Let's Take A Walk

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When I first drafted this, snow was settling outside the study window, small flakes gripping the gravestones and their moss blankets, creating micro-drifts on the workshop roof beside me. We took the opportunity to head across the valley and climbed a short distance to find fresh snow; Ailsa was pulled around in the sledge and we built a small snowman, using dry oak leaves for a unique hairstyle. At one point, Ailsa leant in and gave the snowman a kiss and a hug, then spent a moment rubbing her cold nose. For some reason, this tiny parcel of time felt larger, as though there was an important lesson contained within those seconds.

As I edit, there is more fresh snow higher up on the mountain but not at our altitude. The winds have been strong, howling through the forests from above, bouncing off rock and ripping at branch and twig. The temperature is moving up and down through a rather alarming range—and this is not normal. Yesterday, the sun was strong enough that the bees in our bee home hatched; last night, the temperature was hovering above freezing once more.

Just a little observation, a glance from the window, demonstrates these abnormalities. It does not take much to realise how warm this winter has been here, how the queues of cars with skis atop have been forced higher and higher to find the snow—we see this from our windows and we feel it on our skin and in our chests. Our world is changing and we need to bear witness.

Before Christmas, I sent out a letter which concluded my introductory season of Ancestral, Wild Empowerment (AWE), loosely centred around the word ‘respect’. I also shared the topic for season two: mapping.

In that letter, I said this:

“…I can take time out of my day, out of my week, to take a walk in the local woods, uphill and down, see all those different facets of nature which I could use if I needed to, discover others I have yet to learn, and generally map my local area as I would if I were one of the ancestors. And I can share that.

This tricks my strange brain into ‘allowing’ the time. It is not ideal, in that I should allow such an activity without thinking of ‘work’. Yet due to the way my brain works, this will help.

Crucially, such walks will not only help to illustrate each part of AWE Season Two, with photos, material, and even a planned hand-painted series of maps, but they will provide a focus for another idea I have had—collaboration.

I read the wonderful posts many of you share and I know that nature and walking within it are strong parts of your own identities. As such, if you wish to take part in this process—talk of your local walk, approaching it through the eyes of one of your ancestors, say so! Either pop a note in the comments, send me a message via Notes, or hit reply to this email if you are interested—I will then add you to the list and send on further details.

These posts will be free for all to read, as opposed to the pay-walled parts of AWE. They will be guest posts, with your publication (if you have one) and name front and centre. I do not envisage the first of these to be published before the second half of January, at the earliest, so there is no rush but, by all means, if you are interested, do start looking at your local area through the lens of your ancestors!

By discussing mapping and moving through a landscape—in time and memory, as well as space—we will provide a solid foundation for what is to come in further future seasons, built on the ground already cleared during season one.”

After sending this, I was delighted to receive a number of replies from those who wished to take part. I had also sent out a few emails to those I thought might enjoy the process, although judging by the scarcity of replies, I suspect at least some of those might not have been received or read (this can be the problem with reply via email to a Substack letter—things can be swallowed by inboxes).

When I shared the idea for this collaboration, I deliberately left details sparse but, now—after queries from those of you interested in taking part—I realise some more ideas or thoughts might help.

If you already have an idea of what you would like to do, however, just go with that: if you take the very basic principal—of approaching an area as if you were one of your ancestors, in the millennia before farming—you can’t be wrong!

At the heart of this, I want you to look at your environment in a way which makes it feel fresh to you, to ask questions, to seek answers. In short, all those things I touched on in the introductory season of AWE.

Perhaps you walk a dog, every day, along the same path? If you have been doing this for a while, you’ll have already seen the seasons shifting, already be looking for the signs of coming change, or know exactly where you are on the circle of the year simply by observing nature all around you. Share this, talk of these minute changes—what they bring to your environment and what they mean to you. Maybe you already know a few edible species, or have an inkling that this tree might be good for shelter building, that one for a slow, hot fire. Ask yourself questions and seek those answers.

Maybe you walk to work? Or cycle? You can do the same along this route, no matter how urban the path; there will always be some nature, somewhere. Things grow in the cracks and push through to the light, after all. When I lived in a city I saw far, far more foxes than I have in the woods or fields. What would a distant ancestor think of the fox? Would they hunt or trap them? How would they use them? Would they attach meaning to the fox, something we still do; the fox in those children’s tales we share to this day is crafty, clever, cunning. We can learn from them.

Every animal, every plant, every sign you see would carry meaning—think about what meaning this might have been, and also what meaning you already attach, perhaps without even noticing you do so. As time passes, spaces gather more meaning—here, you found a dead deer, something which will always be attached to that space, there you saw a goshawk, flashing through the woodland; at a certain time of day, the woodpecker always beats their staccato rhythm in that specific section of woodland. The more observations we make, the easier it is for our subconsciousness to process others, piecing together from the senses you might not even know you are using.

Or maybe you walk longer distances at the weekend? Perhaps this walk takes you through different environments, from village to field to wood to hill, by way of marsh and river? Or you pick over the leavings of the ocean on the shoreline? What would those ancestors do with such a tapestry of ecosystems? Where would they site a shelter? Why? How would they travel without roads? What would one environment bring that another lacks?

Think of food, think of shelter, of medicine, of pigments for painting, of species to harvest for all manner of uses. Think of fire, of tools and toys to make. Think of where you would place a series of traps—perhaps funnel fish in a river into baskets, or shallow, fenced areas, where you could easily gather a harvest to dry and help your family through winter.

Perhaps you live somewhere with considerable extremes of temperature? How would you deal with these without modern technology and fibres? Similarly with those irritants, like mosquitoes, blackfly, or midges? Without modern chemicals, how could you stop them biting?

Ask whether a species you see rarely would have been more common in our past. Ask whether there would be others—now missing—how would they change the environment?

Don’t neglect the land itself—the soil, the rocks, the minerals. Is there somewhere on your walk where you see stones you think might be useful for tool-making? Or fire-lighting? Perhaps the sticky mud on your boots indicates you have rich resources of clay? Or there are caves nearby. Look into the bones of the earth and look up to the skies—what do those clouds tell you? Will it rain soon? Will it freeze tonight? What is the time of the day? Are there migratory birds moving through your area, perhaps small, flitting through buildings and woods alike, or larger, vast skeins of geese, or swans? What does this tell you about the circle of the year?

Maybe you already know a little (or a lot) about those fisher-gatherer-hunter ancestors who lived in the area you currently move through? Maybe you know of archaeological evidence? If you don’t, how could you find out more? Are there museums near you, or resources in a library or online? Perhaps you are lucky enough to live somewhere people still regularly use wild resources, harvest carefully and with intent? What could they tell you about all the above?

These are just a few questions you could ask yourself. As you might be gathering, this topic is a vast one.

You could use some of these questions as a basis of what to share in your piece (or pieces, if you feel it would need more than one post). How you share this is entirely up to you—I am happy for you to use words, photography, audio, art, or any other way you wish to share your walk: yes, even video. Or you can use any combination of these.

Maybe your piece could be a list of questions and the answers you find (and further questions arising from them!)?

Perhaps you want to paint a literal map, illustrating it with the things you see? That’s great. Or maybe you want to share the sounds you record on your walk and consider audio a better option—that’s also great.

Maybe your walk—all the while considering those ancestors—inspires a piece of fiction, a song, a poem, a carving, a knitting pattern, a piece of embroidery; these are all wonderful ways to share this project.

And what about switching things up—rather than considering the environment as it was before we left behind a gatherer-hunter-fisher lifepath, maybe you would like to consider what it would mean to live like this in our day and age in your area? What would you do differently? Could you repurpose rubbish you find (beer bottle bases can make excellent arrowheads, once you learn how to knap)? Are there still connections to such a lifepath near you, perhaps descendants of those who lived from the land before colonisation altered their world entirely? (I have spoken before of talking to an elderly neighbour, who remembered making crude flint tools as a young man, being taught the method by those older than he, using them for hedging or cutting rope, for example. It was cheaper than a metal tool.)

(As something of an aside—what do you think those ancestors would have thought of their own ancestors? What would those who came after them make of them? The past in the past is a topic we too often forget to consider. Taking Britain as an example, farming was probably introduced around six thousand years ago—people, modern Homo sapiens had been living there for at least forty thousand years. They only began to use iron around two thousand eight hundred years ago. The time we were entirely modern—entirely ‘us’—and entirely hunter-fisher-gatherers dwarfs that since we began to farm. [And those dates are from Britain. Evidence elsewhere shows hominids first began to use fire at least a million years ago, perhaps even as far back as two million years.])

The scope for this idea really is vast.

Mapping an area means so many different things—and I shall ultimately leave it up to you how you wish to share them. If you are still unsure whether your idea will work (I’m pretty sure it will!), just send me a message.

I have deliberately asked lots of questions above, rather than give a prescriptive formula for what I would like to see here. I want you to be creative and I want that creativity to flow from nature.

That is the key to this whole idea, of looking at skills and mindsets we have mostly lost as a species, and trying to rekindle them, trying to show how we can appreciate the natural with a depth missing in our modern age, simply by imagining those ancestors and asking the right questions, seeking answers. Of course, there is nothing simple about this! You could walk the same walk for every day of your life and you would still find new things, still learn new-to-you answers. This is, to me, oddly comforting.

Passing on and sharing knowledge is key. Taking all you learn and showing it to the world is a brave step, yet it is a crucial one to helping others. No matter how simple a question, it is not wrong to ask, after all.

We need to join each other in delighting in our natural world once more as is our birthright, a birthright stretching back into a dazzlingly-long, dizzy, past. To welcome the ancestors and to seek their knowledge brings us closer to the world, and to ourselves.

Finally, if you want to take part, just let me know—and do not feel like this project has to be prescriptive or constrictive. I want it to challenge you, but I also want it to be fun. There are no deadlines here. If you think you’ll have something ready by a certain date, let me know, but do not feel trapped by this—I will share these posts when you are ready, all linked back to your own Substack letter or wherever you wish. I can include a brief bio/description of your letter too.

As I mentioned in the post where I first mooted this idea, these posts will be free to all. Although parts of AWE will be paywalled, these walks will not.

Leave a comment, message or tag me on Notes, or reply to this email if you would like to take part.

I am excited by this idea, thrilled that some of you want to take part, and looking forward to the results. I see no reason to put time limits on this collaboration, even once the second season of AWE, centred on ‘mapping’, ends. I’ll keep sharing your own walks with my readership, for as long as people want to keep sharing them with me.