I spent last weekend, with Jane, a Wildcraft facilitator, immersing ourselves within nature. It will be something we will do alot of in Wildcraft.

We spent hours imagining ourselves as a deer as we picked our way slowly, with no purpose but existing, through the bluebell woods of the high valley in which I live.

We watched a buzzard quarter the rugged bluffs above us, scouring for a distracted rabbit. Its folorn cry a motif of the moorland beyond.

We stood, as one of our bronze-age ancestors may have done, on a granite promitory that jutted out into misty space hundreds of feet above the river that meandered far below on the valley floor.

In the dark shelter of the conifer woods I got down low, imagining myself as a woodmouse nibbling on a fir cone in the safety of my larder. I scampered around the bowl of a great tree.

I changed into that great fir tree, rooted deep in the peat soil then I became a squirrel, clambering, with its sappy branches in my paws.

Then, high up in the canopy, I imagined myself as an owl looking down from my lofty perch. I understood from this vantage why, as a mouse, I had taken twitchy care in my little journeys between stump and hollow.

We walked blindfolded through the woods touching and hearing the scenery around us.

We scraped the earth with our nails and breathed deep its herbal, resinous, mulchy smell.

We chased along trails and runs, tracing with our fingers, the bumps and edges of prints made by badger, deer and fox.

We made tea from spruce needles and nettles at a little camp amongst the jumbled boulders in the woods.

We got up before dawn and watched the sun pale the sky a rosie pink and light up the dew on the grass like a sea of fibre optics.

We had a front row seats for the Dawn Chorus.

I now feel, once again, very connected with the natural world around me.

For more details on the Wildcraft programme then click here

Wildcraft is about many things. Foremost it is about our individual relationships with nature, our collective ancestral identity and how we can live together, today and in the future, with our tribe. It is also about strength, confidence and self-realisation.

But, importantly, it is also about childhood and adulthood.

Society has programmed us to ‘grow up’, to leave childhood behind, to leave its innocence, curiousity and playfulness: to put away the joy of now and strive for the future. When we are children we exist in the now. It is a valuable quality that the worries and vanities of the future and the regrets and dissappointments of the past seems to tarnish, over time. Dulling our lives. Wildcraft aims to celebrate the joy of being present, now. We aim to realise that we can pass into adulthood without leaving the child behind and that they can co-exist within us – one nurturing, protecting and guiding, the other full of curiousity, fun, hope, play and revelling in being fully ‘present’: here and now.

Society, in some sense, has been orphaned from its childhood. It may be some reason why, as adults, we have committed some of the most horrendous ills against each other and our planet. But those who hold Wildcraft really believe, that in some sense, keeping the child strong, clear and present within us will help it be the needle on our compass of adult life. Pointing us to make choices that hold the future of our children at their heart.

Through the creation of handcrafts using natural materials we seek a reconnection with the earth-based life of our ancestors. The production of craft items is the culmination of technique, tool choice, material choice, correct processing and safety…along with some creative judgement.

‘Crafts’ is a rather broad church that encompasses many of the skills and equipment to extract, process and use the raw resources around us in order to create useful or pleasing items. Being able to take seemingly un-usable raw materials and create something out of them not only helps to exist in the wilderness by helping us access and utilise our environment but it provides a creative interface with nature that is both aesthetically pleasing and spiritually rewarding. Importantly crafts embody a knowledge of how to make things of use and beauty and by mastering them means a preservation of ancient skills for the next generation and helps us continue to connect with the land around us.

We teach various crafts on Wildcraft because it re-establishes a direct link with our ancestors – placing us directly in their minds, but now, in the present.

It provides a link between the object being crafted and the resource that it is foraged from lying around us.

It teaches both an art and a science and how this comes together, with the application of skill, patience and effort to create something of use or of beauty…or both.

It inspires curiousity in the things around us and frees the imagination as to what can be made from it.

It shows us to make rather than just purchase is rewarding, giving us the confidence to make decisions as to what materials are most suitable and through what methods it can be achieved.

Best of all it helps us value nature around us: a value that which we will hold dear.

Life is made from and sustained by water. Without it we would last just days. Clean water would seem like a human right but in reality it is a luxury that over a billion people struggle to gain access to with over a quarter of the world population with inadequate sanitation: leaving them fighting for life itself. We have gone, and will go, to war over water. It quenches us and our lands. Without it there would be just a barrenness from which no seed will sprout. Water has shaped our landscape from the tallest mountains to the deepest valleys.

Knowing how to find water in the landscape, to make it drinkable and safe from pathogens and contaminants and to transport it enables us to travel further in the wilderness. Water lubricates our joints, aids our thought processes, helps our sight, keeps us cool, enables us to digest and release energy from our food to keep warm. Water not only shapes the landscape but it shapes us.

We teach ‘water’ on Wildcraft because such an important commodity should never be taken for granted – even what is hidden in the smallest drop. It is important to understand how dehydration can cut short more than just your enjoyment in hot aswell as cold climates, how unclean water can limit your ability to exist and how the animals, insects, plants and even the shape of the land can give you important clues as to the location of this precious life-giver – even underground.

For us on Wildcraft we drink water, wash with it, shelter from it, cook with it, stand among the trees that grow in it and rejoice it: we spend time listening to the rushing brook, marvelling at the primordial soup that forms a sluggish pool and give thanks to the trickle of rain that drops from leaf into cupped hand.