REMINDERS OF WILDERNESS

I find that the wilder a place feels, the more relaxing the time spent there. A few minutes in an urban green space is one thing - and should not be undervalued - but a walk in a location where few reminders of humanity are apparent and natural processes dominate is an altogether more rewarding experience.

In other parts of the world I’ve had the pleasure of experiencing true wilderness, or as close as it’s possible to get to it these days. Some of the national parks in the USA and Canada protect vast areas of mountain and forest that are close to their natural state. It is possible to walk deep into these forests and imagine that you’ve travelled back many thousands of years to a time before humans had first appeared on the scene. It takes a few moments of quiet reflection to fully appreciate the experience but I find it has a powerful, mind-calming effect. Why is this? Without delving too deeply into the underlying philosophy, I think it’s because an interest in wildlife offers an element of escape from a world increasingly dominated by humans. It’s a way of recon­necting with aspects of the old ways of life that our brains are so well adapted to, and provides a welcome break from modern, high-paced living. The more fully immersive the experience, the more effective the therapy.

Is such an experience possible in Britain in the early twenty- first century? Well, it’s certainly far more difficult to achieve here but I’d say that it is possible, provided you are willing to relax the rules a little and have luck on your side.

It’s true that we no longer have any wholly natural habitats in Britain; humans have altered them all in some way.

One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.

Mountains and hill country in Britain can certainly offer remoteness from other people and a lack of artificial structures. On some days that might be enough. But in these places Aldo Leopold’s words are written into the landscape itself. Platoons of sheep, cattle or deer (at unnaturally high densities due to a lack of predators) roam the hillsides, keeping the vegetation in check. George Monbiot famously referred to such areas as ‘sheep- wrecked’, a phrase that won him few friends in the farming community but which neatly encapsulates the extent to which the natural vegetation is suppressed by overgrazing.¹ There are places in the hills where landowners are trying hard to bring back the scrub and the trees, and to restore some ‘wildness’ and biodiversity - but, for now, if you wish to escape from the influence of humans (and our animals) it’s often best to head to lower ground.

One good option is to seek out a rugged stretch of coastline, taking care to avoid the most heavily used spots where holiday­makers gather. Along much of the coast of Devon there is a well-used footpath and you’ll have to dodge people and those mysterious black bags full of dog turds. But there will be places where you can step away from the path and take a tangent down towards the shore. Then, it’s usually not too difficult to find somewhere with a view that is nothing more than the surrounding cliffs, the beach below, flower-rich coastal grasslands and the open sea. If you’re up for a bit of scrambling over rough, steep terrain then your chances of success improve, especially where livestock graze the coastal grassland. You might be able to reach a place they rarely venture and the natural vegetation has had more of a chance to flourish. The heavily trodden footpath may not be far above you but soon it all but disappears from consciousness. Whether you can avoid all signs of humanity will depend on luck and the vista out to sea. Even in remote locations, a fishing boat might come chugging into view. Or your eyes might snag on luminous pink and orange buoys, marking out lobster pots on the seabed far below.

Away from the coast, woodland is probably the best option for escaping from humans, with its enveloping shield of trees and pared-down sightlines. There are small ancient woods close to home where I can find genuine pockets of wildness, if not true wilderness. They have a high canopy of mature Beech, Ash, Wild Cherry and oaks, along with a tangled understorey including Hazel, sallows and birches. In some of these woods there is no footpath, no signs of recent management and, almost always, no other people. They appear almost abandoned in the landscape and, indeed, woodland ecologists might refer to them as ‘neglected’. Such places would, at one time, have been managed for fuel and fencing materials, as were almost all our woodlands. But, for now, they stand idle and silent, all changes within them driven by natural processes.

Earlier today, to try to clear my mind, I took myself off to the nearest local wood. I walked into the middle and sat quietly, back against one of the mature oaks. It was peaceful, with no noise from motor vehicles. I tried the same mind game that works so well in the remote, wild national parks of North America, imagining this place before humans. I could hear Blackbirds, Robins, Wrens and Chaffinches singing, as they have probably done on much the same spot, uninterrupted, for thousands of years. And as Edward Thomas put it: ‘Beautiful as the notes are for their quality and order, it is their inhumanity that gives them their utmost fascination, the mysterious sense which they bear to us that the earth is something more than a human estate.’ These birds would sing, as they have long sung, whether we were here or not. True, there was little chance of a Bear or Wolf or Moose ambling by, and I knew if I strolled a few hundred metres in any direction I’d soon be back at the fence line and the managed fields beyond. Humanity is not easy to escape; but sometimes there is no choice but to make the best of the limited options available. A neglected wood can help with that.

Whichever habitat you select, there is a final problem to overcome, one that is, sadly, often insurmountable. You may not be able to see any obvious signs of human activity, but what about noise? As well as the welcome sounds made by wild animals, known as biophony, and other natural sounds such as the wind in the trees or a stream flowing over its gravel bed (geophony), we now have to contend with anthrophony, the multifarious noises made by humans. These sounds are not so welcome, especially if they represent the very thing from which you are trying to get away. In the most heavily developed parts of our country the noise from roads is all pervasive. And if you do manage to find a place away from terrestrial traffic, you’ll still have to contend with the air traffic above you. Here, in the sparsely populated landscapes of mid-Devon, busy roads are few and far between. And the vast jumbos that lumber across the skies do so at great height, with long gaps between them. It is still just possible to escape, at least for a short time. It’s the best I can hope for. And today, as on most days, it is enough.