Support the Campfire Podcast on Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/c/mattiasolsson
Maria Westerberg | The Involuntary Activist
Maria Westerberg never set out to become an activist. She became one because she saw forests disappearing — places she loved, places that were part of her home and her sense of belonging. Their destruction felt like a physical loss.
Maria is an artist, a twig poet, and a forest activist. In this conversation, we begin with her childhood and her search for a way of living that felt true to her. We talk about forests as places of refuge and freedom, the curious figures she creates from twigs, and the difficulty of finding our own way in a world full of expectations about who we should be.
We also talk about what happened when the forest around Maria and her husband Johannes was devastated by drought and bark beetles. Rather than simply clearing the damaged land and starting over, they began an experiment in ecological restoration — moving thousands of trees from places where they would otherwise be removed, restoring wetlands, and allowing a more diverse forest to emerge.
Along the way, we explore industrial forestry, biodiversity, the value of working slowly, and what it means to act from love rather than opposition. Maria reflects on how working with the land has given her something that years of campaigning against destructive forestry never quite could: a tangible sense of possibility.
Perhaps our relationship with the living world can be about more than protecting what remains. Perhaps we can also learn to repair what has been damaged, and discover a different role for ourselves among the other creatures with whom we share this Earth.
This is the first episode in a new series of the Campfire Podcast — conversations with people finding their own ways towards a more alive, regenerative and meaningful world.
IN THIS EPISODE
• Maria’s relationship with the forest, from childhood to the present
• Becoming an involuntary activist
• Twig art, poetry, freedom and the value of doing things slowly
• Industrial forestry, clear-cutting and the loss of biodiversity
• What bark beetles can teach us about forests and ecological resilience
• Restoring a damaged forest by moving thousands of trees
• Wetlands, rewilding and working with the land
• Vandana Shiva’s ideas about acting from what we love
• Finding hope through practical acts of regeneration
• Rethinking human work and our place in the living world
LINKS
Support the Campfire Podcast on Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/c/mattiasolsson
Discover Maria and Johannes’s work at Romantics Reserve:
https://www.romanticsreserve.com/
Watch Kinfolk, featuring Maria Westerberg and Vandana Shiva:
https://www.campfire-stories.org/kinfolk
Watch A Tale from the Woods, my first film with Maria:
https://www.campfire-stories.org/a-tale-from-the-woods-film
Listen to Vandana Shiva on Cultivating Fearlessness:
https://www.campfire-stories.org/vandana-shiva-on-cultivating-fearlessness
Watch the films at Campfire Stories:
https://www.campfire-stories.org/
CREDITS
Music: Arvid Rask
Sound mix: Boris Laible
The Campfire Podcast is hosted by documentary filmmaker Mattias Olsson and is part of Campfire Stories, an independent film platform exploring the roots of our ecological and social troubles — and the beginnings of a different direction.
Films and conversations are freely available. Campfire Stories is sustained by people who believe this work matters.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
