I’ve been here in Belipola for a few weeks now, entrenched in the local cultures. I eat Sri Lankan food at every meal–with my hands even. I work along side Sinhala and Tamil people and hear their languages around me. It’s funny, then, that lately I seem to spend all my time thinking about Australian Aboriginals.

The Aboriginals see time differently than we westerners. Instead of facing the future, they see themselves facing the past. Future generations are behind them, always following. That is what I see here in Analog Forestry. There is an endless progression of forest stretching into the future, following the present forest as it moves towards the past.

For every section of forest, you can see its present state. But for every section of forest, you can also see what it will look like in five years, in twenty years. There may now be a warm, grassy area full of sunshine and a few struggling saplings, but one day those saplings will be huge canopy trees that shade your eyes, and all the grasses will be long gone. Or maybe they’ll be thriving citrus trees with fruits ripe for the picking. Or maybe they’ll be tall firetrees lighting up the landscape with their bright colors.

But which will it be? A forest, on its own, can take hundreds of years to decide. It could be half a century before the forest is helpful to the planet or to the people living on it. This is where humans come in. We can choose for the forest. Gone are the days of forcing the land to do our bidding. This is about intervening in the forest now so that the forest of the future fits our needs of its own accord. We can decide what follows.

So how do we know what to do? How do we know where the forest is going and how it will get there? We must look forward, if you will, to the forests of the past. Those ancient forests, the ones we are following, know everything about what a forest can be. They are full of structures and functions, helpful to humans and to the lands humans have helped to degrade. If we look to them for inspiration, we are able to move forward and choose where we want the forest to go, and what should follow it.

This is where the next interesting part of Analog Forestry comes into play. There is a great melding of science and spirt, of art and formulae, of biology and creativity. All these things have to come together to achieve the vision you set out with, to make room for future forests while appreciating the present one.

That is what Analog Forestry is to me. It is about humans seeing and experiencing the forest around them and having the foresight to look over their shoulders and see the forests following behind. Then they can use every tool available to them and every side of their brains to guide the forest of their choosing into being. Not just for the sake of themselves. Not just for the sake of the land. For both. For harmony. For all the forests and people following behind.