“Walking and remembering.”

This chapter considers the ambiguous interplay between the dual functions of forests in Israel: as sites of commemoration and spaces of recreation. Beginning with a general overview of the commemorative-leisure merger in the Israeli forests, the focus narrows to a specific type of memory carrier: walking trails recollecting historical events in unrelated natural spaces. These trails are designed to incorporate memorial qualities, aiming to integrate previously overlooked topics into the national narrative through the culturally significant practice of walking the land, thereby creating treescape memories . Nonetheless, their intertextual qualities closely connect them to the socio-political context in which they are intentionally established. Examining the chosen examples – the Escape Trail, the Yemenite Jewry Forest trail, and the Martyrs Trail – challenges the perception of a trail as an alternative memorial and demonstrates the resulting reification of meta-narratives.