Wood was Good!
a tonic for the soul
I am just back from Wood - the first festival of the year (for me at least) - and one at which I run a stage, hosting a delightfully diverse bunch of speakers.
The first Wood was back in 2008, and it has been held the same weekend at the same location ever since. I think I went first in 2010, and launched my ‘Kindling’ tent in 2013.
The award-winning festival is the perfect family event - young children are seriously catered for, and as they get older, the freedom and security of the site means they can turn as feral as they like. I have seen my children move from nervously navigating the new space to gathering stick-swords and forming a pack within short order! A warning, though, it does sell out each year, so if you are interested for 2027 … do keep an eye on the website!
Okay, so why write about it here? Well, I did do a spontaneous Hedgehog Question Time when one speaker finished 15 minutes early - that was great fun! But mainly it is to tell you about Eva - now she has been in these pages before, and is a great source of hope and inspiration to me (and pretty much everyone else who meets her!) Quick recap - she visited Derek Gow’s Rewilding Combeshead project on my recommendation and that led to her breeding Harvest Mice, and helping release 250 of them into the wild as part of a serious conservation project. Oh, and Chris Packham came along to give his support - he is someone blessed with enormous reserves of kindness.
Eva had just turned 14 and is so self-assured that I did ask if she wanted to just be on stage alone and talk for her allotted 30 minutes, but in the end it was decided that I should be ‘in conversation’ with her.
She had a great crowd of around 70 people - and really did not need me. And what she showed was how the determination of one young person can create a great change - for themselves, for the wildlife they seek to conserve, and for the people around them who become excited and engaged by her action.
Now, it would be a bit of a reach to compare Eva to Greta … but there is common ground. Great shifts in society must have popular support, but that support often arrives because of the actions of a single person - or small group of people. We all need inspiration - we need to be reminded that we can often do a lot better - and Eva gives us that.
When I showed to short video of her talking to Women’s Hour on BBC Radio 4 - a number of my colleagues in the hedgehog world responded with variations of ‘when I grow up, I want to be like her!’
Because it is more than just the Harvest Mice - she wants to start a project where children all over the country are breeding endangered species (under the watchful eye of ecologists) - to release into the wild!
A quick shout out to some of the other amazing people who came to my stage - I was so thrilled when Robin Ince said he would read from his two beautiful books of poems, somehow squeezing me in between London and Manchester (thank you Francesca for being a very good taxi!)
Ed Finch was a teacher at my kids’ primary school - Larkrise - and was everyone’s favourite! He is now down in Devon, but visited his old stomping ground to talk about ‘What the *%$@ is wrong with education’. Simple answer - the erosion of humanity.
I had back-to-back professors - Kit Yates (maths, University of Bath) and Angeliki Kerasidou (philosophy, University of Oxford) … bit of a gamble, the audience in the tent ranges from babes in arms to the retired! But both of them were superb - Kit has books out (The Maths of Life and Death was what he mostly talked on …) and Angeliki, well she is just wise!
Jo Wimpenny’s book, Beauty of the Beast - I have written about her before. She is lovely. And was followed by ethnobotanist, Sarah Edwards. Isaac Campbell is still doing his PhD in mycorrhizal fungi, but really was impressive. And then came Beth Cox, talking about making books, in particular books for children, more inclusive.
Sunday morning started a little bleary for me … but Robin Ince soon bounced us all into a much better state. Helen Pilcher’s ‘This Book May Cause Side Effects’ was only just out and is a brilliant examination of the idea of the ‘nocebo’ effect.
Roger Close - a palaeontologist - gave a persuasive argument as to why we might NOT be in the 6th great mass extinction of life on Earth - which was a cheery introduction to me talking about Cull of the Wild, Killing in the Name of Conservation. Sunday was wrapped up by Lucy Forest talking about her love of ancient woodlands and then I had a snooze!!!
Wood is such a good tonic for the soul - and the mind. Hope you can find something similar where you are!
Oh - and coming soon - news about TWO NEW BOOKS from me!
Thank you for hosting such a wonderful stage at a wonderful festival. We all have the hedgehog Hugh song in our heads from Nick Cope too 🦔 😊
What you do is superbly brilliant in every way,keep up the wonderful work,it is so desperately needed right now.