Of the wild

Firstly, a huge thank you for your kind words and support following my last letter, it really does mean the world to me.

‘The Wild’ makes me think of vast landscapes of wilderness, untouched by the hands of humans. Of mountains, forests, savannah or oceans, where wild creatures live their lives without interference. However today there is hardly a place left on this fine planet unmanaged in some way by our species. Even in the deepest, darkest depths of the oceans, plastic rubbish is found. Even the atmosphere, the very air that all of life on earth breathes, has been altered by us.

Our nature reserves, seemingly wild, are not completely autonomous. They are planned and managed, reeds cut, pools created and maintained, scrub eaten by introduced animals or cleared mechanically, the natural succession of habitats held still, frozen in time. I’m not saying this is bad, in fact it’s incredibly important in many circumstances, but thinking about our definition of wild, these reserves become museum pieces, enclosed and preserved in fear of loss. It’s important to remember that the real wild is dynamic, and landscapes, and the species that live there, change over time in a complex system. In the UK we’ve convinced ourselves that we don’t have enough space with all us humans around to simply allow these natural processes to take place, so we contain it, and only let wild happen in its allocated space.

Wild though, is a feeling, not necessarily a place. There is wild in the Wren song at the bottom of the garden, and I fling my window open wide on a Spring morning to allow the sweet trilling into my home. That song once echoed through the woodland which covered the UK thousands of years ago. It rang out from the scrubby edge where the aurochs grazed, ancient landscapes in which our ancestors lived their own wild lives, and still the Wren sings.

For a child with a fistful of grain, there is wild in the ducks at the park. Awe and delight at observing, or interacting with, a different species. A reminder that we’re not alone, that we share our world with others, with their own life stories, so different to ours. A reminder that we are of the wild too. In this sense, the wild is all around us, in our gardens and cities, and in the wider managed countryside too.

There is wild in the Peregrine who flashes through the city sky, wild in the crashing waves at the beach, wild in the grasshopper singing on the road verge, wild in the gulls following the plough. The moss growing on the fence post, the plants pushing through cracks in the paving, birds nesting in the eaves, solitary bees in soft mortar, and moles in the lawn. We live alongside the wild, and in the act of noticing we feel a little wilder ourselves, a sense of belonging and kinship. Connectedness to place, to time, to history, and maybe if we try to make it a little better, if we plant the flowers to feed the bees, we are connected to the future too.

‘Of the wild’ started as an Instagram account, during a time I felt natures wild call particularly strongly. The ‘Beast from the East’ had swept across the country, bringing great drifts of snow, and for the first time ever, the weather had prevented me physically from getting to work, it was an awakening to the power of nature and just how wild our world really is. I stomped through the thick white blanket in wild delight, alone, alive, and feeling slightly feral. I waded through the soft powder to a little common not far from home, and watched a Snipe probing the only unfrozen ground, near a small stream slowly flowing, a dark stripe across the monochrome world. I think I started that account to try and show how the wild really is all around us, but the tangle of stems that arose was a little too rough for the Insta-perfect algorithm, and it turned into more of a personal account. Discovering Substack though rekindled the idea of sharing stories and photos of reconnection with the natural world, it may yet end up a tangled mess again, but my one aim is simply to help people notice the wild things just a little more, and to notice that they have noticed. What grows from there belongs to them, be it awe, connection, curiosity or motivation.

There is such talent here on Substack, that I sometimes feel a little out of my depth, but I hope my words will resonate with you in some way. So come with me, as I forage for photos, locally and further afield. All images and words are mine, never AI, so I apologise in advance for any errors. I’ll show you what I’ve seen, and I very much hope you’ll join me.

Here’s a Green-winged orchid from a recent shoot, from a little meadow surrounded by arable fields, a beautiful little oasis.

Thanks so much for reading, please do leave a comment, I’d love to hear from you!

Until next time,

Dawn.

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