Book Chapter: ‘Litterfall’, in: Speculative Nature Writing, edited by Hetty Saunders and Jos Smith (Cornwall: Guillemot Press, 2023)
In an unspectacular corner of the British midlands a meshwork of pipes weaves its way through a small plot of mature woodland. Suspended a few feet above the forest floor, the pipes carry vast quantities of CO2 from terrestrial storage tanks high into the forest canopy. Slender scaffolding structures encircle the trees like the skeletons of dismantled gas-holding towers. At carefully controlled intervals, valves on the towers let out bursts of gas, creating an invisible cloud that contains the amount of CO2 expected in the atmosphere in 2050.
Taking one of the world’s major research forests as its point of departure, this chapter explores the imaginary consequences of a real-world experiment that seeks to simulate the future of climate change. Comprising a 5,000 word contribution to an anthology of ‘Speculative Nature Writing’, the chapter straddles the border between fiction and non-fiction writing, alternating between rich descriptive passages and minutes taken from a series of imaginary meetings as the research forest is beset by a number of meteorological and economic crises.
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