I have always felt a pull towards the wilder places when exploring. Those ancient woods, full of trees that spread out across the skies, obscuring the sun, allowing nought but a teasing of light to occasionally pierce the canopies and breathe life into the reaching plants below.
I’m sure I am not the only one to experience the pure wonder of a wild forest and I’m sure I won’t be the last, but the experiences I have had will always be my own. That is why I find these last wild places in the UK. Because they give me something that nothing else does, but something that is really difficult to explain.
But I shall try.
Wildwoods
The Wildwood, this isn’t a connotation of the latest fads around wild swimming, wild camping or wild coffee drinking or whatever next outdoor activity is deemed wild just because it is not in a controlled environment. A wildwood is an uncultivated wood or forest that has been allowed to grow naturally. Nothing more, nothing less. Yet as these beautiful places start to dwindle, I feel more and more that I need to spend time in them.
These untouched parts of the UK bring with them a magic that you cannot find anywhere else. Don’t get me wrong, the sea in both calm and angry states are an incredible sight to see, shrinking our egos and making us feel small again with its fury. Yet, the feeling of a wildwood is different.
I distinctly recall the atmosphere as I stepped into Wistmans wood on Dartmoor for the first time. A blanket of silence surrounded me as I breathed in the air provided by the gnarled trees and moss-covered boulders that have lain there for thousands of years.
I was lucky enough to get there early, avoiding the unrelenting crowds that come to view the ancient wonder. I have to bite my tongue when the humans start to arrive, constantly reminding myself that they have the same right to these woods as I, and that their ancestors probably played a part in ensuring the forest survival from the man-made brick and mortar. For a moment, however, it was just the trees and I, so I sat and listened. The breeze singing its way through the old branches, that had seen more life than I could ever imagine. The bird’s song feeling as it has been sung for me, their poems giving me permission to enjoy a place that is normally reserved for the wildlife that call it their home.
I don’t know if it is my past lives, or just my overactive imagination that transports me into an open-eyed daydream of what life on the moor must have been like many thousands of years ago. Where harmony with the earth and the forests was normal and wild camping and swimming were just life not a fashionable activity.
I picture the man and woman, collecting water by the stream, imagine them sharing with the grazing creatures, un-phased by each other’s presence, because it was normal. The wilder creatures knew us and us them, there was no need for fear. There was no over-indulgence, no over farming, no destroying everything for the sake of a few extra quid in an already rich mans pocket. It was harmony.
That’s it really. That feeling I get as I walk into a wildwood is a sense of peace and harmony reserved for a people thousands of years ago.
And so, I urge you to walk on the wilder side of life from time to time, sleep in, breathe it in and embrace it. But I also urge you to protect it, for it is a fragile thing, like all those ancient things in this world, and they need us now more than ever.
Comments