At some point, on a beach, someone said: but the real question is how do we rewild ourselves?
Part of my response to that emerged in a gratitude prayer in reference to our still-wild souls. I concur with my fellow beach-sitting-writer that we do need to rewild ourselves. I think we start by identifying the part that is still wild.
That same day, I was talking about my 2021 experience of Thirty Days Wild, during which I'd focussed on wild flowers. Over half of them I found in my suburban garden. Wow, that's serious rewilding someone said. I could only smile, because actually it is serious neglect. When it comes to gardening, I find I spend most of my time – and by most I am talking more than 80% - trying to stop things growing…or growing so quickly…or growing in the 'wrong' place.
As I've said elsewhere, I have no pretentions to being a gardener. I have a tendency to let and forget when it comes to planting. I put stuff in and then wait to see if it has a will to survive. If not, then we're not well suited. The other side of that approach is that in some areas of the garden I just wait to see what comes up of its own accord – and this does seem to differ every year. There were no poppies last year, no sunflowers, there were campion and forget-me-not and dandelion and bramble. Bigger thistles and alkanet – and I may come to regret both of those. I was pleased to see the columbine resurging after a kind friend pulled out "those weeds". Pansies will take any spare corner and bloomed into December in the warmer & sunnier spots. Dog violet is colonising the front wall. It looked like the grape hyacinth were coming up for another bite of the summer, new shoots in late August: I decided to wait and see.
Waiting and seeing. Therein lies an aspect of wildness. Not needing to control. That is a wild thing.
This, then, is one of the still-wild corners of my soul. Its home is in my garden. The grass grows longer than tidy. The trees I pay more attention to, because trees frighten me with their power, and the garden is small and I need the bungalow to outlive me. The gentler smaller plants – and those further away from the structure – they get free rein – at least for a season. I have photographic evidence of the memory of this place, and I know the earth holds that too. It is a memory of beech and birch. A memory of bay. Of ivy. Of proto-eco-systems in rainwater pipes. It can revert in time, just not in my time, because I love living here and need the structure and the shelter. And the earth has longer to live and more patience.
There are new trees to reflect the former life of this land that was once an orchard. It holds memory of apple and pear, and the newly planted trees, young as they are, have yielded their first fruits. Therein lies another aspect of wildness. Hold on to your experience, however deeply the memory lies, it will fruit again when called upon. Wildness is never lost, only transformed. Never buried, only planted.
So this is my recipe for rewilding your soul.
FIRST: find your starting wild.
If you would rewild yourself, first find your yeast or your seed, your 'starter', the aspect of yourself that however small or well-hidden is still wild and only needs the right conditions in order to grow.
Nurture it. Be kind to it. Allow it the primary condition it needs in order to grow that is common to all things: it needs time. Depending on that nature of you (and likewise of me) it may be a fast-growing or a slow-growing species. Let it be what it is. Give it time. And if nothing seems to be happening, remember the first aspect of being wild: waiting and seeing.
We have grown to associate the word wild with abandon, rapidity, passion, but that's a false human limitation. Wild can also move at glacial speed. At decomposition speed. At the speed it takes the Himalaya to grow.
Your human wilding will not move so slowly, so fear not, but equally it is worth reminding yourself (and me, myself) that it does not need to rip through like a hurricane.
SECOND: find your local wild
The second and possibly the most important ingredient in rewilding yourself is your local wild.
Find a place of wildness, close to home, and befriend it. Visit often.
Note: the word is wildness, not wilderness. It matters that it is close enough for you to go there every day. You don't need actually to go every day, but you need to be able to go on any day, whenever you have the time, whenever you have the need, because as you start to re-wild you will find that you have more of both: more time and more need to be in touch with the wild and feral things.
Yes, feral. I fully accept the 'gone-wild' into my definition of wild things.
Some folk pass over the garden escapees when they go wild-flower hunting. I don't understand that. Surely: RESPECT! These guys and girls have leapt the garden wall, made a bid for freedom, and are making it in our land on their own terms. I love it.
THIRD: be brave, be kind, accept that there are limits
The problem we have, I fear, is that too many of us do not really want wild, because in the wild, “what is” has out-competed “what no longer is” and we hanker for a 'wild' that exists on our terms.
We cannot turn the clock back. We can choose to lend a helping hand to the under-dogs (red squirrels, pine marten, hedgehogs) – and I do – and we can choose to try to eradicate the utterly destructive (wage your war on Japanese knotweed) – but at the same time, if we choose which wild creatures we want, which wild plants we will allow, then we have to acknowledge the limits to our willingness to be wild.
That's ok.
Because when I talk about rewilding the soul, I'm not suggesting that we throw everything away and go live in a cave. Unless that's what your soul calls you to do, in which case I wish you warm winds, clean water and much fruit growing on the hillside.
For most of us, rewilding is a gentler affair, a simple reconnecting with the world we are a part of, and have possibly lost touch with. So when you seek out your local wild, do not feel it must be a high mountain or a remote shore. Anywhere nature has a free(ish) hold on her space is all you need.
It matters only that you can go and be there. Often.
Truly untouched is awesome but, equally truly, feral, gone-wild, rewilded, weedy, woody, will do. Parkland at a push. Find it, and go there. Admit your everyday to the place and love it. Bravely.
Note: the word is every-day, not every day. Free days, mornings, evenings, noons and nights, whenever you can find, make, beg, borrow or steal the time. Play hooky if you must, because as you rewild you will find that it becomes a priority to be in your adopted space, and in other perhaps wilder spaces.
FOURTH: live your way, don’t justify your way
Within your tame-world there will be obligations you choose to accept or cannot yet dismantle. There will be roads you're simply not yet ready to walk down. Do not explain your timidity, simply accept it. Not me, not yet, maybe not ever, certainly not now. No rationalising.
In that world there will also be people who do not support your move towards the wild side: family, friends, co-workers, neighbours. Do not seek to convert them, respect their views and hold to your own. This is about your life not theirs.
The final ingredient for rewilding, therefore, is deciding how to live and then just doing it, not explaining it, not justifying it. The oak has no need to explain itself. The poppy grows as tall as it will. The ivy clings where it wants, climbing the walls or sprawling over the ground. Fish swim with the current or against it or hang in mid-stream as they see fit. None of these things feels a need to negotiate their right to just be who and what they are. And nor should we.
I wish you peace and I wish you wildness.
