Dear Friends,

Welcome to our Summer Newsletter.

A small black ball of fluff – so tiny that it was hard to see effectively – was making its way across one of the roads I take home at the end of the day. Traffic was coming from both sides, and I just wonder if this little shrew finally made it. Or, with my doom hat on, it is now a flat bit of fluff on the road having met its fate under wheels of human juggernauts.

Last summer on the same stretch of road I found a duck with all her ducklings in a large pothole on the fringe of the tarmac swimming around a puddle of water. I could not stop, and any attempt may have put them in more peril. Both left me as I drove on, with my head full of thoughts and my heart saddened at the precipice of life for wild creatures as our roads expand, get busier, there are more houses and more people – and they are pushed to the fringes of existence. I don’t forget them – and the pictures in my mind of them remains vivid, and feelings linger of a sadness for their struggle to survive when I remember them.

Our work at the Foundation heightens our awareness of the communality of life on earth and our immediate environment and how we humans are just a part of a beautiful, sophisticated and magical set of inter- relationships and webs of life. These creatures are part of us, and us a part of them. It is this message that we take out into the field in all our capacities of education, therapy and conservation.

It is hopefully growing awareness of the need for us to be in balance with nature, to ensure we can advocate for our fellow wilder community, that we teach the values and benefits of what wildlife and nature offers us, and how we in turn can commit to helping them be more respected, understood and safe. It is said, that without bees the earth would slowly collapse…each element playing its role in a system that can be immensely robust and in equal measures, immensely fragile.

I hope that Robinson Jeffers in his poem ‘The Green World’ is right that Nature will be more patient than us. He writes:

‘The green world is forgotten, and the earth is foul
Under the tread of men—
But there is a world of green beneath our feet,
And it will wait for us to understand.’

We have been revisiting our history and origins as an organisation through the wonderful evening event held in June with Michael Charlton called “Leave Some for the Honey Badger” in London.

This origin story of our founders Dr Ian Player and Magqubu Ntombela in the early days of the Wilderness Leadership School in South Africa, up to today, brings to life wisdom of indigenous people who lived close to nature in a symbiotic relationship and how much of this we have lost today. This wisdom was in language, behaviours, daily spiritual practice, and a sense of interconnection and belonging. It is a way of viewing each element of nature as equally important in its offering to the other, and how wilderness journeys into the wild help us feel this, see it and believe it through direct experience.

As I write this piece, I am blessed to be preparing for a five-day canoeing journey in West Scotland, leaving in the morning. We are paddling one end to the other, and wild camping, along remote shores of Loch Awe – amongst 13th century Knights graves, and castle ruins of the mighty Campbells, with a backdrop of mountains, wind, water, rain and some sun. Close to the elements, close to each other, close to Gaia.

Nine young people will venture with us from the Haberdashers’ Company schools in South London. Some have never paddled, some never camped, some have never done anything like this at all. Some are more experienced.

What we hope is for them to drop the pressures of exams and busy city lives, to settle into a rhythm of a simple existence with no phones, no watches and to notice what nature throws our way to do our best with. We hope that they will notice the small things, the green world, the tiny shrews, the ducks in their real and wild element, the beauty, the silence, the lapping of waves and a sense of belonging.

We will do everything to move towards this space. We reflect, we use solo time, we laugh and play, we talk…and we paddle.

This journey takes us back to our early roots. Ian Player founded the Duzi Canoe Marathon in South Africa – still running today. Water was an element not to toy with, or to disrespect but elemental in its impact. We will appreciate it for this too as we push our paddles deep and pull hard together.

What he didn’t talk about then, in the 1960s, and is now hugely topical is the impact of nature on mental health. Today, what he knew instinctively, is fact and research that is undisputed on mental health improvement and nature immersion. It shifts mood, builds confidence, boosts self-worth, offers hopefulness, offers awe and wonder, makes us more creative and calm, and makes us feel happier. Water in some cases seems to expedite the benefits and is known as Blue Therapy.

During June we have had over 3000 children and young people pass through our therapeutic and educational programmes, and the team have two more months of busy delivery ahead of them.

They are all amazing and we have welcomed in a new member of staff, Catherine Walker, who will be supporting Education and our Mann Wood programme – we are delighted to have her on board, and she has been thrown into the deep end from day one.

We also have a new Administration and HR manager, Shelley Rudling – who is brilliant and an incredible team player, supporting everyone to be at their best. She replaces Angely Webb who will now focus on growing income and delivery for our therapy one to one and group services.

We have also run a wide range of therapy camps, home schooling, events such as Golf Days and Wellbeing Days, board meetings, visitor open days and then the relentless need to fundraise nonstop – and look after each other including the wider team of over 45 therapists, fifty volunteers and our brilliant freelancers.

This is all made possible by your support as friends, believers, followers and funders. We are so grateful to you all and our work grows more important day by day.

Our thinking is made possible and our beliefs elevated by the writing of Aldo Leopold in a Sand County Almanac representing some of the first writings on land ethics which I reread again recently:

“We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us.
When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.”

With our founders in mind, our young people and adult clients before us, and a busy world to escape from time to time for sanity, it is important to keep this writing as a reminder of who we are and where we fit in.

I hope the shrew made it. I am too nervous to look hard at the tarmac in case it did not. But at least it tried.

Happy summer to all our friends,

Jo and the team.