BBG Diaries: Wild Tales

There is a monologue in Paradise that immediately struck me when I watched it:

“My dad used to say if you were lucky, you got a few moments where you got to experience life at full volume. That’s how he put it: ‘Life at full volume’. Those moments when you’re completely present, and everything slows down, and all the textures and colours and sounds, they all go, like, hi-def.”

I noticed the silence around me; Spring’s stay was nearly over, and I hadn’t even noticed her. She was unlike a lion or lamb, but like a mouse through the silver sliver left by a tired door. In early June, my eyes landed on the email title, “Learning to feel human again,” from Jack Harries' newsletter. At the top was an image of Jack pushing a wheelbarrow through a puddle with a rainbow overhead, seemingly stretching from one side of his 200-year-old Cornwall watermill to the other.

Beneath this, he wrote, “We've spent years becoming fluent with technology, whilst losing touch with everything else. We read about nature, watch content about foraging and slow living. But we never actually do any of it. And underneath the missing skills there's a deeper feeling. Something untethered.”

Untethered was the right word; What once felt like moving in rhythm with the seasons now felt like remaining still until they passed me with the polite indifference of a stranger on the street. The newsletter was an invitation to join what Jack called “The Summer Circle,” a six-week program that included four practitioners teaching participants not only to read the landscape, but to become a living, breathing part of it again. Forgotten skills included herbalism, natural dyeing, navigation, and birdsong.

After having completed our 19th issue, “To be Human”, which focused on the human touch in an increasingly digitised world, I still felt there was a gap I couldn’t close. About halfway through the six-week community program, I was involved in a member-led “Journal Circle” set up through the shared group hosted on Circle. After having completed a “21 days of Journaling” exercise, I finally saw the gap. To be human is not the same as to feel human. “To be”, for me, was just to know, to intellectualise, to live entirely in my head untethered from my body.

At the start of the six weeks, I knew it was soon to be summer, but I couldn’t feel that it was soon to be summer. It wasn’t until the volume was quite literally turned up ever so slightly that I remembered what summer once felt like. I woke up one morning as music knocked on my closed windows from the elementary school behind me; It was Field Day — a celebration that sings summer’s sweet interlude. I heard children running around the open field filled with obstacle-course inflatables, screaming, laughing, and playing.

Having just joined The Summer Circle that same day, instead of instinctively tuning out the noise, I let it in. I remembered a Field Day in my own childhood, one of those hi-def moments: the grey cotton of my Abercrombie shirt soaking in sweat, the fresh smell of the grass, the thump of Usher’s “OMG” in my chest (a wild song choice for children), the sight of my red-shuttered home peeking through the trees, my mom blowing up water balloons. Nothing of that day was particularly remarkable except for the simmering anticipation of summer, but it still was stamped in my memory like a sunburn.

Jack posted a call for everyone to share their intentions before The Summer Circle, and my intention became immediately clear: with summer approaching, I wanted to open my senses and let her in, right through the door. On the very first group session, or “Opening Circle,” music from the group playlist played aloud before anyone said a word. FaceSoul’s “Grow” filled my chest, briefly pushing down the nerves and social masks we all wear. The lyrics were smooth and resonant: “Don't be afraid / After the darkness is light.”

When Jack began the session, he softly admitted to feeling nervous; And in rhythm, everyone else let the veil pull back slightly, one that I knew would be tugged at more throughout the six weeks. As each person shared openly about what brought them there that day, one resounding thread between nearly everyone was feeling lost in some way and searching for a like-minded community to tie to.

The second session, “Herbalism with Monica Wilde,” started again with music and a poem read aloud by Jack — “The Summer Day” by Mary Oliver. Part of the poem reads, “I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. / I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down / into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass / how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, / which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done?” So that week and the next, after the “Natural Dyeing with Olivia Powell” session, that is exactly what I did — strolled idly.

I walked past the knot in the tree my mom used to tuck packs of gum into. I looked at the English Ivy growing up a tree I noticed every summer for decades, but hadn’t really seen. I picked pink petals off a rose bush and set them on towels to dry before making rose oil. But I didn’t rush to make everything a “task” as I normally would, and took a few days before I simply felt like trying what we learned. We learned that a plethora of natural resources exists right outside the door.

However, on that day, a heavy storm passed through, wiping out my entire garden and power. More than “forgotten skills”, we had been learning the art of messing up, which, in my case, in striving for perfection, was an art I had left behind long ago. But I chose to take Cardamom from my spice cabinet, prepare a cotton crochet top my sister made me with tea bags as a mordant, and dye the fabric a bright canary yellow. The process wasn’t exactly “correct”, seeing as cardamom is not a colourfast dye, but it was good, and it made me feel capable, reminding me of one of my favourite John Steinbeck quotes, “And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.”

One of the last sessions, “Natural Navigation with Tristan Gooley,” was the wind needed to propel me past that gap between knowing and feeling. There are rare moments when someone can put into words exactly what you thought you uniquely felt. He said, “When your brain is overwhelmed, it tends to bin observations like the colour of leaves, and that all means something.” Essentially, I was throwing every sensory input out, and so, of course, nothing would feel “hi-def.” And what a senseless thought — to think any feeling is particularly unique. What Tristan said had resonated with nearly everyone. We didn’t have to make any major life changes or live off the grid to find our way back — whatever “back” meant for each person. He said, “The trees are talking to us; we just have to listen.” Listening meant looking to see which way branches reached like outstretched fingers, feeling which cheek the wind kissed, seeing the birds take off that same way, and feeling the rocks round closer to water.

In the final “closing circle,” members shared what they had learned. It was striking how emotional the group was, with several members even meeting up for the final call, including Ricarda, who photographed much of this diary. Many said they had been going through a transition, whether a break-up or a big move, and the last six weeks helped them feel less lost in that. Wild Tales extends far past the seasonal group circles. Members lead group sessions about grief and forgiveness, create book clubs, and join a virtual “Campfire” led by Jack each Friday — an open space to share, listen, and learn. In understanding the desire to disconnect digitally, members and administrators plan many in-person meetups, including in Germany, London, and Ibiza at Juntos Farm. This week will host the first official Wild Tales Annual Gathering in Cornwall.

The Autumn Circle opens on September 20th and includes learning to ferment, candlemaking, Samhain folk, cider making, and perhaps most importantly, deeply connecting with yourself and those around you.

The door is open. Link to join.