GOING WILD AT THE HAY FESTIVAL

Yesterday we went to the Hay-On-Wye Literature Festival to hear Robert MacFarlane and George Monbiot speak about their new books.
     Robert Macfarlane writes about his experience of journeying out across the land,mountains, rivers,and sea. His books include 'Mountains of the Mind','Wild Places', 'Old Ways' and his latest book is 'Holloway'-not the prison, but old paths beaten and trodden down by carts, horses, and boots over time. They are embraced by overhanging trees forming a natural tunnel with a tiny light at the end. He said he's only recently realized that his books chart his descent. His next one will be subterranean, about his experience journeying beneath the earth.
       I'm a huge fan of his writing. He writes poetically about his visceral experience of nature, spending nights alone on the top of wind-crushed mountains, long walks across Rannoch Moor or a Suffolk beach guided by sticks that disappear as the tide turns. He makes you feel as if you're his travel companion. While reading his adventures I experience them vacariously and that's exciting, thought provoking, and moving. He says he comes from a rational tradition, where truth must be verifiable. He's not setting out to have a spiritual experience, but his writing for me evokes the search for a deeper understanding of himself and the meaning of life through his relationship with nature. He inspired us to visit wild Sutherland and Cape Wrath, although we didn't follow in his exact footsteps, that would have been too much of a physical challenge, but it got us to places we might not otherwise have visited. I was chuffed that he wrote on our signed copy of 'Holloway', 'Keep Adventuring!' He also introduced me to the work of writer and environmentalist Roger Deakin, who, whilst on their stomachs, looking down a crack in a West Ireland limestone 'pavement', helped Robert redefine the meaning of 'wild' and has made me look at the landscape in a different way.
     'Rewilding' was the theme of George Monbiot's talk:'Feral: Rewilding The Land,The Sea and Human Life.' George Monbiot is a well known environmental campaigner and writes a column in the Guardian newspaper. He has a poetic hopeful vision, with a positive view of conservation, focusing on what you can do or what might be possible by thinking and acting differently. He sees the current system of conservation as narrow, random and negative. He set out his argument, based on the experience of Yellowstone National Park as to why he believes we should be focusing on a top down rather than bottom-up approach to improving the wider eco system. This should be done by reintroducing larger keystone species, such as wolves, lynx, even elephants, that would have a trophic cascade impact on smaller species, meaning there would be an increase of species at all levels. His dream is to create a European Serengeti. He said that positive environmentalism should focus on the rewilding of upland areas,where farmers are paid to keep their land bare.  All this has to start with the self and our estrangement from the natural world.  We have to face our fears and rewild ourselves.