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All travel writers, at some point, are forced to reckon with the domestic. Having written two books from frontlines of the Democratic Republic of Congo and refugee camps in Kenya, Ben Rawlence finds himself reconsidering the purpose of his work after the birth of his two daughters. Aware from his reporting how an unravelling climate is already destabilising lives across the world, he turns his gaze homeward, committing to family life in Wales and wrestling with how best to equip his children for the future. Think Like a Forest is told through a series of frank and heartfelt letters to his daughters, spanning from before their birth up until the first is on the cusp of becoming a teenager.
Parenting is beset with anxiety, but something feels particular about this moment. Having children myself, I am often at a loss to understand my role when all we really know is that their lives will be radically different from our own. If the future has become “a moving target”, as Rawlence puts it, then what is parenting? How do we prepare our children for a world for which we ourselves feel unequipped? How do we raise them within a system that we know is jeopardising their future? It is helpful to read that other parents find such mental conjuring overwhelming. Parents of young children are the most likely to ignore or deny climate breakdown, the day-to-day already requiring complete engagement without also having to project their little lives into an uncertain, unstable future.
Well before secondary school, Rawlence’s daughters are fluent in the language of emissions and extinctions. Some parents will balk at this, seeing their role as preserving a child’s naivety and optimism for as long as possible. Yet eco-anxiety in children is frequently traced, not to existential concerns about the future, but to adults’ failure to be honest. Rawlence draws on his conversations with psychotherapist Caroline Hickman and the research of the Climate Psychology Alliance. “Eco-anxiety is not anxiety,” says Hickman. These are real concerns. The anxiety derives from watching adults ignoring the problem and refusing to discuss it.
Our children probably know more about the climate crisis than we imagine. We have grown up scared of a changing future. They have known nothing but. “The disaster we so often think awaits us in the future has in fact already happened in the past,” Rawlence writes. Our children know this, and this is maybe the most profound split between the generations. Our role is not to gloss over what they are feeling, but to hold them and help them understand how to live within such flux.
What this means, Rawlence suggests, is building culture. Building networks of community, grounding in place, treating hope as a verb and a daily practice. His own work has led to his co-founding Black Mountains College in Wales, an institute with the aim of educating its students for a warming world intellectually, emotionally and practically. Echoing the visionary work of the late environmental activist Joanna Macy, he writes, “Only when we have done the hard work of grief can we reclaim the meaning of hope.”
Adults must grow up a second time, as we learn that the future we were peddled is not the one we are going to get. There is much to be learnt from our children: their instinctive ethics, Rawlence writes, are correct. They understand themselves to be part of a wider ecology, one of community, place, Nature and landscape. The world may be flawed, but it is not lost, and each successive generation experiences the joy of discovering it anew. He quotes marine biologist Rachel Carson: “If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder ... he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world.” What better ambition for a parent as we hold our children’s hands and walk towards the world that is yet to come?
Think Like a Forest: Letters to My Children from a Changing Planet by Ben Rawlence. Jonathan Cape, 2026. ISBN: 9781787335257
