I went to the Natural History Museum Photographer of the Year exhibition yesterday, and the photos were incredible. If you can make it there by 2nd July 2023 I strongly recommend that you do so. Take the time to explore the entire museum, it has a fascinating collection, and very good explanations too.
Many of the photos took my breath away. Often they continued to paint the picture that adventure and natural encounters require large landscapes, big budgets and endless hours sitting, waiting and researching as well as some good fortune. One set of photos in particular however, reminded me of a concept that I’ve recently been exploring both theoretically and practically. That of adventure and wonder being a mindset rather than a thing that requires vast amounts of time and money. Alastair Humphreys explores these ideas in his series ‘The Doorstep Mile’ and his work on MicroAdventures. As I found did ‘Wonderland; a year of Britain’s wildlife day by day’ by Brett Westwood & Stephen Moss. Another good book on this theme is ‘Rewild: The art of returning to nature’ by Nick Baker.
Spring Foraging Day
£95
Learn to identify and cook seasonal wild foods. Our instructors will take you on a stroll to gather our plants in the afternoon you’ll cook up a delightful celebratory meal.
Basket Weaving Day
£95
Create your very own willow basket. We take you through the entire basket weaving process from how to harvest your willow to how to care for your basket.
Track and Sign
£95
Spend a day with our highly knowledgeable instructors. Develop a deeper understanding of the wildlife a mix of habitats including chalk grassland, hazel coppice, plantation on ancient woodland.
I’ve been combining these concepts with my interest in the natural world, bushcraft, tracking and trailing, foraging and so much more, to really slow down on my walks and to look. Not just catalogue, but look.
Another thing I’ve done recently is pick up a pencil and started to sketch. This has taught me how little I actually look at things. Inside, after a day chopping wood, I thought I’d draw the wheelbarrow overflowing with logs ready for the fire, I suddenly realised that I had no idea what a wheelbarrow actually looks like. Of course I could recognise one, I could describe one in words, but draw it from memory, I hadn’t a hope.
What shape did the barrow make, what angle did it come out at? Where was the wheel exactly? How did the handles come up at the back? There was no way, without looking at a wheelbarrow or an image of one, I was going to be able to draw anything that slightly resembled a wheelbarrow. This was a surprising and discombobulating revelation. Weirdly I know that although my drawing skills aren’t up to the greater complexity of forms, I would actually feel more confident with a nettle or a hazel tree. These are plants that I interact with on a regular basis, on a personal level and also on a professional one. I remember when, before I started running my foraging courses, I realised that describing a nettle, a plant I’ve known all my life (I’m sure that’s not entirely true) wasn’t something that came easily to me, it was just a nettle. I had to go back out to look at it and reference some of the literature to pull that “it’s a nettle” into words and reasons, almost to unpick the shortcuts in my brain and re-find those systematic steps that I would have followed at one stage to confirm the ID. This was an earlier moment when I realised just how little we looked, but its potential as a way of exploring our doorstep took another few years, the failed sketching of a wheelbarrow and some very good books to take root.
So with a lot of waffle about how I arrived at this moment, I would like to offer you a challenge or an invitation. Take a walk in an area you know well, your garden, your local park, the strip of grass just outside your work or school.
And this time pause to look carefully.
What is the smallest creature you can see? What is the detail in the leaf? What is that telling you? Has some thing disturbed it, trodden on it, eaten it, the wind blown it, the sun scorched it? Look into the cracks in the bark of a tree, what life lives within? Look at the leaves that are falling to the ground at the moment. Marvel at the variation within them, wonder at why this might be? Positioning on the tree? Tristan Gooley tells us about smaller, thicker south facing leaves compared to larger, thinner north facing ones. What damage have the leaves suffered? Have they got torn edges from the wind? Leaf miner beetle damage delaminating the layers and showing the increasing size of the creatures appetite? Galls on them where wasps and other insects have layed their eggs? Signs of being munched by caterpillars? Or are they being pulled stem first into the earth by the worms to be eaten?
I’d encourage you not to look to confirm or deny, prove a theory, work out if it’s x or y, catalogue a species or list future uses. But look for the sake of looking, look and ask an open why. Look with a new found curiosity, with the inquisitiveness of the most frustrating toddler you know, the wonder of someone who understands that we can never comprehend how interconnected everything is, but is going to do a damn good job seeing how much they can.
Bushcraft Foundations
£95
A day of skills to set you off to a good start in a woodland survival situation. We cover fire, water and shelter the foundations of bushcraft, as well as natural navigation to get you out of your sticky situation.
Fire Lighting Masterclass
£95
This one day in-depth course on fire lighting will make you confident lighting and maintaining fires in a range of conditions, even if it’s lashing down with rain. Create your own fire bow set and know how to use it to make an ember, and blow this into a fire.
Forage and Feast
£135
We are bringing the razzmatazz to the woods for the evening with a three course meal, storytelling and live music around the campfire.
Gather the plants for your dinner then relax with live music as dinner is prepared for you over the fire.
Rekindle the curious, inquisitive human inside, full of wonder and interest, able to focus on the large and the small and give yourself permission to marvel. Change your perspective, both metaphorically and physically, lay down on the ground, sit in the branches of a tree. Cup your hands behind your ears and listen carefully, can you hear different things as you turn your head? Currently I can hear the parakeets’ screeching call through one window and the blackbird’s gentle song through the other, as the whirr of the fan on the stove behind me brings warm air onto my back. Now outside it’s all gone quiet, something is afoot, or awing.
I’ve given a few ideas here on how to change your perspective and hopefully to encourage you that wildlife is everywhere. Yes, we need vast open spaces and large scale landscapes. But we can still have an adventure, wonder and marvel at the world just outside the front door, by slowing down and looking in a different way.
