Forest for the Trees is a four-part environmental art and story piece set in Kirkkosaari, Muhos.
The Story
Forest for the Trees is a four-part environmental art and story piece set in Kirkkosaari, Muhos along the fitness trail.
The work depicts the seasons on the island, and its parts are made from trees peeled using traditional methods. The trees are painted in the colours of the landscape in different seasons. The work includes a four-part story describing the seasons and periods on the island from prehistoric times to the present day. The parts can be read or listened to, read by the author. The content is from historical sources, stories collected in a participatory workshop, and interviews with local people.
Forest for the trees 1.
It’s spring on the island. The place has many names, of which Muhossaari (Muhos Island), Kirkkosaari (Church Island), and Hautausmaasaari (Graveyard Island) are remembered. On a high spring sky, folding into turquoise, light clouds sail in the warming breeze.
The island is formed by the fork of two rivers, a point that has changed its position again and again over the millennia as first, the ice and then the sea receded from the area. The movements of the larger and stronger River Oulujoki have both raised and eroded the northern shore of the island. The southern shore, on the other hand, is slightly sunk towards the calmer, clay-bottom river, which brings water from the marshlands and splits in two on either side of the island. Over long periods of time, from distances away, the soil has accumulated at this junction, forming part of the island. Natural gas rises from the bottom of the Muhosjoki River bed, and there is sometimes a lot of foam on the surface. The water is now brown because the marshes that once kept the water clean have been drained to fields and woodland, from which the colour now spills into the river and down to the sea.
Sometimes the water was so clear that people did their laundry in it, for millennia. Long before even the first church, which rose a few centuries ago, in the Middle Ages; a small barn-like building where baptisms, weddings, and funerals were held when the priest had the opportunity to come from a long distance to run the affairs of a distant parish on the outskirts. This first church hardly had a stone foundation, but it was built on an island, a place long consecrated to spirits and ancestors and the final resting place of a community at the river of life and death.
What is the significance of this island today, for you?
Forest for the trees 2.
In the heat of a summer’s day, an island lies, where local children search for adventure and treasure, signs of the past. The ruins of an old church, the bones beside the cemetery fence.
On the northern shore, the foot seeks out the lookout stones, where many a time people have sat dreaming, reaching out with eyes and thoughts towards the west and the sea, the city on its shore, where hundreds and thousands of tar boats, logs, barrels of butter and fish glide along the river. And all the people the riverboats carry. And the ships, the steamers like Laine and Lempi! Once upon a time, the river route provided a way from the sea all the way to Karelia and back.
It was here that an adventurer, an explorer who travelled extensively around Finland, immortalised local children dreaming on the bank in the late 19th century. At the Paris World’s Fair, the public was able to see the same landscape through a picture.
“The beaches are smiling summer landscapes, but the region is especially beautiful from the hillside, where you can see a belt of water sliding into the distance between its fertile shores and the dark foliage behind the fertile banks,” wrote the photographer, I.K. Inha.
The Wood Cranesbill is humming in the light shade, leaning towards an arctic raspberry flower on which a small butterfly with a greenish metallic sheen rests.
What do your eyes find when you open them?
Forest for the trees 3.
With the autumn evenings and the coolness of the weather, the autumn foliage settles on the island. Imagine the sweet smell of smoke and decaying leaves. Ancient trapping pits and indentations left by tar pits and coal kilns have long been covered by moss and brush. The lights of the power station glitter over the dark water, and the electric hum vibrates in the brisk air.
A Forest Research Institute research station has risen on the island. The workers are a close-knit family, for whom the island is like a second home. A private beach, a pier, and a boat at the foot of steep steps on the water’s edge, and a tennis court in the yard. The ruins of the old sawmill on the southern part of the island are being demolished and even the stones of the foundation are being taken away, for they annoy the manager of the research station.
The station door is hardly ever locked. The forest is old and untouched, the berries redden on the hills, the mushrooms on the heaths. They are picked after work. It’s nice to arrive on the island on foot.
One day the facility empties of people, the station moves to the city and the community falls apart. The house is left empty. One night, something strange happens: someone starts a fire and soon there are only smoking ruins. After that, the forest is suddenly heavily used, with mushrooms and berries disappearing. Peace, and with it many permanent and special inhabitants, leave the island. The wood warbler, the tree pipit, the hazel grouse, the long-eared owl, the treecreeper, the black woodpecker, and many other rare species move away. For them, the real forest on the island was one of the last shelters that offered them a chance to survive.
Where to go when there is nowhere else to go?
Forest for the trees 4.
The night moon wanders across the sky, illuminating with its faint glow the ski track and the freshly fallen snow on it, patterned by fresh paw prints. On the trunk of a fallen aspen, the marks left by a chisel tooth. The island’s white-furred winter resident eats the green hiding from the cold under a grey bark.
The river is quiet in its bed, with a light covering of ice keeping the water just hidden, in places just a thin fringe of ice that cracks to reveal hints of depth.
A fog-like image of the days of thick ice floats over the water, horse races on ice are held on the river. The low winter sun shines down on the snow-covered banks, creating a glittering flicker. The horses’ backs and breath steam in the frosty air. The crowd spreads out along the banks. Perhaps horseshoes still lie in the muddy bottom.
The time of the Golden Bell races ended some fifty years ago. Around the same time, an illuminated path was built along the island’s beaches and in the shelter of the forest, which people began to walk along on foot in summer and on skis in winter. Many still walk along these paths.
A millennia-old ski has been recovered from the river, and a similar but even older ski has been found further upstream.
What moved us in the past, what moves us today?
The Artist
Visual and performance artist Mari Kämäräinen works as an artist, performer, and expert. Kämäräinen lives and works in Turku, but is also active in her home region of Oulujokilaakso, for example in the Northern Opera Company. In her works, she uses performance, drawing, space, and storytelling. As a community artist, Kämäräinen aims to promote the connection and well-being of nature and people.
In cooperation
Sound design: Sami Mustonen, Muhos
The colours and stories have been designed together with local people who have a special relationship with Kirkkosaari. Story details were collected in a walking workshop on the island, separate interviews or literary sources.
Sources:
Muhos Local History Museum, Wanhaa Muhosta: kotiseutukävely Korilanmäeltä Kirkkosaareen, Heikkinen, 2016, Previous employees of the Forest Research Institute; Irene Murtovaara ja Osmo Murtovaara, Marja-Kaisa Heikkinen, Elsi Lehikoinen, Kalevi Leskelä, Mirja Palkki, Esa Holopainen, Rokua Geopark / Humanpolis Oy
The Journey of Discovery in Art
The seven works of art in the Journey of Discovery in Art project highlight the natural and cultural heritage of the landscapes in the Rokua Geopark area, recognised as being of national importance, through environmental art. The works are inspired by three main themes: geological heritage, tar, and legends. The works have been funded by the Council of Oulu Region (AKKE funding) and the founders of Rokua Geopark (the municipalities of Muhos, Utajärvi, and Vaala, the Rokuan Terveys- ja Kuntouttamissäätiö foundation and Metsähallitus) and commissioned by Humanpolis.
