Wild Human

Tag: nature

  • OptOutside: An Antidote to Black Friday

    OptOutside: An Antidote to Black Friday

    When 80% of us in the UK and more than 50% of the world live in towns and cities, we’re losing our contact and our connection with nature.

    This affects our health and wellbeing – studies show how much we need nature for our mental, physical and emotional health, like this one from Stanford University – and by spending very little time in natural and wild spaces, we don’t see what’s happening.

    We don’t see the loss of species, disappearing habitats, the leeching of the soil, or the poisoning of our air and water.

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  • What I’ve Learned from Wild Swimming in the Sea near Hove

    What I’ve Learned from Wild Swimming in the Sea near Hove

    This year I decided I need to swim more.

    I run and do yoga, but my low back is hurting, and lots of people say swimming is good for that.

    My work is changing too, and because of that I’m looking more closely at how much I spend.

    To save paying £4.25 every time to swim at my local pool, the King Alfred, after 10 years of living in Hove I finally wake up to an open secret: the sea’s at the bottom of the road, and it’s free. 

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  • Finding a Deeper Connection to Nature in the Dark

    Finding a Deeper Connection to Nature in the Dark

    The other day I get up at 6am and drive to some woods near Lewes with Alistair Duncan, to check them out as a potential new venue for School of the Wild.

    It’s properly dark as we set off, and it’s only just getting light when we get to the woods.

    The orange glow of the rising sun on the horizon slowly filters through the forest, lighting up the tops of the trees, and making the purple, gold and red of the early morning sky turn blue.

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  • How a Fox Hunt Gave Me a Lesson in Nature’s Sixth Sense

    How a Fox Hunt Gave Me a Lesson in Nature’s Sixth Sense

    “I have a bad feeling about this,” says Sharon, as we watch ten horse riders and twenty hounds run about excitedly across the valley. “It’s supposed to be a drag hunt, but that feels like they might have got something,” she says.

    I’m standing in a field on the edge of Mile Oak Farm with Sharon Clifton a silver haired psychotherapist and Equine Assisted Learning Facilitator from Spirit Horse Works. It’s a grey, damp morning, and the ground is wet and muddy beneath our feet.

    We watch as the pack of hounds disappear into the gorse bushes on the hill opposite. Their barks drift over. The hunt leader, in red jacket, blows his horn several times.

    Both of us hope they haven’t found a fox.

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