Aesthetic Experience in Forests 1998
Journal of Aesthetics & Art Criticism
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Lusto, Punkaharju, Finland 1996

"Aesthetic Experience in Forests," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 56, no. 2 (Spring 1998): 157-166. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/432254

Invited address at "The Aesthetics of the Forest," the Second International Conference on Landscape Aesthetics, Lusto, Punkaharju, Finland, June 10-13, 1996.

Online at: http://hdl.handle.net/10217/35650

Forests are aesthetically challenging because of the sense of deep time, experiencing an archetype of creation. Forests are both perennial and dynamic. Appropriate aesthetic encounter requires knowledge of scientific natural history, necessary though not sufficient for intense, multisensory, participatory engagement when persons, immersed in forests, live their aesthetic experiences. Forests, although naturalized, are experienced as sublime, evoking the sense of the sacred. Aesthetic appreciation in forests radically differs from that appropriate for artworks.