‘Truly scary and fascinating at the same time’: childhood memories of multispecies forests

This article examines childhood memories of encounters and relations with other animals in forests. It asks, what kind of imaginaries are constructed on childhood memories of multispecies relationalities between children, animals, and forests. Theoretically, the article is situated within the framework of multispecies relationality, with three key concepts: agency, becoming with, and home. The article furthers geographical research on child-animal-nature relations, focusing especially on the contexts of farm animals and wild animals, forests, and children’s independent movement in, interaction with, and emotions felt about nature as part of everyday life, understood as multispecies spatio-temporal imaginaries. Methodologically situated within memory studies, the study draws on written narratives on human-forest relations, consisting of experiences and memories of forested environments from mid- to late twentieth century Finland. The article argues that multispecies relations involving children, animals, and the environment, in places that are experienced and later remembered as meaningful, are crucial for creating connections within a multispecies world. Such embodied experiences provide a basis for imagining and empathizing with the lives of nonhuman others and the consequences of human action.