I’m currently writing this on my laptop using the car bonnet as my desk whilst dinner warms up in the billy on the toasty glowing hot coals..
We are nestled up by the glorious Kiewa River, beside a phenomenal old river red gum who has a trunk the size of our car. There are swarms of European wasps everywhere. I found their underground nest and it is quite an empire, the usual winged friends pop by to say hi, eastern yellow robin & grey fantail, the canopies are enveloped by white cockatoos who clearly have dominion over this area & every now and then the illusive satin bowerbird calls its robotic like sound amidst the shrub.
We have been down in rural Victoria, running rewilding workshops at the Off Grid Living Festival, spreading the seeds of knowledge & experience of the wild ways and meandering through the foothills of the wild Vic Alps trying our luck at trout fishing!
A common topic has been arising in conversation over the last few weeks & it keeps circling its way back around, the dilemma of having a foot in two worlds.
The world of nature & the world of modernity.
These two worlds are literally opposing forces that we are up against in current times.
Some folks will never have a choice to decide which one they participate in.
Some will never see the likes of the concrete jungles
Some will never know what it’s like to gaze up & see the stars and be spoken to by the deep silence of the night sky.
It’s a really strange position to be in. A careful balancing act, because if we drift too far into one side, the balancing act is done for as we slip into the abyss of these two very differing worlds. If we slip into the welcoming abyss of the natural world, we are in some ways removing our connection with the wider more dominant world of the modern, yet if we dwell within the modern world it quite literally makes us sick as our nervous systems are bombarded with stimuli & unnatural frequencies coming from many dimensions.
I founded Wild Beings, our non-profit organisation in 2020, whilst living in a bell tent on some family land. I was a few years into my rewilding journey then, I hadn’t participated fully in the matrix for years & was really deepening into the rhythm of the land, a slower & observant way of being. I was feeling the benefits of living this more natural lifestyle and was full of passion to share it because let’s face it in 2020 everything got flipped upside down in society & the bush provides the anchoring one needs amidst such insanity & craziness.
I wanted to bring people into my world, the bush life.
We did that, but over the years since then, as our humble vision grew, we found ourselves having to wear shoes during certain workshops, make sure we had the correct legalities to protect us, speak in a more proper manner via the world of emails and admin and learn the skills of running a “legal entity”..
SO opposite of everything we believe in.
But in order to continue to live a lifestyle that aligns with the values of land-based living & rewilding & sharing these, the irony was that I had to learn these worldly skills to sustain our vision and create stable foundations within BOTH the natural world & the modern world.
This concept is so strange to me, to have to secure a life of health, nature connection & self-sufficiency skills, as human beings who have been born on the earth, lived on the earth, died on the earth for the longest of times practising this nature-based existence, now we are so far removed from these origins that it has become a privilege to live this way.
Here on the east coast of NSW you pretty much have to be a millionaire to own land now.. How on earth are barefoot bush folks going to make a million bucks to secure the lifestyle of land-based living?
These are some of the weird things we are up against within the ravenous monstrosity of capitalism. To live like a healthy human, regular sunlight, daily movement, clean wild drinking water, healthy local wild foods & the supporting relationships of a village is a privilege that is very difficult to maintain whilst keeping up with the financial overheads of basic survival needs of shelter, food, water & community.
From an intention of reconnecting folks with nature, we actually had to sacrifice a part of our wild feral selves, to be able to relate, to be taken seriously, to play by the books & learn this foreign realm of numbers & risk assessments & policies.
To walk this path is an utter privilege, to be able to learn what we love and share that with others is not something we take for granted. Yet the current framework of society does not make it easy to live a humble land-based life.
All we can continue doing is replenishing our cup within the natural world & sharing that space with others, recognising that the machine of capitalism does not support thriving, functional, healthy, joyful ecosystems of land or people. So if we recognise that, we can take action on bringing that power into our own decision making & being mindful how we spend our energy.
It always comes back to the simple gestures,
Daily sunlight, daily movement, daily nature time, clean drinking water, healthy food & nourishing relationships, these ingredients make up strong & healthy individuals which create functional communities & well tended ecosystems.