Dave Key
Project Consultant
Founder, Footprint Consulting

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Mary Oliver

Escape

When we get out of the glass bottles of our ego
and when we escape like squirrels turning in the
cages of our personality
and get into the forest again,
we shall shiver with cold and fright
but things will happen to us
so that we don’t know ourselves.
Cool, unlying life will rush in,
and passion will make our bodies taut with power,
we shall stamp our feet with new power
and old things will fall down
we shall laugh, and institutions will curl up like
burnt paper

DH Lawrence

Being different

The group process in the Natural Change Project is not about doing, so much as about Being.

I think, with the global social and environmental challenges that face us all, that we tend to over-focus on doing. We’re culturally obsessed with action plans, outcomes, products. Everything is linear, sequential, measured and evaluated.

At the risk of being controversial - we’ve been ‘doing’ environmentalism for nearly 50 years now but the situation is still getting worse!

Before we do anything, perhaps we should ask questions about the way we ‘are’. The way we feel about ourselves and other people… and our environment. In getting things done we often mine our own integrity, destroy close and unknown relationships… and devastate the land and sea.

I believe that we need to balance our compulsive doing with some carefully considered stillness. But how do we do that in our 24/7, data-saturated, global culture? Well, I think we need to work on Being first and foremost and then have faith that from this will come a more considered and compassionate form of action.

A circle in the sand

We started our time together in Knoydart in a Saami Tipi pitched at Long Beach near Inverie.

We sat in a circle round the fire and talked about how we were feeling that morning.

Next we went onto the beach and spent some time exploring and gathering things that we’d found which we then brought back to a spot on the beach where we had marked out a circle in the sand. Inside the circle we made a map of the surrounding area, each person representing their explorations individually, forming into a collective sense of place. Sometimes (as in this case) I refer to this sand circle as a Mandala, drawn from the Buddhist tradition of making circular patterns out of coloured sand that are then left out in the wind to blow away. A symbol of the transient nature of reality.

But this circle can also reflect the Celtic knot, the medicine wheel, the ships compass, the cycle of life, the eternal spiral patterns found in many Celtic and Norse cultures. The circle is an archetypal form - the strongest shape on Earth, the format for humans communicating with each other for, at very least, tens of thousands of years. Humans respond well to circles, in my experience.

When we had finished our map, we came together to talk about the things we had each brought, the places we’d found them and the things they represented in the circle.

After leaving the beach, the tide came in and the sea made it’s contribution to the unfolding picture.

Natural Change Genesis

I’ve been running outdoor courses based on the same approach as the Natural Change Project for over 12 years now. First in New Zealand where I developed the original programme as an outdoor leadership course, while working at ‘OPC’, New Zealand’s National Outdoor Training Centre, and then as a freelance facilitator working in Europe, mostly in Scotland.

The approach evolved quite naturally out of my experiences of working with a diversity of groups outdoors. I simply noticed that ‘something happens’, as the Scottish conservationist and father of the global national park movement, John Muir, said. I focussed on that ‘something’ and intentional tried to work with it. My belief - based on my own experiences rock climbing, mountaineering and sea kayaking - was that experiences of wild places had the power to transform the way we think, feel and act towards the environment, other people, and towards ourselves. For me that belief has now been tested and proven.

About four years ago, I realised that this type of ‘outdoor education for sustainability’, as it became, was actually more about healing than education. I like the definition of healing as ‘becoming whole’. Something to do with becoming complete, authentic and conscious of our place in the web of life. At this time I met Mary-Jayne Rust, a Jungian Analyst based in London, and we started developing and running ‘Ecotherapy’ courses together. This proved to be a rich and extraordinary process that has led to the techniques and processes that I am now using in my role as facilitator of the Natural Change Project.

Whether the Weather

It’s Tuesday and I’ve just checked the weather report and synoptics for the next week. It’s looking really good! There’s a huge high pressure system sitting over the whole of the UK which should bring settled fine weather with perhaps some mist in the mornings and maybe some high cloud.

It will be cold at night though - perhaps some ground frost. We will all need to wrap up warm!

The main thing is that there’s little or no wind forecast, which is excellent news as the wind is the main issue when trying to keep warm.

Fantastic!

Good to go

Just back from Spain. I was there to run some courses and conference sessions using the same approach as that used in the Natural Change Project. It went really well and I had an incredible time with a truly inspirational bunch of people.

So I’m getting ready for Knoydart and feeling very excited about facilitating yet another interesting and diverse group of folks. Difficult to make the adjustment from Spain to Knoydart - what to pack? From shorts and little else to a down jacket and Goretex in one week flat!