The Need for Wilder Places

Well run farms can be great places to visit. Beautiful parkland attached to a stately home is also wonderful. Both are artificial, the farm’s appearance dictated by its working purpose and the parkland, as with formal gardens, can be a joyful concoction assembled with true artistry. But I’ve always liked places that have become ‘overgrown’. Efficiency is a virtue in many contexts but there is more to life than order and precision. I’m not alone in valuing land which was once carefully tilled or managed for someone’s profit but has fallen into disuse and become ‘overrun’ with unplanned vegetation creating surprising and secret spaces and welcoming unexpected wild visitors. There are those who dismiss this ‘secondary’ wilding as near worthless because it is not true ancient woodland or ‘genuine’ wilderness of the kind which still exists (just) in some parts of the world. I have no time for the views of these purists. As a child I always loved the hedgerows which had been forgotten and neglected by adults, the expanses of tall wild growth like willow herb and bracken, even the bramble that compensated for our scratched legs (those short trousers!) by giving us the tastiest berries.

Every so often I meet someone walking on Blacka Moor who tells me how he used to love the place as a child. It’s a place made for children, somewhere to explore which will never give up all its secrets.