Welcome to the fortnightly Sunday letter, traversing nature, being human, story, season and compost.
Hello and welcome to this Sundays fortnightly letter,
I’ve recently been writing about what wild is, and it’s so beautiful to unearth and root up what I knew as a child, on a felt sense, when in nature. And what I felt later as a young adult when on my own recovery journey with nature, but didn’t have the words for then.
The religious or spiritual have been known to call wild; soul. Scientists have said that wild is an emergent property, a process, and many others may call wild; Mother Nature.
In terms of etymology, wild, wildness and wilderness share the same root, which is the word, will, referring to an entity being self-willed. A being not controlled by another, but whose own will is allowed to guide them.
In old English, wilde means; in the natural state, uncultivated, untamed, undomesticated, uncontrolled. The term wilderness is thought to have derived from Old Gothonic languages meaning “will-of-the-land”
The innate nature and spirit of wild, being one that is strong willed, and self willed; not governed by others ideas of politeness, civilisation or culture, but instead by their own needs and processes.
This will, wills life into being, just as the earth itself self willed themselves into being from fire, stars and explosions, the will in the wild makes creators, shapeshifters, alchemists, and skin changers of us all.
The wild in the world is never stagnant, always animated with effervescent aliveness, as fluid as a sparkling river, the tidal flow of the ocean and the thrum and spiralling of our blood, and the cyclical wheel of life. The wild is always wilfully stepping and dancing towards the future, yet fully present. Even in death, life is metamorphosing and transmuting; alchemising what has died into the womb of future life. For nothing in nature is ever wasted, cast aside or forgotten, the wild always lovingly transforms it; into beauty and medicine. Be it dead tree, fallen plant, dropped petals, the aged bee, the bones and flesh of you and I or the shit of all.
There is kindness and care in this, this to me is the true angelic work, leading the dead and the cast aside to become part of the earth.
And in this way, nothing in the wild stays the same, no plant, tree, animal, insect, garden, forest or pavement can stay the still, for the will of the wild will keep reforming and moving towards health, towards balance. It is the same with our own lives. We can try and pin things down, but we cant, just look at our own wild bodies, they wont hold still to a vision we put upon it no matter how hard we may want to. Our bodies are not what they were a year ago, five years ago, a decade ago. We are now made of different stuff than all the past times formed in our memories.
The matter we call our name, has scattered itself across this earth many times. The water in our bodies is just passing through, tasting what it is to be human. Not so long ago, it travelled the skies in a rain cloud and flew in high tempered storms, before that it was at one in the arms of the ocean, gliding over the skin of whales, vibrating to the trill of seals, and before that, it meandered as river with pike and salmon pushing through it.
Our cells birth and die with each new breath, our skin sheds and renews continuously, like a mushroom, we leave a sprinkling of fine dust wherever we go, shaking our spores where we tread. Our hair comes and goes, subtlety falling away and rejoining the land. We leave little minute gifts to feed the earth everywhere we go, our substance, just like all wild substance, is not fixed and it does not really belong to us, it is borrowed. It came to us from the wild and to the wild it will return over and over and over.
This ever shifting wild dance is not just the physicality of us, but like all wild ones its the winner will innate will and spirit of us. Its what leads people to live out their dreams, its what pushes us to change, its what wills us to find food and water and shelter, it is the same creative life force that steers the acorn into oak, our bodies to breathe, it unfurls medicine from the seed, propels the wings of bee, blackbird and dragonfly, turns caterpillar into moth and butterfly. It cracks open the hardened grey, it brings the blood that forms over cuts and draws them together, it inspires the spider to weave, lungs to take breath, the baby to suckle and crawl, and the young birch tree to pioneer new forests.
Without taking heed of societal pressures, economic growth and when left to be without onslaught of damage and destruction, the wild is always reclaiming what is rightfully theirs. Their life, their space, their beauty, their goodness, their growth and their continued evolution.
In the continuous pull to rebalance and create a place where life can thrive, wilds processes become the figure head for recovery. For however trammeled, or barren, or damaged, the wild is always moving towards changing it and repairing it, understanding as it does, how to grow beauty and power from what seemed lost.
Sometimes change, before you get to the other side and feel the gold that arises from your alchemy, can feel like destruction, unravelling and madness.
But look out into the wildness and see what you are made from and for. Change, especially change that brings you closer to the medicine that is you, is a natural part of being human, being animal, being wild.
Thank you for being here, and may the wild world, both within and without, bring you much wonderment.
Brigit xxxx
Oh my Brigit!! Today’s Into the Woods transported me into a warren of rabbit holes. The wonder of experiencing being human without the outside world controls resonated with my soul. I agree completely that we must experience our ‘wild’ to find our medicine within. Thank you so much for bringing these words so beautifully.
Oh this has brought me so much wonderment this morning. Thank you.