Parenting in a Nature-Depleted Age

'What is the extinction of the condor to a child who's never known a wren?' - Robert Pyle

I was an outdoorsy, free range child, but as a teen things changed. As I grew older and spent more and more time on my appearance, I also spent more and more time online. I was the girl who wore six inch heels to walk the dog. I wore a full face of make-up to stay indoors on the computer. It just became my new normal. I lost touch with the previous version of me who played amongst the bluebells and always had grass stains on her knees. Eventually I started to avoid doing anything that might smudge my eyeliner, interfere with my hair extensions or damage my lace petticoats. I stopped going swimming or to the beach. It actually got to the point when the breeze on my skin felt irritating - annoying and alien. I preferred to stay indoors, where the temperature was regulated and nothing might muss me. Chatrooms, blogs and forums were my 'real world'.

I realise that in a lot of ways I was an extreme case! Luckily this bizarre phase only lasted a short while. But I'll never forget feeling disturbed by the slightest of breezes! Now I'm more like my mum who, come rain, shine, storms or snow, always went to the back doorstep first thing upon waking, and sat on the step wrapped in her dressing gown, looking into the garden with her cup of tea. That peaceful time and connection with the outdoors is a great way to start the day refreshed and grounded, even if your toddler wants you to join in his persecution of the local woodlouse population rather than drink your coffee in peace. But I digress.

With the benefit of hindsight, I can see now how lucky I was to be able to have such an outdoorsy childhood. We were able to rent a house in the village, which we might not otherwise have had access to, as my parents worked for the landowners. This provided a brilliant place to grow up - surrounded by woodlands and meadows, I could play unsupervised but safe from traffic, and I was able to range further as I got older. Of course not every child has access to this much unspoilt nature, particularly not nowadays as we try desperately to house our growing population and provide the infrastructure that they need. 

We now live in a digital age. Many well-meaning friends and family have said things to me like, "Not to worry, soon you can get your little one a tablet, and then you won't have to do so much with him." I absolutely could plonk him in front of a screen for several hours a day, but as we've learned when we've fallen back on that easy option before, we all suffer. His mood suffers, his behaviour suffers, and bedtime becomes an all-out battle. So we keep screen time to a minimum - just an episode of one of his favoured shows now and again, usually if Dai's working and I need to cook dinner without small hands trying to investigate all the hots and sharps. 

If it hadn't been for the Spud, I'm not sure whether I would ever have rediscovered my love of the outdoors. He's an extremely active child - I once took him to a class for lively toddlers and he ran rings around all the others before effecting an escape through a door one of the other mums had left open whilst looking at her phone. I had to hurdle chairs, bags, and other people's children to catch him before he could find his way out into the street.

To keep his energy levels under control so we can have relatively calm days, he has a minimum of an hour's walk around the neighbourhood. Every day, rain or shine. In the warmer months, he spends more time in the garden than in the house. Had I not been a parent, I might have spent a good chunk of 2020 under the duvet, or vegetating in front of Netflix. As it was, every day we spent our allotted hour down on the nature reserve, avoiding other people and enjoying the birdsong, and we've kept up the habit. If the weather's bad, we often don't see anyone else around. On rainy days, we put on our wellies and waders and go splashing down the river, just us and the ducks. 

I recently read about 1000 Hours Outside, which encourages kids and parents to match screen time with time in nature, and I've kept this in the back of my mind ever since - on those days when I struggle to feel enthusiastic about rebuilding the leaf pile for him to jump into for the 97th time, or when he's leading me further away from home just as I'm starting to think about checking my email. Every hour we spend wandering woodland paths and back alleys is another hour closer to that epic 1000 hours. 

The Spud with his bag of wildflowers

The fact is that although I no longer live in an idyllic village, I want my son to have the same interest in the outdoors that I have. The sad truth is that we now live in one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world. One in seven of the UK's native species face extinction. Just 13% of the UK's land area has tree cover - compared to a 35% average over the rest of Europe. And if my generation raise our children indoors, staring at screens, things can only get worse.

Nature deficiency is bad for children. Author Richard Louv describes some of the symptoms: 'Diminished use of the senses, attention difficulties, and higher rates of physical and emotional illnesses.' In her book Losing Eden: Why Our Minds Need the Wild, Lucy Jones writes, 'My grandmothers had an inherent lexicon of the natural world and how it operates. My parents knew their birds, flowers and plants; names, timing and behaviours. I knew a bit, maybe five to ten per cent of what they knew, and I was keener on wildlife than most of my friends. It would follow that my daughter's connection with the natural world would be even more remote than mine. Would she be able to name - by which I mean know - anything at all? Or would she be so desensitized to the point where a connection with nature would have little - or no - value?' 

Not only are we depriving our children of a vast array of joys and wonders if we fail to encourage this connection, but it's bad for the rest of the ecosystem too. Children won't care about what they don't know. In our increasingly industrialized society, facing a deeply uncertain future of extreme weather events, pandemics and climate chaos, further alienation from the world that sustains us will only further contribute to the modern view of nature as hostile and 'other' at best, and at worst a collection of meaningless resources to be plundered.

Avoiding Pagan Posturing in the Age of the Insta-Witch

I mean to tread lightly with this post; it's not my intent to offend anyone, and it's important to remember that I don't actually know the thoughts or intentions of other individuals and therefore can only pass conjecture on what I have observed. However, as someone with a (disturbingly) deep-rooted interest in style, personal image and how the above manifest in our bizarre social-media-driven consumer society, this topic is of great interest to me!

I was musing recently on how I'd managed to go from the relatively simple concept of a shopping ban to finding myself interested in Earth-based spirituality and considering a course in Druidry over the space of two years. But actually when I looked back it was quite easy to track the progression, a sort of spiralling journey from needing to do something to take my mind off shopping and get out of my own noggin; spending more time outside; falling back in love with the Earth and trying to live greener; taking up foraging and gardening, as well as environmental campaigning, which made me feel more and more connected to the Earth. This sense of connectedness then led me to start exploring Paganism - and here we are. Adding a spiritual or philosophical element to the green(ish) life, for me, helps to make it even more meaningful and fulfilling. The mythopoetic worldview (Sharon Blackie describes the mythic imagination here) ties into my lifelong love of the imagination and the liminal, and my staunch belief that all we can perceive with our limited human senses is far from being all there is.

However, knowing my tendency to cling to labels, not to mention my propensity for theatricality (I was goth for the better part of a decade - being at least a little bit theatrical is practically a job description), I determined to be slow and methodical about my studies, to make sure that what I was doing felt right for me and aligned with my actual lived experience (you can tell me all you want that amethyst and clear quartz are good for headaches, for example, and maybe for some people they are, but I might as well rub a custard cream on my forehead for all the good it does. Just because something is written in a book doesn't make it true for me). 

I also didn't want to do what I often do and believe everything I read without question, especially on the internet. Accepting an animistic worldview is an easy step for me - hello, I am a person who, as a child, brought home sticks that 'looked lonely' - I'm pretty much there already. However, I'm not going to go 'full Glastonbury' as Dai calls it and start thinking I'm a starseed. Reminder to brain: believing some stuff that makes sense to you and fits with what you know and have experienced does not equal believing everything ever espoused by anyone who owns a pentacle necklace. In the age of self-publishing on Kindle, one must have a pinch of salt ever at the ready.

But it's that theatrical tendency I'm particularly on guard against. I've mentioned before that my previous forays into Paganism have been accompanied by much swishing of velvet and esoteric jewellery. I love the look, and I'm really only ever a heartbeat away from putting on elf ears and a flower crown and flouncing into the sunset in a flutter of tie dye and a jingle of silvery bells. What I didn't want to do this time around was buy into a Pagan 'image' without doing any real work, confusing witchcraft with shopping (to paraphrase Terry Pratchett); or worse, spend time on social media showing all my friends how earthy and spiritual I am... 

This is where I need to watch my step. I understand that for many people, online communities, based around social media or otherwise, are very valuable. This is just as true within the Pagan community (the Resistance Witches with the 'Hex Trump' campaign are a memorable recent example!). And by no means does enjoying fashion (of any kind) or posting a selfie mean that someone is not participating in something real or valuable or meaningful. 

But I have found that for me personally, it detracts. Maintaining an image, whether through fashion or an Instagram feed, takes energy, time and work. Energy, time and work that I could better use studying, or writing, improving my focus, tending my herbs (or my son), or just going down to the river and spending some time in nature. If I break away from that to craft a good photo, my focus is split; I am not as peaceful, the connection falters; some of the benefit is lost. Likewise if I am worrying about my hair, or concerned about snagging my skirt.

Dai and I also saw, on our last trip to Glastonbury, a fair amount of what Dai describes as 'Insta-witches' - a lot of the more 'mystical' areas in the village, such as the beautiful Chalice Well, were surrounded by people taking photos for social media - we couldn't actually get near the Well on that particular visit as two women had colonised the area to set up a jewellery display which they were photographing. And we queued for half an hour to drink from the Red Spring as we had to wait for another bevy of phone-clutching mystics to finish setting up crystal grids and photographing their bare feet. (Please see my opening remarks about not actually knowing what other people are doing. I don't intend to cast aspersions or be snarky! But from an observer's perspective, it seemed... like posturing?)

It certainly got me thinking about my own approach - I really want to avoid taking a sort of Anne Gwish approach to spirituality ('being myself, as long as it looks good and people are watching'). 

I've been reading a book by Penny Billington called The Path of Druidry, and when I read some online reviews I noted that some people were irritated by a remark she makes in one of the early chapters: "A Druid should fit in, should be able to be invisible; that's what gives us the freedom to get on with our work. [...] Being self-consciously eccentric as a way of life is like trying to appear wise - it takes too much energy away from what Druid life and work are all about."

Now, I can totally see why some people found this irritating - 'fitting in' isn't really something I'm big on either. But my daily nature-walking wear of jeans and t-shirts is, well, pretty invisible. And for me, this was such a refreshing thing to read - an instant antidote to the itchy eBay bidding finger (step away from the Jordash dresses). 

I am someone who was recently described by a dear friend as "a New Age hippy... I think of you like one of those paper dolls, you mix it up and try different things, but your base setting is hippy fairy". (Naturally I'm delighted by this description.) So, believe me when I say, I can EASILY devote my time to being 'self-consciously eccentric'. I could start my own IG account of woodland selfies where I never look directly at the camera because I'm very mysterious and bohemian, or rip up flowers and fungi so I can take a photo of my hand holding them (I found a great post about this on an old blog by Grace Nuth - totally worth a read). Or, I can dress in a way that's pleasing enough, comfortable, and still allows me to tromp through muddy fields, and just get on with it! It was a RELIEF to have it spelt out for me that clothes do not maketh the Druid. It may not be even vaguely an issue for those who do not have my preoccupation with style and shopping, but it was a huge deal for me.

I've decided that balance is, as it often is, the key. My dramatic skirts have their place - when we visit our favourite canalside Pagan pub for a pint of ale, or roaming the streets of Burley or Glastonbury. But when I want to be able to crawl into hedges, cross streams or move through woodland, it's sensible coat and shoes all the way. This probably seems really obvious to you! But I, for whatever reason (gothy theatrical tendencies?) benefit from a reminder.

The Bizarre World of Other People's Stuff

I really love other people's discarded stuff. I grew up wearing charity shop clothes, and generally still do. What you can find second-hand is generally much more interesting than what you can buy new, especially in this era of bland mass-produced fast fashion. 

It never ceases to amaze me what people throw away. I often think that we, as a society, have entirely lost our sense of perspective, of the value of things. We expect our new clothes to cost next to nothing - how can a T-shirt cost £1.50? The material to make it, the wages of the person who stitched it, the cost of shipping it halfway around the world to a store near you, let alone the livelihood of the farmer who grew the cotton or the weaver who formed the fabric, are not reflected in the price tag any more, as big stores sell individual items at a loss to achieve more sales and swell their overall profits (for the CEOs, naturally, not the workers actually producing the garments). 

But at the same time as we consumers hunt out our wear-me-once disposable bargains, those who are more affluent are also buying and disposing. I once worked in the rag bin at a recycling centre. Literally in the bin, which I don't think is allowed any more. It was a shipping container with open doors for people to throw in their bags of old clothing. My job was to go through that clothing by hand and rescue any that could be resold in the sales shed or on eBay. The remainder (all those £1.50 T-shirts) was exported to developing countries, to be sold on their markets, recycled into fire blankets and insulation, or - just as likely - end up in their landfills.

I was not paid money for this. Instead I was allowed to take away any clothes that I wanted, which I could then resell to make a living. If this was still allowed, I'd still be doing it, but, at least locally, there are now no more rag bin workers. The shipping container has been replaced by charity shop bins, which essentially perform the same function except the stock is sorted in a shop or warehouse instead of by unpaid workers crawling over precarious mountains of stuff. It wasn't the most well-regulated or ethical job, but I enjoyed it, I wore my protective gear religiously (needles and nappies abounded), and if I was doing it now I could make a mint, what with all the resale sites springing up such as Shpock, Vinted and Depop. I know it wasn't ideal and I can see that there was great potential for exploitation, but for me it worked - I set my own hours, I was never bored, and my own wardrobe was in great shape.

And the finds! Gucci shoes, unworn, still in their box with the eye-watering three figure price tag. Two pairs of New Rock boots (one pair of which I still have, twelve years later, and I can report they are still going strong). A Victorian top hat. Just thrown away!

It was the Gucci shoes I often thought of in later years. Who would buy something that expensive and throw it away? This was the tip, remember, not a charity shop. I couldn't comprehend that kind of waste. I've been on a week's holiday for less than the cost of those shoes.

I thought of them again when I was checking out a resale site I'd never heard of before, and came across the following:

Fifteen thousand pounds! For a skateboard!!! Who even are these people?! 

Truly, the inequity in our society is exemplified by what we can afford to discard.

 

Walking the Wild Edges

Since I realised the calming, uplifting effect that walking in nature has on me, I've been spending more and more time outside. The Spud is benefiting from this too - he loves to be out in the fresh air. As well as our everyday walks, when the weather is good we pack a picnic into my backpack and head out on a longer expedition. 

In recent years I've moved from the country village where I grew up to a council estate in the suburbs (by way of a few people's spare rooms, after splitting with my ex shortly before we were due to go travelling). There was a bit of adjustment required when we arrived in this grey terrace, but soon I discovered there was a nature reserve behind the estate with a river running through it. Now the Spud is bigger and can walk further, we hike across the fields to the woodlands I used to walk in when I was growing up. 

Each year more land is sold to the developers, and more of the fields I used to play in are swallowed by the urban sprawl, but it's still relatively easy to scratch off the thin veneer of civilisation and find ourselves far from anywhere, between Roman roads and Old Straight Tracks, copses and hedgerows and sun-dappled glades of celandine and primrose. You can still see the progress of mankind in the ploughed fields and tumbledown barns, the glint of a beer bottle in the nettles, the pylon stalking unexpectedly across the horizon like an invader from another time. But it feels for all the world as though we're alone on the edges of things, where something magical might still happen.

I grew up here, I found myself thinking, as the Spud and I shared a sandwich and a drink of water in the shade of a hedge. Looking out over the fields I could see the straight, tree-lined cut of a Roman road. I'd walked that road with my mother as a child, and for years after I'd had a recurring dream about it, a cloaked rider on a dark horse pounding down the hill towards me. 

The Spud and I followed the footpath across the centre of the field. Vast clouds sailed across the sky like zeppelins, sending shadows chasing over the ploughed earth. I felt like Tiffany Aching walking on the Chalk. Perhaps, I thought idly, if I were ever to set up an altar again, I might do better to have some of these flints than some fancy shiny foreign crystals, no matter how pretty. After all, this ground here is what I'm made of. This chalk and flint may as well be my bones. My mother's maiden name comes from "Free", and there have been Frees here, and in the surrounding area, since records began. (I did some digging into my ancestry recently, and other than my paternal grandmother who was from Bornholm - and her ancestors, back to the 1700s at least, adding a strain of Norse to my makeup that I'm quite proud of - my family looks to be of Anglo-Saxon descent on both sides.)

Just as I was musing about flints on my altar, the Spud caught hold of my jeans and offered me a huge flattish oval specimen that he had prised out of the dirt of the path. Crouching beside him, I turned it over in my hands, and caught my breath. The underside of the flint was covered in sparkling crystal that glittered in the sunlight. Wow, I thought. Okay. I can take a hint.

My sparkling flint

This is far from the most strange thing that has happened to me out on the wild edges of this land. Nor am I the only one who can tell stories about this area. (Britain on the whole is a strange country with an equally strange history, which is why I love it so much.) For example, a few years ago I was working in one of the last independent shops on my local high street. The owner was (is) a fairly well-to-do bohemian-ish lady who lived in the next town over. To get home from work she had to drive through several villages (including mine) and along an old, but well-travelled, road overlooked on both sides by woodlands and open fields. One night she had passed through my village and was heading through moonlit farmland when something dashed into the road in front of her, paused in the headlights for a moment, and disappeared into the hedge on the other side.

But in that frozen moment she saw it quite clearly. "I can only describe it as a goblin," was what she said, and though the shop staff speculated that it may have been a flashback from an acid trip in her misspent youth, she was quite shaken, and it was a while before she drove that way at night again.

The street I grew up on was at the edge of the village and ended in farmland. There was a big pasture at the end of the road, which was bordered on the far side by a very old narrow footpath known locally as the cinder track.

One evening when I was about eight or nine, my friend Alec and I were sitting with our backs against someone's garage door on the edge of the pasture, talking rubbish and looking out over the fields as the sun went down. We both saw, at the same moment, a figure striding along the cinder track towards the village.

I remember looking at Alec to make sure he was seeing it too, and my own fear was reflected in his eyes. The dark figure - a black silhouette - was taller than the straggly trees that bordered the footpath, making it ten, eleven feet tall or more. Its arms were unnaturally long, reaching past its knees. And even from this distance, impossibly, we could both see its eyes, which were deep red, glowing like hot coals. And there was this... feeling, seeping from it like mist, a malevolence.

Without a word to each other we both bolted, ran for our houses, leaving dust in our wake.

Sometimes, walking in the woods with my little boy, I feel like I've stepped sideways out of the flow of what is deemed to be 'normal life'. There are days when I'm so enmeshed in the System -  earn your money, pay your bills, check your emails, go to the supermarket, watch telly, work work, rush rush, veg out, repeat - that getting out of it seems impossible. I look at those I know who live in vans and on boats, who drift on the wind and the tide at whim, and I can no longer figure out a way to join them. 

But I'm not sold on the other way of living either, and I feel that keenly when we're wandering on the edges. I feel this gulf between me and the world of Friends re-runs and hair straighteners, Love Island and eyelash curlers and Primark... Suddenly none of that has any meaning. I feel more and more like I'm looking at that world from somewhere else, and it's a language that I don't understand any more.

Sometimes it's alienating to believe in magic and monsters when most of those around you are existing in a different reality. But I've seen what I've seen and felt what I've felt, and the flint of the land, thousands of years old, is in my bones. Strange things still happen on the Old Straight Tracks, even as the sound of traffic encroaches and the pylons march on across the landscape. The weird and the wild are still out there, beyond this 'civilised' existence we've trapped ourselves in, if you know where to look.

Decluttering Regret and Charity Shop Rules

I mentioned once before that my rusty 'joy antennae' have meant that when I have had clearouts in the past I've gotten rid of the wrong things. My biggest regret in particular is letting go of a pair of skirts I bought ten-years-ish ago in a seaside hippie shop called Rainbow's End. They were by a brand called Dark Star, and they were both tulle maxi skirts, made from dozens and dozens of overlapping layers like petals. One was in all the colours of the rainbow with raw edges, the other was in my favourite rich purples, blues and indigo, and every 'petal' had a lace trim. They were, hands down, the most beautiful garments I'd ever seen in my life.

I have trawled eBay ever since I got rid of them hoping to find replacements, but so far no joy. Whoever bought them from the charity shop I donated them to is a lucky duck. I've even been back to Rainbow's End and asked about them, but while they had skirts that were sort of similar they weren't half as gorgeous. (I haven't given up, though! I'll check every time I'm in that neck of the woods.)

Why did I get rid of them? Fear. Shame. A desire to conform. After my teens and early twenties had been characterised by wild and unconventional clothing choices, I hit an awkward stage after some online bullying and felt like people were judging me everywhere I went. I adopted a palette of sensible neutrals and started shopping in the 'trendy' shops, trying to blend in with everyone else. 

All my strange and colourful clothes went to the charity shops, except my stompy goth boots and one velvet medieval gown I couldn't bear to part with (for which I am now extremely grateful - I intend wearing it on my 30th birthday. It has been worn in such diverse places as a goth night in York and a crazy golf course in Kent). I've forgotten most of the other garments that disappeared in this first big purge - most of them wouldn't fit me now anyway - but I bitterly regret ever parting with my beautiful faerie skirts!

In mid-April, my hunt for replacement skirts led to a bit of an eBay splurge. I hadn't bought on eBay for years other than essential items for the Spud, but within a few days I became the proud owner of: a steampunk-ish pinstriped waistcoat (for the bargain price of 99p!); a purple satin bullet bra, vintage but pristine (a fiver); a tie-dye fishtail skirt in shades of blue with a barbed wire motif (£7.99); a stunning purple and black velvet and lace skirt with pixie-esque pointed layers and mirrored embroidery (£22.50); and a tiered tulle skirt in blue, indigo and green (similar-ish to my long lost Dark Star skirts but not quite as exquisite. £14.50). 

I realised I was getting carried away one night when I was still on eBay at one a.m. (those shopaholic tendencies just don't die). I was starting back as a volunteer at the charity shop the following weekend, and my sudden enthusiasm for second-hand clothes made me a bit nervous. It was much more sustainable than my previous shopping habits, but it wasn't exactly free. However, at least I now had a handful of exciting and unusual pieces to mix with my more mundane t-shirts, jeans and jumpers. But before returning to the charity shop I knew I was going to have to set myself some limits... and crucially, actually stick to them.

Based on my previous stint as a charity shop staff member, I set myself the following rules:

Thou Shalt Not Buy Anything Which Doesn't Make You Go "Wow"

(otherwise you end up with a wardrobe full of "all right"s and "nice enough"s, which is one thing if you're really short on clothes but a bit unhelpful if you're me and want to avoid repeating the declutter/refill cycle for another ten years)

Thou Shalt Not Buy Anything Which Doesn't Go With What You Already Have

(again, been down this road before, and it's super annoying. If it doesn't work with my existing favourites it's essentially pointless. No garment can stand alone)

Thou Shalt Not Spend Silly Money

(the category of 'silly money' varies depending on what the item is - e.g. I have enough t-shirts that any money spent on t-shirts is 'silly' - what else is going on that month, and whether the money could be better spent. For example, a pair of walking boots or a nice lightweight summer top would be really useful for me, but any more tie-dye anythings borders on excessive and sets me back a bit further from being able to do the courses I'm interested in.)

I've told myself since my teens that it didn't matter what mistakes I made with regards to personal style in my twenties, because no one really knows themselves when they are young, and through all my experimentation I would have my shit together by the time I hit thirty. 

Well, I'm staring down the barrel of that date now, and though it's a little bit more complex than 'ta-da, I am now a finished person', it seems I wasn't actually too far off with that estimation. I've rediscovered some of the confidence I used to have with regards to clothes and I no longer worry about other people's opinions of my outfits, but I've also learned more about what I like and will actually wear rather than just buying stuff 'because it's different'. And I'm happy that I've learned to source things second-hand (with a very occasional item new from small ethical and sustainable brands)  - it means that my wardrobe won't be cookie cutter, but it's also more responsible and less wasteful. 

I don't think I can commit to not buying anything at all at the charity shop, because I know from experience that all kinds of gorgeous things will turn up right under my nose. (And I suck at resisting a bargain, as recently discovered when I got an email to say that Dresden Dolls merchandise was up to 80% off. I managed to snag an art nouveau-style  t-shirt before they sold out, with equal parts guilt - another black band tee - and glee - a DOLLS black band tee!) I find it amazing how some people just... stop shopping. Even after two years of analysing and navel-gazing, I still struggle. Honestly, I've considered professional help! I don't expect perfection, but it's so frustrating, and at times I feel spoiled, greedy, embarrassed, entitled.

But I can do my best not to overdo it, and make the right choices. Right now, my new eBay items seem to have plugged the obvious wardrobe gaps (a waistcoat for layering and because waistcoats are funky, some long skirts for the summer), so I can't think what might tempt me to stray! But I know there will be something!

Just please, keep your fingers crossed for me that a pair of rainbow layered Dark Star faerie skirts come my way.