Afghanistan is recalled as a landscape under pressure, where people cut down their last trees to sell as firewood. The reference gives the location a brief but pointed place in the novel’s wider account of forests: here, as elsewhere, immediate need and the sale of wood accompany the disappearance of a diminishing resource.

A Landscape Recalled

Afghanistan enters through Tom Paulin’s memories. After serving in war and losing comrades, he finds civilian life lonely and joins a restoration crew at Seeley Lake, where tending young larches gives his grief a focus. His thoughts return to Afghanistan and to people felling their remaining trees for firewood, a memory set against the restorative work he is doing in the forest.

Forest Loss and Human Need

The account links Afghanistan’s diminishing trees to the need to sell firewood. It offers no further detail about the people, the scale of the felling, or its causes; its force lies in the stark image of a dwindling supply meeting immediate need. In the novel’s larger environmental pattern, forests are repeatedly treated as sources of trade and profit, while the loss left at the place of extraction remains visible after the commercial opportunity has passed.

Contrast with Restoration

Afghanistan’s remembered tree loss stands in contrast to Tom’s work at Seeley Lake. There, a crew burns accumulated fuel around old larches, after which thousands of seedlings spring up; Tom comes to see planting as a way of recovering a bond with the comrades he has lost. The contrast does not suggest that Afghanistan’s forests are restored. Instead, the memory sharpens the difference between cutting trees to meet present need and tending a forest toward renewal.