A Wild Life Manifesto

Are you enjoying #30DaysWild? It's the Wildlife Trusts' annual festival of noticing and celebrating the wild world around you. If you haven't come across it yet, check it out. There's an outbreak of birds, bees and beetles on Twitter, not to mention daisy-chains, bare toes and grubby grins.

Towards the end of the campaign page (where they are encouraging the doubters) they point out that "the chances are that nature is already there, but you haven't noticed it yet." This, for me, is the whole heart and centre of the point. Noticing it. Of course nature is already there - you are nature, the yeast and wheat in your breakfast toast is nature - regardless of how many flour improvers were added as well. Indeed, if a bird's nest is nature, then your house is nature too.

... and so is the toaster. And so is the internet. And just like that all meaning has drained away from words like 'nature' and 'wild'. What is it that we really mean by 'nature', by 'wild' if huge, air-conditioned termite mounds are nature, but my garden shed isn't. If the fox which poos in my garden is, but my neighbour's cat, which also poos in my garden, isn't.

We mean not-human. We mean unmanaged-by-humans. We mean 'other' to our human-built worlds. And we often sink into our human-built worlds,  getting lost, like Narcissus, in our own reflections. There's probably nothing more essential to our health, and that of the planet, than looking away: noticing and celebrating the other - and how much of it there is everywhere.

After 30 days wild, let's make every day wild. Nature is all around you. In your house, in your fridge, in you. In fact, you are part of it, and it's not other at all.