…and our 5 Top Tips for Making these Adventures Magical.

One of the myths connected to rewilding is the idea that we need to exclude humans from nature to enable it to thrive.  The problem with this idea is that it reinforces a common trope within our consciousness – the same one that got us into the climate and diversity mess in the first place – namely the idea that humans are separate from nature rather than being one with it.  Addressing this lack of nature connection is essential because being in a relationship with nature enables us to experience where the issues lie and motivates us to respond with the necessary urgency.

Sadly, people in the UK today often need to relearn how to be connected to nature – something which should come so instinctively.  This is why access to nature is so important and why it needs to start at a young age.  It’s not just good for nature connectedness, it’s good for your child’s health too: a lack of time spent in nature has been linked to what Richard Louv named nature deficit disorder, a condition which has a negative effect on our children’s well-being.

So, now you know that heading off to the woods will help both your child and the planet, I hope that these top tips will enable you to enjoy the wildness of which we should all be a part!

Tip One:  Choose your Way Wisely.

“In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they’re still beautiful.” Alice Walker

To get the most out of your woodland adventure, ancient and semi-natural woodlands always come up trumps.  These biodiverse places are a gift for discovering a variety of native fauna, flora and funga.  Your little one will be met by an orchestra of shape, colour and sound that they just won’t experience in an avenue of orderly planted trees or in the monocultural tree factories that are plantation forests.  Even those without the ‘keep out’ signs can be limiting: I remember, as a child, looking away from a plantation footpath into the dark and empty spaces that lay on either side and feeling a sense of foreboding which made me shrink away and stay close to my family.

You can find great woods near where you live by checking out the Woodland Trust map and, if you would like to know whether the woods on your OS map are ancient or plantation, Natural England has a map for that too. 

Tip Two:  Tell Stories.

“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” (attributed to Einstein)

Small children live in the world of stories and our native woodlands are alive with them.  Calling up these stories within your child’s imagination embeds the magic of these special places.  It may be that you already know folktales of hawthorn and oak, bluebell and fair folk, and you don’t need to be the most accomplished storyteller to share the sense of these stories with your little one.  If you want to learn more stories, then I would highly recommend Lisa Schneidau’s Woodland Tales of Britain and Ireland.

Other stories which will foster a love for the woods might be ones connected to your own childhood or family history. It might even be that the stories you tell are the ones implicit in the colloquial names we have for flowers and insects.  I was always conscious of the foxgloves by the side of the lane where I grew up because my dad called them dead man’s bells, and my own children, even as adults, are able to recognise oxalis stricta as the lemon factory the fairies run.

Tip Three:  Sing Along with the Birds

“Listen to the birds.  That’s where all the music comes from. Birds know everything about how it should sound and where that sound should come from” Captain Beefheart 

I was always disappointed in myself for not being able to recognise the individual bird species by their calls. I now realise that I had it all wrong because I was focusing more on the species (which I couldn’t see) and less on what the bird was singing to me – I was listening with my head and not with my heart.  My children taught me to listen with my heart again.

Singing back to the birds with the same song that they are singing to you will not only be fun but also make you and your little one a lot more conscious of the variation in the sounds that they are making.  When you know the songs well, it will be far easier to be tuned into which bird you are hearing and then you can find free apps that can help you match the song to the bird (such as the Merlin app or the RSPB website). If you do this regularly on woodland walks, it can also help to nurture an understanding of the rhythms of nature and the variations that you find in different places and even in different parts of the wood.

Tip Four:  Build a Relationship with Nature.

“Many of these trees were my friends, creatures I had known from nut and acorn” J.R.R. Tolkien

A key aspect of learning to love nature starts with getting to know and make friends with it.  This will not happen if nature is seen as something to be wary of.  Allowing your child to get down and dirty with nature can therefore help them to build a relationship with it.  Dirt will wash off hands and faces and, if you’re worried about them ruining their clothes, have some clothes that you don’t mind getting ruined.  Invest in some puddle busters (or wellington boots as you might know them!) so that they can investigate to their heart’s content and feel the squelch-squerch of the mud.  

If you have a place that you can visit regularly, you can help your child to build a relationship with the landscape there by getting to know that place more deeply.  Look out for the shape of trees and your child will be looking out for them the next time they visit and may greet them like old friends.  We had a fallen tree in our nearby wood where the roots resembled a dragon’s face and my boys loved going and saying hello to their dragon friend and riding on his back.  They also knew the mossy stones where the gnomes held their meetings, and the roots of which trees may or may not have been passageways to the faery world. 

You can also use your time in the woods to embed the idea that our relationship with nature is reciprocal rather than just something that we take from: if you are going to collect pine cones from the woods then take along some nuts or seed with you to feed the birds and squirrels; if you are foraging bilberries, blackberries or wild garlic, be sure to leave some for the faeries so they don’t go hungry.

Tip Five:  Lead by Example

“Children learn more from what you are than what you teach” W.E.B. DuBois

Learn to love and care for the woods yourself and it will be infectious!  Be mindful that going on adventures in the woods with your child is not something that you are doing for them but something that you are doing with them.  Do not think of spending time in nature as providing an educational experience.  Instead see it more like you are taking your little one to visit a close relation because you want them to know and love them as much as you do.  If you find yourself slipping from the heart to the head, take a moment to pause – listen for the song of the birds, look for the shapes in the trees, and feel the squelch-squerch of the mud beneath your feet.  Do this and who knows, maybe it will help to relieve your symptoms of nature deficit disorder too?

This blog has been written in honour of one of our youngest Wild Cardigans who will imminently become a big sister for the first time.  We hope that you and your little sibling enjoy many adventures together in wild spaces.