Jules Weston
Project Manager,
WWF

Valuing the source

 ”Ah you could just take a book and read,” she said, clearly relieved as she recognised that activity as “getting away from it all”. 

 Well you could, but that’s not what people tend to do.  To allow something really different to happen people tend to de-tech completely and leave behind what would be distractions like books, phones, cameras etc and only take a journal to write in.  Actually a lot of people choose to fast as well.

 There was a visible struggle in comprehension and a short silence.

 ”Well it’s just like a walk then”.

 Actually we stay in a small area like 10 metres square so that we don’t turn the solo into a physical activity.  It’s not about climbing mountains, traversing, challenging, travelling, “getting there” or “having it all”.

It’s about letting the quiet voice speak up and listening to what it says.  It’s a journey inside.   

That is probably THE most important journey any of us as a human being can, or will, ever make.  It is the SOURCE of all our externalised actions, journeys, relationships, behaviours, careers and activism.  We need to take care of the source.

So how?

On a personal level I think it’s about acknowledging and valuing the source.  About finding the place where our gladness and the world’s hunger meet, trying to help, live and work with others authentically.  And really, really trying not to do it alone or feeling alone in this process…community.  Finding a place to share in a community.

On a Meta level it’s about creating real Values within structures.  If we as a society don’t first value the mental and spiritual health and well being of ourselves/our people/our communities how will we value the health and well being of other living things/systems - or vice versa?  

 Some folk have said this project is a bit touchy feely - I think that speaks volumes about what is “acceptable” today in our society.  In my mind, if we don’t attend to a wound it only goes septic - and spreads infection.  Is attending to the wound touchy feely?

The woman also asked “but what do they get out of doing this?” in a deeply puzzled way

Read the blogs I said.

Many thanks to “the woman” for inspiring this blog and no offence intended

Fear of boredom?

As I’ve been describing the natural change process in Knoydart to people, inevitably the focus becomes the solo dawn till dusk experience (described so beautifully and personally in these blogs). 

“All that time alone in a small area?”  

 ”No-one took a book to read?” 

“I’d find it really difficult staying in one place for that long”. 

Those who have done a solo, including myself, claim it is an incredible, unique and unforgettable experience.  I think it’s something to do with having “unstructured” time, alone in nature.  Dawn till dusk at this time of year only lasts about 13 hours and we have decades of “time” in our lifetimes, yet the solo is usually the first experience of this kind where we give ourselves permission to just be, alone, in natural surroundings, without mountains to climb, “things to do” or any other distractions.  We face our fear of boredom and find it to be a shallow myth.  Instead, our mind is set free to roam and wander, to appreciate and reflect upon the things it needs and wants to. 

My daily life is usually so crammed with things to do at such a fast pace that every hour is congested, compartmentalised and severely rationed.  Sure this is modern Western life for most of us, but there is an unsettling feeling that such a pace somehow lacks an appreciation for life itself, certainly a wonder at detail or any time to “care” for anything.   And there is an almost pathological fear that we might get bored or be inefficient in our “use” of time.

In other centuries, human beings wanted to be saved, or improved or freed or educated.  But in our century they want to be entertained.  The great fear is not of disease or death, but of boredom.  A sense of time on our hands, a sense of nothing to do.                                    Michael Crichton, Timeline

And yet that is exactly what the solo experience seems to turn on its head with such profound effect!  

Does anyone have any ideas on why solo wilderness experiences are so  affecting?  If you have done a solo I’d be really interested to hear how the experience affected you personally. 

There is no order

Those of you who are concerned with structure and order may have realised that the blogs are not always 100% accurate in terms of days for uploading.   There is a reason for that…the broadband promised on Knoydart for this purpose has turned out to be a satelite phone line in a cold shed at the bottom of the garden.  Hence we have not been able to upload as we go or write directly into a computer.  And we’ve been pretty busy outside!  However, I’m sure that order and date accuracy is not the top priority on people’s minds here.  These are stories told with heart and soul.   Restricting them and re-ordering them feels pretty irrelevent. 

Do please send us comments if you have time!

The whole time has been an absolute privilege - a wonderful place, amazing nature, fascinating people talking honestly about big, important ideas with a lot of courage and so many different processes and layers of meaning going on at the same time that I’m slightly lost for words…

What’s important?

In this project I think one of the most important things has been (and will continue to be) vital to this project’s evolution is maintaining a loose frame, not controlling too tightly or forcing the process. There is a chronic danger in our culture, and sometimes in my comfort zone, of over-defining, over controlling and setting very specific targets and outcomes. The participants, all probably used to being well informed, thoroughly briefed and often in positions of leadership each took bit of a leap into the dark by taking part in the project. I am deeply impressed by their courage and openness.  When individually invited they were purposely not told who else was taking part or exactly what the project workshops would entail. I wonder if they would have taken part if we had described the processes and practice in detail at the outset?

Yet now they are on board do they honestly appear like they have any regrets about taking part?  Certainly there seems to be process of change happening…

Motto:

Patience

Patience

Patience

Rites of Passage

What we lack as adults today in western society is a form of rites of passage with a focus into ourselves, our ecological selves, our role in the world, what it means to be human and all the responsibility that entails.

Yet scratch the surface of the “modern consumer” and in evolutionary terms our instinctual, “primitive” or indigenous selves (which may be at least partially defined as living in harmony with nature, co-existing in community, without greed or plain “sustainable”) lie just below our skin.

I think the scratching of this surface by creating a modern, relevant, rites of passage in community and then passing that on, forms the backbone of this project.

The process is perhaps, necessarily, culturally specific in its approach but the themes that emerge will likely be universal human themes. My intention is that this approach, these thoughts, ideas, journeys and experiences in all their diversity are freely available through this website. The hope is that by reading the personal journals in the blogs and witnessing a process unfurl, you might find something that chimes with you, that you identify with and that in some form, at some time, you might want to take forward.

Where did the project idea come from?

fruits to seeds...

WHERE DID THE IDEA COME FROM?

WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT?

Two questions I get asked all the time about the project that I’ll try to answer, at least in part…

BUT the answer to the second question really lies in the process of the project over the coming months. “It’s all about” how the process of this project affects the people taking part, how it changes the way they look at the world (theirs and others), how it changes the way they act and behave and also how they influence others’ to change. Of course we can talk about sustainable behaviour change but that must be the least inspiring combination of unimaginative words known in our language. I think it is more about the art of living, the creation and finding of meaning, rediscovering ourselves and what it means to be a human being alive in  2008 facing the pressures that we all face, yet finding that underneath our skins lies a unifying thread of humanity. Lofty ideals? Perhaps. But without lifting ourselves up to some noble aspirations, taking full responsibility and truthfully facing ourselves and where we come from as a species how can we genuinely hope to create a powerful vision of the next century for future generations of any species?

 So where did the idea for this project come from?

Well, like all ideas it is an amalgamation of thoughts, approaches, experiences, needs, creative process and partnerships. From my own perspective I can trace the birth of the idea back to about eighteen months ago when I was working up campaign and communication ideas for sustainable lifestyles for WWF and co-incidentally went on a WWF personal effectiveness course. There I was given an article called “For An Ecology of the Heart” that I will try to find for this blog. It was from Resurgence magazine, a magazine that I had (perhaps surprisingly) never heard of before, let alone read.

As soon as I read the words in “For An Ecology of the Heart” I was thrown into a storm of ideas and excitement – here, at last, was someone eloquently saying some of the things that I had been thinking and fumbling with for a while but had not yet found the means to express. I wondered if WWF could combine some form of these ideas with personal development approaches, communicate the concepts far wider and INSPIRE people to “sustainability” through a reconnection with nature and what it means to be human. For this communications project to work it would be far better to take real, interesting people on a journey spread over some time and for them to communicate it themselves. I believe there is nothing more powerful or affecting than personal experience. This led me on a personal quest to discover more about an inspiring and relatively unknown approach that combined art, nature, spirituality and psychology that I discovered mainly came under the name of eco psychology. Six months later I took part in the incredible eco therapy course run by Dave Key and Mary-Jayne Rust, upon which much of this project’s design and process is based (read Dave Key’s blog on here).

The intention is that we communicate as widely as possible about this project and research the process. The range of people taking part and the amount of time they will be thinking and creating should lead to some fascinating blogs (and potentially lifechanging experiences). For some of the blog readers the ideas and experience will resonate, for others it will leave them cold, but what this project won’t do is just leave people not knowing that this approach exists.  And just maybe…it could even create genuine, lasting change.

Clearing for puffins

I spent the whole days yesterday on Fidra island on the Forth clearing invasive mallow plant, as puffins can’t get into their burrows to breed because of it.  Lots of work there still to do but it was good, honest, physical work that i enjoy and miss these days being stuck in front of a laptop most days.  

Of course i am 44 (since monday!) and now feel it, but since I am so gym-adverse the physical aches feel unusual and quite virtuous too!  Actually helping wildlife is a good feeling - physical, mental, spiritual.  This was virtually the last trip out to the island this year as the seals are pregnant and waiting to haul out onto island to have their pups so don’t want to disturb or stress them by landing close by.  Seals are SO curious - most of our chopping down activities on the wee island were watched from the sea by several seals.  Was quite magical really - and free - I was a volunteer for the sea bird centre. 

Thought of our nearing trip to Knoydart as we went to Fidra island on a boat that may be similar to the one we’ll take to  Knoydart.  That bit was really exciting and exhilarating.  The whole thing was genuinely satisfying.  

I wonder if physically “making a difference” is an important part of feeling it psychologically?

Why bother trying this project?

 My experience of doing the eco therapy course with Dave Key has led me to believe that an experiential approach to “sustainability” holds a vital key to a strong elemental awakening and connection with what we often call “the environment” but really mean the entire magnificence of the natural world and all its ecosystems.

By experiencing the feeling of being human in the elements of wild nature, relying on self/instinct/human nature and being wholly and solely responsible for self care, choices in behaviour and actions this engenders a heightened, accentuated awareness of ourselves as human beings and our absolute, visceral connection with nature:our ecological selves.

All separation from nature is artificial, constructed, superficial and ultimately flimsy. Witness our attempt to separate from the powerful elements of nature in volcanic eruptions, floods, storms, typhoons and now the chaos of climate change. We are unavoidably part of, dependant not dominant.

Can we live an instinctively “lighter” life on the planet without this sense of what it means to be “part of” something far greater than ourselves?  Why would we care or bother trying?

Self responsibility is key. Without it we don’t feel responsible for ourselves, our actions or the repercussions of them, nor others, human and non human. At the minute it feels like humans are holding all the power but not taking much responsibility, at least not in a positive empowering way.

Yet self responsibility brings a tremendous feeling of strength. When you go through something like the solo experience from dawn till dusk (that is planned in these workshops), face the fears of being alone, of being wholly self reliant outdoors, some physical discomfort and the anxiety about the psychological impacts there is the sense of feeling stronger, more comfortable in our skin, more connected with our lives, ourselves and others, more grounded, safer and happier.  Something happens to people when they do the solo experience.

Einstein purportedly said that there was only one important question to ask: “Is the universe friendly?”

I believe that the universe is friendly.

hopi prophesy

Prophesies that make you really think where we are in the world