The man-made is pushing out the natural these days. In the UK there is concern over our wild land – areas where the impressions people leave behind are at their weakest. Pinning down a definition of wild lands is a subjective issue; deciding to protecting them is not . The John Muir trust tries this
definition of wild areas : “large areas of high scenic and wildlife value, with minimal evidence of modern human development”. They have created a map of ‘wild-ness’ within the UK showing that, following this definition, wild land is found almost exclusively in Scotland, Wales and the far north of England. Despite this definition the JMT valiantly explains that small pockets of wildness can be found “anywhere anywhere that nature prevails”. Despite this, the underlying message seems this: there is no wildness, no real nature near where you live you have to go way up North to find it.

I love these so called ‘wild-places’, I spend my weekends climbing the mountains of Scotland, spending nights in a tent away from towns and roads so that I may experience the thrill of sitting to watch the red deer rut, or a Golden Eagle soaring above the summits. But there are other places that I enjoy nature. Sitting in front of my window and watching the curlew as they pick their way between the stranded boats on the mud flats outside; looking upwards and catching the last shooting star of the night whilst waiting at the station for my morning train.

In today culture humans and nature are segregated by a fence, we can go and look at nature, but don’t interact with it. The border guards to that country seem more and more to include our environmental organisations. It is time to remember that we are natural, we are part of nature and we should interact with it nature as we and every other specie has continued to do for a billion years.

We have major environmental issues to deal with today. The scale of our ‘resource use’ continues to increase, and on a purely ethical level we must remember that our high consumption lifestyles have implications for other people in other places, our children and theirs.

It may be important to preserve a definition of wild-places. But is is surely more important to connect with other parts of nature as part of a day-to-day routine. Remember that in the depths of our ‘wild-places’ people have lived in the past, and each day they found a way to be part of the environment. Let’s attempt to reconnect to the nature in our own daily life, that is our environment, and nature and us should interact here too.