The 15 Practice Keys

Each Practice Key is a simple, repeatable way of spending time with nature. Some will call to you straight away; others will make sense later. There is no right order.

← All 15 Practice Keys

Practice Key

Create culture

Turn the things you do outdoors into a way of life you share.

A nature table with a deer skull, feathers, nuts and leaves on wood

A campfire laid in the woods, ready to gather round

A nature culture is the habits, objects and small traditions that make connection something you live, not something you mean to get round to. It doesn't need a group to start. A nature table by the door, a hearth to gather round, a thank-you at the start of the day and a story at the end of it are all enough.

Culture is the soil the other fourteen Keys grow in. Start with a place you can return to and one small practice you enjoy. Make room for it, notice what changes, and let it shift with the seasons. If someone else gets curious, invite them along.

Try this week

Clear a shelf for a nature table and add one find.
At supper, everyone shares one thing they noticed outside today.
Begin a walk by saying what you're grateful for.

Explore 85 Create culture activity guides Back to the Practice Keys

Safety, and where the activity guides come from

Look after yourself and others. Outdoor activities carry real risks: fire, tools, water, weather, heights, plants, fungi, animals and getting lost. Every activity guide includes safety notes, but you are responsible for your own safety and for anyone in your care. Supervise children closely, get the landowner's permission, follow the Countryside Code, never eat anything you cannot identify with complete certainty, and only light fires where it is allowed and safe. If in doubt, leave it out.

With gratitude to the lineage. The Wilding Practice Keys and many of the activities in the activity guides have been adapted from the core routines of nature connection in the 8 Shields approach (Coyote Mentoring), mapped by Jon Young and shared in Coyote's Guide to Connecting with Nature (Young, Haas & McGown).

These ways of noticing and belonging are far older than any book. They grow from the knowledge of Indigenous and land-based peoples around the world, who have lived in close relationship with the land for thousands of years and have kept that knowledge alive, often in the face of great loss. Jon Young describes 8 Shields as built on patterns of nature connection he found in Indigenous cultures around the world, and on what his mentors taught him, including the teachings passed down through Tom Brown Jr. from Grandfather Stalking Wolf. Our own ancestors in these islands once knew the land in this way too.

I offer Wilding with deep respect and thanks to all of them. It does not claim or copy any culture's ceremonies or sacred practices. It is a UK way of carrying forward simple, shared human ways of paying attention, giving thanks and belonging to a place. — Jay