Meeting the Wild

I grew up on a council estate in south London in the 80’s. Its rows of flats one on top of the other, brick wall structures that housed and hemmed us in. The concrete under my feet and the black bars of the nursery we were held back from entering, the boundary lines to the small areas of green that were ours. No shouting and no balls declared the signs, and no bushes, or climbable trees either. But we were still wild.

Us key latch kids didn’t just rule our houses when our parents were at work, we ruled the estate when they were home and we fled outside to escape our ‘chores’. We ran in a pack and had a clear hierarchy and territory. We could do want we wanted as long as we never left the estate and came home when we were called. Evening, weekends, school holidays. Hours and hours of time together to roam, to get up to mischief and learn our limits on our own. Was that wild, or was it free? Is there any difference?

My summers were spent in rural Ireland on a dairy farm. I woke early, gulped down breakfast and sped through my jobs, eager to unleash myself on the world outside. A world that revolved around my other pack, the one in which we were thrown together by the ties of family rather than the proximity of council housing. We climbed trees, hills, and fences. We crossed the small river countless times a day, visiting the houses only when we were hungry, or the rain became too much. We jostled and laughed, we relearned each other each year, using our conversations to peer inside another completely alien world. Them into the city life of London, and me into the green fields and physical life I often felt more at home in than anywhere else. I learnt new limitations in those summers, where the adults had no expectations for my time, and no need to shape my experience. I was definitely free, and they would say I was wild.

Fast forward two decades to a woman watching the cars slice through the rain outside, looking down on the street from my tower of bricks. Wet concrete and even less green, and new constraints called time, energy and money. Tiny children at my feet brimming over with life and curiosity reminding me that we are born wild if we are allowed to be free. Days spent exploring London commons and parks, souls like heat seeking missiles aimed at nature and the unclaimed spaces. But then as time rapidly flowed, sped up by mealtimes, bath times and bedtime routines, the realisation that the nature of city was not ‘free’. Padlocks in the evenings, neatly kept pathways bordering trimmed grass and unspoken rules about climbing. It certainly wasn’t wild, at least not wild enough.

I began to plot our escape, our greatest adventure yet… into the wild. Pieces of paper, tests and the jangle of keys, we were running towards the forest and the untameable sea.

Another decade slipped by, older feet walk beside mine as new younger pairs run and skip and play. Those feet have always felt grass, climbed rough bark, wriggled in sand and learnt their own limitations. While they grew, I breathed in the salted air whipping against my skin. I walked amongst trees who have stood a century of change and development. They have watched the bridleways become tarmacked roads, horses become cars. They have kept their wild.

Here, today, I am filled with the choice I do not often enough take… forest or beach, the rough textures of stone or bark or the softer sand or meadow grasses. Here there are untrampled places. Areas where the path does not unfold neatly before you, where nature bars the way with brambles and thorns. You have to want to move forward, you have to reach your own limitations. Here, you have to free yourself long enough to meet your wild.

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This piece was written thanks to a monthly theme from Illuminate, a writing community from The Kindred Voice.

Read more stories on the theme ‘wild’ from the other Illuminate members.

What is Wild? by Laci Hoyt

My One Wild and Precious Life by Tracy Erler