Every year in June the UK Wildlife Trusts launch a little thing they call 30 Days Wild. The mission, if we choose to accept it, is that each day for the month of June we do one thing for or in nature. The Wildlife Trusts' website describes the idea as 30 Random Acts of Wildness. They have a pack with a list of things that you can do – big things like digging a pond and little things like going on a bug hunt in your garden or park. Many of them are aimed at getting children involved, but I say: if you don't have small people, be one! Checkout the website at 30Days Wild – the UK’s biggest nature challenge – reveals people’s favourite ‘random acts of wildness’ | The Wildlife Trusts to see the kind of things that count as "wild".
It's fun and has one single simple aim: to get us to connect more with our local wildlife by getting closer to it.
I stumbled across the initiative in May last year, when we were talking about emerging slowly (and, as it turned out, only temporarily) from full lock-down. Even though I am lucky enough to have a garden (part of which is deliberately semi-wild – or, if you prefer, "neglected" ) and am also even more lucky to have close access to woodland, rivers, a lake, parkland, I was feeling pretty isolated. So I thought, if I can't connect with friends and family, I can connect with the planet.
I promptly made a list of wild things to do.
When June kicked in, I promptly started ignoring it. Only the list: I stayed signed up to the principle, I just loosened my approach. Whatever I might have intended to do, my instinct led me to my own passions of words and pictures. So during the actual month I don't think I did any of the things the Trusts recommended, and I did very few of those on my own list. That is, I didn't do them consciously as part of "my" 30 days. So here's the thing: the ideas are just ideas. Just go out there and connect in whatever way works for you.
What I did was to produce 30 pictures and 30 short pieces of writing (mostly poems) and shared them around. I know that this made a few people smile. And a few others think. I'm happy with that: making a few more people look more closely, or think a bit differently, for instance about slugs, or the holes in the garage walls where the bees decided to nest, or what might show up in the lawn if you let the grass go unmown for a while, then my little celebrations will be pebbles in the pond…they will ripple outwards.
For my own part, I actively looked closely at the natural world very close to home every single day during the month, and over time that led to some small gains for the life in my garden. There are more bird feeders this spring than there were last. There are more water bowls and I clean them out and refill more regularly. I no longer wince at slugs – except when I inadvertently tread on one barefoot in the dark which is absolutely not recommended! – I generally let them go on their merry little way, in the hope that the hedgehog might return. I’m overcoming my aversion to spiders. I didn't mow the lawns until the end of May, though I'm thinking with Spring being so late this year that might not have been late enough. I had to compromise.
Of course I have signed up again this year. This time I've started from my natural bent towards words and pictures. And I have chosen a theme of wild flowers. 30 Days, 30 Flowers, 30 poems. My aim is to put each one (or an extract depending on how long they decide to be) on Twitter #30DaysWild – and I figure I'll publish a few here over the next few weeks.
What can I say? It is in my nature to need a challenge…and celebrating the beauty that is on my doorstep is no challenge at all, it is a daily nano-pilgrimage to mother earth. Creating something that might make others want to do the same: that is the challenge.
This is where I reach 'full disclosure' and admit that I like to make life easy for myself, so I am using the expression wild flowers somewhat loosely. So flowers includes tree blossom, and wild includes anything not deliberately planted where it is currently growing: escapees, naturalised plants, incomers, bird-sown, and also things that may have been planted but are now more or less left to their own devices, which includes trees that are only "managed" at the point at which they become an imminent danger to the public, but are otherwise left to grow and fall and rot and regrow as they see fit.
If you've read this far and you're still wondering "why?" or "is there a point to all this?" I can only give you my own interpretations. Every other week I read something which confirms that being in nature is good not only for our mental health and sense of well-being, but also for our physical health. My personal view is that, actually, we cannot avoid being in nature because we are nature. Whatever some systems of belief would have us believe, my personal view (and no disrespect to anyone whose truth holds otherwise) is that humans are intrinsic to the system. There is nothing special about us, other than what we have achieved in terms of domination and ruination of the planet. We are animals – in both the worst and the BEST sense of the word.
I also believe, more particularly in the case of my approach to these 30 days, if we return to celebrating our wild growing things – especially the things that are often derided (like weeds!) - then we will encourage others to see their beauty too. If they see beauty unexpectedly, then maybe they will start to look for it, and they will find more of it. Anything that helps folk see what an awesome planet we live on has to be a good thing – it has to encourage them to care more about it – and maybe be a bit more careful of how they live upon it.
I am not here to tell anyone how to live their life. I am here to ask them, you, me, all of us, to simply look around at how and where we're living it. There are many doom mongers out there, many anger merchants, who will tell you what is wrong. That is not my job. My job is to ask you to look at the good stuff – look at the beauty, the awe-inspiring, the inexplicable natural systems, the ancient wisdom, the love, the light, the potential we have if we choose to use it. And the wildlife on your doorstep is a great place to start - because it might just be more AWESOME than you imagined.
Check out the Wildlife Trust pages and if you're in the UK: sign up – do a few things. We're a week in, but that's not to say you can't stretch your 30 Days Wild into July, or even if you just do One Wild Week…or One Wild Thing...anything, something.
If you're not in the UK, I'd love to know what happens where you are if there is anything similar going on… and if there isn't: start your own. Doesn't have to be June – pick the month when there's lots happening wildly in your back yard.
So: proof of the pudding: how far have I got? I'm writing this on Day 6, which is photo'd but not yet written, so I can offer up days 1 to 5.
I can tell you that my first five wild flowers are: Cow Parsley, Columbine, Forget-me-nots, Clover and White Campion. Actual writing will follow separately - because right now you need to make a cup of tea and go sit in your nearest green space (even if that is next to your window - open it!)
Stay wild.
