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.

← The whole Web of the Wild

The Web of the Wild

Heritage species & culturally significant elements

Living nature woven into human memory and story.

The fluted reddish trunk and roots of an old yew

Looking up through mistletoe and white berries to a blue sky

Branches of a wild apple tree heavy with small green apples

Some living things carry human memory: an old oak, a locally coppiced hazel, a family apple tree, a river woven into local stories. Meaning may be shared across a community or held by one household, and it needn't be ancient to matter. This community includes skills, names and stories, as well as particular species and places.

Gratitude, continuity and reverence can grow here. Part of that relationship is learning whose story you're hearing and acknowledging where it comes from. Another culture's traditions aren't automatically ours to borrow.

You might meet

Ancient oak
Churchyard yew
Coppiced hazel
Family apple tree
Crab apple
Mistletoe
Holly
Hawthorn
A storied local river

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