The Year of Rewilding

Life has a way of happening whether one likes it or not, and just as I decided to give myself permission to shop, a lot of it happened all at once. 

One night a stone came through our bedroom window (the previous resident of our house is apparently not a popular man locally). As well as being a bit of a shock, this was an unwanted expense as we had to have the glass replaced. Then I had to have my dad's car moved by a recovery firm. Then the deposit came due for the little one to start nursery in the new term. Then the Department of Work and Pensions made an error with Dai's taxes. A car veered too close to Dai's vehicle and scraped the wing mirror off. Again and again we had to dip into our piggy bank and watch the balance go down. 

It felt frustrating and unfair. Our finances had taken a battering several months prior when Dai's former employer decided not to pay him what he'd earned, and they'd never really recovered. Friends and family offered support, but it's hard to take money from loved ones when you don't know when or if you'll be able to return the favour. We'd gone from feeling not exactly well-off but able to afford some luxuries, to doing the food shop with vouchers and barely being able to afford the heating. 

Between being suddenly skint and the loss of my father, it was really hard to stay focused. I found that I could sit in my armchair, fall into Facebook or Instagram and still be there a couple of hours later. I was forgetful and slow - jobs that used to take ten minutes might now take whole days. It was getting more and more difficult to face the wind and rain to get out for our daily walks. Sometimes we didn't leave the house until evening. The to-do list was getting so long it made me nauseous just thinking about it.

The bright spots were few. Lighting candles on my altar and casting a warm cosy glow throughout the kitchen. Curling up with the Spud to listen to a local folklore podcast, as the rain drummed softly against the windows. Reading strange, mournful, viscerally beautiful poetry. 

I hadn't yet settled on a word for 2022. I prefer choosing a word to setting a resolution. It's like setting a heading to steer by, whereas traditional resolutions can be rather like selecting a personal failing to beat yourself up about for a few months. Much like trying to do a year-long shopping ban, I suppose. 

The word arose almost spontaneously, just a whisper at first, slinking out of the shadows around the edges of my mind.

Rewilding.

I tried to dismiss it at first - I have a three year old, a mortgage, and a business account on Instagram, what chance do I have to be wild? Wild is for the carefree, the unencumbered, the privileged, the courageous. Artists, artisans, nomads, small farmers, bush-crafters, van dwellers, communal-living-people, people who don't need at least one member of the household holding down a nine-to-five to keep the roof over. People I admire and follow on the socials, but am too comfortably domesticated to become.

Maybe that was the challenge. Maybe that's what I needed.

I saw a meme one day about feral housewives, and it made me laugh, but it also made me think (and not just me either). The next day I stumbled across a book entitled The Modern Peasant. Then I met a woman at a craft market selling baskets and decorations woven by hand from willow. My IG feed was filling up with foragers, home brewers, people weaving their own clothes from linen and dyeing them with leaves and berries, people who found happiness and empowerment in living simply and close to nature.

[Image text: The term "domestic housewife" implies that there are feral housewives, and now I have a new goal.]

Fair enough, I can't pack up our household into a caravan or narrowboat (yet). But being a feral housewife? That, I could probably manage. Or at least have fun setting out in that direction. Rewilding in baby steps. 

A wilder life was also a different way of looking at living frugally, which can be a fun challenge when your coffers are full but a stressful grind when they're nearing empty. One of my favourite reads in the last few years was Radical Homemakers by Shannon Hayes, which seemed like a pretty good jumping-off point for further disconnecting my life from consumer culture - which right then seemed to be doing its damnedest to reel me back in, because sometimes it's harder than others to resist the endless scroll and the easy fix.

Maybe I could choose foraging over Facebook, take up reading poetry by candlelight, make things with my hands, get dirt under my nails and stars in my eyes, and in so doing become a little stranger and a little wilder over the course of the year. It definitely seemed worth a try.