Wild is a state of mind, not only a place.

Yes, it is where the wildebeest roam, and the dassies scamper along mountain crags. Or, to put it in European terms, where foxes trail the forest and hares muck about. But it can also be a bird in a tree, a house plant, insects doing what insects do. You can be in the middle of a city and still experience the wild. Feel it. Sense it.

Spells to make the wild visible

Sometime last year, I bought a book called: ‘Rewild Yourself. 23 spellbinding ways to make nature more visible’, by Simon Barnes. It is full of practical tips. In it, Barnes teaches readers to weave spells that call out the wild to you; to make it visible. I put these spells in my spellbook and took to the hills in my back garden in the small town of Baar, Switzerland.

It revealed a whole new world to me. It’s not that it wasn’t there before, I was just not noticing. I was tuned into a different station. But now the hills that I previously thought tame became a window into the wildlands. I spotted birds I had never seen before. I’ve seen eyes peek out of the deep forest when I wandered at night. I’ve watched the moonrise and the sunrise, and how it changes the colours of the trees. I woke up to a new world.

These spells, or tricks, have changed the way I interact with nature, by helping me engage, notice, hear, see, and most importantly, sit.

Nature was around me at all times, but it always felt tame and distant, like it was beyond the next mountain. To me, Switzerland lacked that unacquainted feeling of ‘the wild’. I was looking for wolves and antelope and excitement.

But the wild doesn’t just live at the edges of our civilised world, in the impressive and the extremes. It’s not just ‘out there’. It also lives within us.

Awakening my wild soul

Last year, during my own awakening, amidst the pandemic and settling into a new life in Switzerland, something stirred inside me. It called desperately for the wild. It was momentous and overwhelming, reminding me of a poem by South African poet, psychiatrist and wildlife expert, Ian McCallum:

One day
your soul will call to you
with a holy rage.

the rising, by Ian McCallum.

The wild is not only a place, but a state of being, where we open ourselves up to sense the earth and its creatures around us. In doing so, we allow ourselves to witness the dance of the changing seasons, the waning of the moon. We take pause in nature and hold it in reverence for all its wildness.

This is my journey as I wake up to realise the wild inside me.

Cultivating wild habits

My soul has only just begun its awakening. It is slow and shy, like the fragile blossom at the eves of spring. The wild is still elusive, but slowly it draws nearer. It's around the next bend. My ears hear nature unfold around me. But I am not quite there.

Wild places, both within and without, is not a destination. For me, it is a quest, a constant journey. It is practised. Each day, I get a little better at recognising it; I get closer to the bend.

To reach it, I need patience and stillness. Developing a sense of the wild is cultivated like a habit. With time, it will be easier to slip into. Then, there will be no separation from the wilderness within us.

Related stories