INVIRONMENTALISM 🌷

No one really knows who the Wild Woman is. She has become so disguised in our culture. Whereas once she was invaluable as a keeper of ancient wisdom for the community, she now seems both inconvenient and, ironically, unnatural to modern minds. I wonder about where she went sometimes. But then there are those eery intuitives who walk among us and the Great Mother who holds us all, and with mothers, there will always be signs.

The wildness of the Moors echos the wildness of our souls. Could it be that we fear the high, lonely, desolate places on a Winter’s night because we are afraid of the desolation within ourselves?

The January the mists rolled in on Ilkley Moor, my mother, sister and I thought we would let the dogs stretch their legs before the drive back to Leeds. In true Wild Woman style, my mum set off into the night making a beeline for the crags up ahead outlined against the darkening sky. Ice made slippery rivulets on the sodden peat. Cha and I slid around, looking down, and when we looked up, Mama was nowhere to be seen.

“Where’s she gone?” Cha said, real fear in her voice. And then, like some incredibly bouji, Yorkshire version of The Hound of the Baskervilles she cried out into the darkness; “Mum, the mist’s coming in! We have to turn back!” I was aware that the pub was literally five minutes behind us and the hounds were two incredibly domesticated cocker spaniels called, somewhat unthreateningly, Jeeves and Wooster. But there was silence.

A year ago, almost to the day, I wrote these words:

…I feel an utter need to be alone. For my body to not always be on guard. I don’t want kisses, I don’t want cuddles. I want my wildish side to come fully out, not there to please or pander to. I feel the need for an adventure, of exploring – on my own. I want to scream at the top of my lungs and unleash my rugged soul. I want to prowl among the peaks in the wind and rain with my hair whipping around my face and hanging matted down my back with mud on my cheeks. I want to live in a cave and cook my dinner over a fire and then curl up on the floor to sleep. I want to step out of my fish tank into the Sea. The world of infinite possibility…

The thing is this ~ the land accepts you exactly as you are. It holds you steadily beneath your heavy boots. It guides you through undulations, valleys and hills where river and wildlife make their paths. It both envelops and doesn’t care for your aching heart, the tears on your cheeks, though it will hold you in soft grass if your knees buckle and you sink to the ground.

This is where true belonging and timeless indifference can be found, and the language of life is composed of indecipherable yet strangely familiar sounds. For this is where you and I, and The Wild Ones, will one day, again, gather round…

“Sorry, sorry!” suddenly ricocheted out. We waited with bated breath. And then out of that spooky Neo-Sherlock Holmian landscape came a shout, and laughter in Mama’s voice way up ahead, ponytail bobbing, spaniels at her heels as she appeared, a sigh of grateful frustration rooted somewhere deep in memory passed between me and Cha. I believe that woman exists in us all. She is that primitive pull inside you that makes you seek the mists on the moor and stand in almost total isolation beneath a blue-grey mottled sky, breathing in the scent of frozen gorse and heather until the cold seeps into your bones and you have to head home. “What were you doing?” gasped Cha. “It’s just so beautiful,” Mama breathed. “It’s absolutely freezing!” Relief was sharp in the air, and we laughed about it to dispel the tension, turning smiling towards the welcoming lights and the warmth of the pub to toast our courageous adventure.

If you’d like to reconnect your feral soul with the Wilds of West Yorkshire, I highly recommend the following:

1. Treat yourself to a copy of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights wherever you are in the world and, as I write this, the 2026 film has just been released. My favourite cover of the book is by Wordsworth Classics, found here
   
   
2. Walk a circular route of The Dales Way and end up at the amazing pub The Cow and Calf – one version of the walk can be found here
   
   
3. Attend a Rewilding Retreat or the Ilkley Literature Festival, which also runs events online

And perhaps the most important thing to connect you to Mother Earth must be ~ that the land is in you and the land is in me. It is our birthright to enjoy it and be free.

In Love&Light, FS XOX