If you buy through our links, we may earn an affiliate commission. This supports our mission to get more people active and outside.Learn about Outside Online's affiliate link policy What makes a forest enchanted? The forest should be lush and beautiful, improbable, and filled with wild things.
It should evoke a sense of wonder, prompting you to slow your pace and pay attention to unfurling ferns and towering trees. You may discover that your mind meanders along with your body, making room for the fresh sort of silence that only exists in the woods. You might also find yourself looking over your shoulder every now and then, just to be sure.
In both fantasy and reality, Forest Park in Portland, Oregon, fits the description. The 52-acre forest on the west side of Portland is a simulacrum of wilderness in the middle of the city. For Colin Meloy, frontman of the band the Decemberists and author of Wildwood—a cultish middle-grade series that’s basically required reading in the PNW—there was no need to invent some faraway land.
Portland, and more specifically Forest Park, was a setting just magical enough. When I visited Portland for the first time in 2015, I stepped into Forest Park with a sense of awe. I had been in the grungy, forever-1990s streets of downtown moments ago, and now I was…where exactly?
Hiking a trail overlooking canyons of ferns, small creeks, lush green so dense it’s nearly suffocating until you take a giant inhale and say thank you? Later, I moved to Portland in 2023 and walked to Powell’s Books on Hawthorne and bought a copy of Wildwood. It felt like a rite of passage.
Wildwood follows Portland teen Prue as she enters the Impassable Wilderness—the story’s reimagining of Forest Park—to rescue her baby brother after he is abducted by a murder of crows. Now, with Portland-based stop-motion studio LAIKA’s release of Wildwood on October 23, audiences are given a virtual pass to the forest—and, in turn, to the weird wilds of the PNW. We talked to author Meloy, illustrator Carson Ellis, and LAIKA production designer Nelson Lowry about the book, film, and seeing familiar spaces with new eyes.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
