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

Map & navigate naturally

Find your way using the land, the sun and the stars.

A yarrow flower held against an Ordnance Survey map

Mapping builds an inner picture of a place: where the fox passes, where wild garlic grows, where the birds call and water gathers. A useful map needn't be accurate to the metre. Mark what you've seen differently from what you suspect, and keep coming back to add and revise.

Natural navigation grows from the same attention. The sun, moon and stars, the shape of trees, lichen on a trunk and the lie of the land all tell you where you are. Over time you carry a living map of your place inside you, and familiar ground stops being scenery.

Try this week

Sketch a map of your street from memory.
Make a sound map: you in the middle, sounds around you.
Work out which way is south using the sun.

Explore 32 Map & navigate naturally 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