Rewilding the Urban Soul by Claire Dunn

Author:Claire Dunn [Dunn, Claire]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-05-31T16:00:00+00:00

Later in the afternoon, I consult Google Maps to locate the nearest green patch. There’s a largish swathe about two miles away. I need to stretch my legs and be with some trees after the long-haul flight. The parkland appears like an oasis in the concrete, its edges thick with nettle of a darker hue than that at home, as though it grows stronger when in its homeland. I find a grove of large oaks and lie down on the grass nearby and tuck my nose into the earth. It smells different, sweeter, less perfumed by astringent eucalypt. Smell is such a marker of place for me, even more so than sight.

I watch as several people nearby lean against a single oak. One checking their phone, one reading, and the other staring into the distance. I wonder if they’re old or new acquaintances with this tree. The slicing and dicing feels far away from this peaceful continuity.

‘Londoners love their trees,’ the owner of a trendy bookshop told me when I wandered in on my way to the park. The shelf closest to the counter was dedicated to contemporary nature writing. I quizzed the petite older woman, dressed in a sky-blue skivvy. ‘Oh yes,’ she told me, ‘nature writing is popular these last few years. Everyone is planting wildflowers in their backyards.’

I wonder if the oak is enjoying the attention as much as the visitors enjoy its company. I get up and walk on, pleased to find that the park gets wilder the further north I adventure, the grass growing long and weedy with patches of what feels like natural forest. There’s something different that awakes in me in these places, away from cultivated gardens and mown lawns. It’s something akin to being around a wild animal compared to a pet. This rumpled grove holds a quality that speaks of its own agency.

My senses are certainly not tracking for a large cat in the bushes, but I’m alert and curious. The wildish quality feels defined as much by where it is as by where it is not: rather than distant and pristine like the idea of wilderness, it’s nearby and dishevelled, resilient precisely because of the persistence needed in the face of urban pressures. There’s a pride to it — the self-contained sovereignty of a person who is authentically themselves in any company.

I’ve a newfound respect for the grit of these places after a conversation with Dave the ranger at the parklands where we hold Rewild Fridays. Mel and I met with him with a certain nervousness, concerned that he was going to retract the permission he’d given us to have fires on our Friday programs during winter.

In half-buttoned khaki mechanic overalls and sporting long, straggly hair, Dave, launched into an hour-long diatribe on all the pressures he faced.

‘The cyclists are organised and powerful. And don’t get me started on dog walkers and their fur babies. You can’t tell them about dog impact. Not my dog, they say. And then there’s the bush kindergarten groups, multiple groups sometimes every day.

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