Finding the Wild Side of Life

 

 My first four days of taking part in the Wildlife Trusts 30 Days Wild has been an experience of two halves. Today we took one of the dogs down the river, spotting an oystercatcher and his veering trail of footprints left in the wet sand. Yesterday I met with one of my tutors for my Wild Writing MA, followed up by a wild lunch sat on Broomheath over looking the River Deben. We were surrounded by dried rabbit droppings, though only spotted one darting behind a hedge, and ferns only just beginning to unfurl their fiddleheads, apparently having been relatively recently (for a planet that has been largely unchanged for over 100 million years) mowed down. The eradication had afforded us a better view of the river and the villages and fields on the hills beyond, but I would have much preferred the forest of ferns. Any time I wander through a sea of their geometric leaves I feel transported back to the Cretaceous Era, awaiting the stampede of long extinct beasts, apparently no match for those curling green leaves.

On the first two days it was only the weather that was wild. What with gales of wind and the rain threatening all day I failed to get out and instead spent most of my days snuggled in a winter jumper, a splatter of rain incapacitating me from escaping from my elaborate burrow. On day 1 I tried imprinting leaves on paper, with little success. On day 2 late in the evening I decided to switch on some wildlife webcams. The first few I tried were, unsurprisingly, completely black, obviously set up in a place miraculously far away from the unrelenting lights so many of us have become used to. Eventually I caught some creatures awake. A family of peregrines nested on Aylesbury county hall. I couldn’t work out how many there were or how old any of the members were. I could clearly see at least three. One, I thought to be male, spent a long time preening with another curled up next to him. I assumed this second to be a female as she looked about twice the size. I flicked back later and another had risen up from the huddle and took up the preening routine. It was an oddly cosy and domestic image for animals so perfectly designed for murder. They appeared fluffy with their fledgling feathers and snuggled next to each other for warmth.

Barn Owls were next. I watched one where a bundle of chicks nestled close to the lens. They screeched incessantly for food and their mother. I turned on another and was immediately met with the face of a barn owl mother turned 180 degrees. She shuffled and twitched on her spot for a long time but eventually moved to reveal another clutch of chicks. Before leaving for her night time hunt she stretched and turned back and forth. There were times when she looked terrifyingly human. At one point, her face turned and catching the light in a particular way, it looked like she was wearing a Venetian mask, an eerie pale and pointed visage. Then she moved closer to the entrance of the box and spread her wings, looking like some sort of odd caricature of a human, a clown fooling about before the beginning of a show or a stout man limbering up for the day.

While the last two days I’ve been in amongst my nearby nature and relaxed under the dappled light that escapes from a canopy of leaves, it was during the first two days, trapped by the mild grievance of nature’s unpredictable weather, that I was reminded how close we really are to the wild. The wild isn’t something foreign and distant that you must escape from the confines of an urban environment to discover. It can be domestic and sometimes it bears a human face. You shouldn’t have to step out of your comfort zone to experience the wild, just lift your head and open your ears to incorporate it into your life.

Walking & Personal Therapy

 As winter is blown away into light spring days I’ve begun thinking about walking.

In all honesty I’ve never been much of a walker. In the idealised image of who I am I am but in reality I’m not. Growing up in big cities has made me too reliant on the convenience of public transport and the ability to get to all necessary and desired amenities with little effort. But I am aware that walking is much more than just a means of getting from A to B.

As a child my family regularly took me for long walks through a variety of landscapes that I’ve now come to truly admire, such as the Lake District, but my most constant memories of those walks is heavy complaining of cold, hunger or tired legs. Like many children bought up in an age of screens I struggled to see what was to be gained by spending hours trapping through hills and rocks.

But despite the regular, and I’m sure thoroughly irritating, complaining I also have vivid memories of more pleasant times. Running ahead through a rocky valley, observing oddly shaped rocks and picturing the scenery as a fantastical landscape, my own Narnia. Swimming along a river at the bottom of an Italian valley, excited to find what would be hidden behind the next bend or in some undiscovered crevice. In retrospect I feel lucky for these experiences for, although I don’t remember any journey in totality, I can still grasp many pocketfuls of memories that multiply the more I think about them. Castles on hilltops appearing through the gaps of trees in a rich forest, woods and waterfalls, endless hills and cosy cafes at the end. But memories aren’t the only benefits of walking either.

Some months ago I came across a book, The Philosophy of Walking, and although I have still done little more than skim it’s pages it provoked me to think about the multiple benefits of walking and how I’d recently tried to motivate myself to fully appreciate a good walk with no particular end in a physical sense but providing a wealth of benefits mentally.

For a few years now I have suffered with anxiety, in varying amounts, for some months it’ll be particularly severe but then subside leaving me optimistically feeling it might be almost gone for good, but out of seemingly nowhere it’s back again. Travelling, for some reason, is always a difficult part of it. The thought of a short car journey to a place that was unfamiliar to me could result in a fit of tears. So often how far I could go was not dictated by fences but my own mental state. Any trip was a real challenge.

Last summer I decided I really had to crack down on this problem as I felt the nerves of an intense year of studying at a campus a 45 minute drive from home. I needed to find my own way of doing this, not being a fan of medication and struggling to find any suitable type of therapy (especially for my budget). The best way to do this seemed to me to be getting out by myself and just going for a wander. I’d usually start off at our local corner shop and then take a slightly longer walk home, slowly widening my comfort zone. Soon I was wanting to go further when I got back to my front door.

Although I never wandered out into the countryside just those short walks were immensely theraputic. I managed to get through my first term at university relatively well and even took a 9 hours long boat trip, a journey that would have seemed impossible a year before. Although there was many factors that had helped I knew these walks played an important part, having given me a greater sense of confidence in being alone and also giving me more quiet time for self-reflection

But with the encroaching cold of winter, that makes you want to do nothing more than snuggle up in a blanket, I’ve had a relapse into my anxiety, making my second term a real struggle and often making me feel absolutely helpless. Once again I’ve had times where I struggle to just walk round the corner by myself and fought to do a lot of things.

Even so, I refuse to say everything is lost and all that good effort gone to waste. Already as the sun warms my neck and I smile at the spring blossoms of fruit trees I feel reinvigorated to continue. I’ve been spying out footpaths and stoking my courage ready to make walking a part of my life again of fully revel in it’s benefits, for my mental and physical health. I already know how much there is to gain from walking, I just need to make it happen.