The Web of the Wild

You sit at the centre of a living neighbourhood. The Web of the Wild is a way of noticing the eight communities around you, and the relationships between them.

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The Web of the Wild

Hazardous species & natural forces

Respect what can harm you and you'll see it sooner.

A tall spike of purple foxglove bells in a woodland clearing

Yew foliage: every part except the red flesh of the berry is poisonous

A tree trunk snapped and splintered by a storm

Foxgloves, nettles, ticks and adders all have their own needs and relationships in the living world. Wind, cold, fire, flowing water and tides are forces rather than species, but they ask for attention too.

This community is about recognising hazards and responding with knowledge, distance or a change of plan. It doesn't mean seeking out frightening encounters. Awareness grows by noticing early, knowing your limits and respecting conditions. And something hazardous to you may be valuable to other life at the very same moment, like the bumblebee climbing into a foxglove.

You might meet

Foxglove
Lords-and-ladies
Hemlock water-dropwort
Stinging nettle
Tick
Adder
Wasp
Hornet
Storms and high wind
Rising tides

Find activity guides Back to the Web of the Wild

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