a roof of stars

Prompted recently by thoughts of others on the wild and the domestic I thought it might be worth sharing some thoughts - or feelings - of my own. Both these states have their pull, even if we are now most of us largely encased in our brick buildings. But to anyone who's known the road, or slept for a night or more in the thick of the woods and enjoyed it, the outdoor life has a magnetism of another magnitude, something that calls us with a passion that can almost be blind in it's strength, that is almost irrational in the way it can keep us following a feeling that may be too intangible to properly express.

And it has it's ramifications now at a time when we are all addressing how we live, when grinding tectonic plates of millennia of culture come to bear in how we see our future, in how we can imagine our way forward as to how we lead our lives. It's easy, if you take the stance of the primitivist, to cast a finger at the roots of settled populations; farming replacing nomadic styles of life, permanent dwellings replacing a life lived on the hoof, with only the simplest of shelter. And some would say that's what we should be going back to, what we shall surely return to when all our cities lie in ruins and this great golden age or near dystopia has finally exhausted itself.

And maybe that would all be for the best, that the world would have the time to heal itself after all our pillaging, that we would be back in our rightful place. But we are all of us now caught up in an interconnected world and any major fall could very likely be accompanied by massive human suffering. Perhaps there is an element of the inevitable, up to a point, though it's true by any guess that what lies in store cannot be predicted with any sense of surety. What should now be quite clear is that we have to turn the ship of civilisation into the current of some very different phase. We have to fundamentally reconsider every element of how we lead our lives, of how our businesses operate, how we travel, what we eat, the relationship of North and South and East to West. We have to have a sense of equal wealth between the nations.

It would be nice to wave some magic wand, to declare our world at peace and it's true that life is good for many here in England. But we should not avert our gaze from those corners of the planet where the simple act of survival is becoming harder and harder as the machine that we're locked into fuels increasing conflicts as the fight to wrest resources carries on. It throws a stark relief on our own lifestyles, where our baubles of sleek and apparently indisposable technology exact a heavy toll in other lands.

Our Western lives today are often light-years from the daily furrowing of countless centuries of agricultural subsistence, just as the steady, sometimes gruelling rhythm of a farmer's life bears so little resemblance to life lived on the hoof, or certainly in a far simpler fashion. For us the transition has taken shape over millennia. But now the circle threatens to turn on it's own tail and all the wolves are knocking at the door; accusatory or simply weighing up the ledgers of the years. Our consumptive patterns of existence bear with ever more effect on people who have kept to a far older pattern of life. They are paying dearly for our comforts and things are surely not the way they ought to be.

This was going to be a fairly esoteric piece on life in houses and the call of the wild, of the green hills and the sun calling us out when four walls threaten to hold us in. But the realities outlined above are somehow far more bony. But perhaps there is some way ahead in looking once again at our immediate environment and habits. I'll spare the platitudes on how we could all wean ourselves away from new electronics. I'll take as read the knowledge that we should all be sourcing food closer to home or growing it ourselves. And it goes almost without saying that we should all keep the new things that we buy to a bare minimum. But perhaps there's something else that life out of doors can teach us, even if it's just an open door or window, even if it's just feeling that breeze off the hills, remembering the smell of wild flowers, living life as fully as you can, walking like you never want to stop, recapturing the pull of the horizon, of the fat moon on a charged and tranquil summer's night.

So much of what we do, what we fill our lives and faces with is a compensation for something all too often missing. Perhaps if we can pull the wild back in our lives we'll be rewarded, with suddenly no pressing need for never ending media, for pounding concrete to the shops. It is still true to say when all else has been said that the good things are often free and largely harmless, the world still offers us rich pickings for our souls, gifts from the Gods abound with every step and home can be a hearth with the very heavens for a roof, that satisfaction is both knowing what's enough even as our cups can overflow with the deep riches that are always being offered us, that are our heritage and legacy, that we must honour and preserve.

And by this I don't mean the hard foundations of resources that mean survival and basic dignity for one or opulence for someone somewhere else but those simple priceless things that make life worth the while when we realise that we have enough; companionship, integrity and mutual respect, high times and adventure and somewhere to call home we can come back to - even if that home resides simply within us - as well as the ceaseless beauty of new life and of the natural world we have around us.

It may be naive to think that both our current culture and the ones of those so clearly under threat can somehow be resolved. Perhaps a fall is ultimately necessary, if not unavoidable, perhaps a lasting harmony can only come out of the ashes. But at my most idealistic I'd like to think we are still capable of drastic change and while that chance remains; however slim, it must be worth the struggle. But it may well be that we will face catastrophe by degrees; not some dropping off a sudden cliff of doom, nor sustaining a model we know cannot continue. We may face decades of forced shifting to something less intensive, as the energy runs short, with all the massive repercussions that will bring.

Whatever the outcome, trying to steer things around now can only help us in the future - the gear shift will be less severe. But we need truly monumental change; we need to rediscover respect for every little piece of matter that we have an impact on, for every watt of energy we use. And scaling down our lifestyles will require a sacrifice no mainstream politician dares to seriously propose at present. We must develop the sense that this sacrifice is not only necessary but can also be a form of liberation, that our great goal is to set a standard of using less at every turn, a new ideal that we can all aspire to. And it has to first and foremost come from our own will, our own desire to change.

The answer may rest in our hearts; we have to rediscover a love for the land that we live on, to let this inform our actions towards her. And we need to build compassion for everyone around us; what may be on the horizon will require massive amounts of shared responsibility towards our neighbours, we need to build the sense that we are all in this together and that our best hope lies in a collective response. But also there is just the simple courage to look squarely at our situation, not run from it or pretend that challenges don't lie ahead. We must be solid in our resolve that whatever there may be in store, we can all be prepared to rise to the occasion.

Copyright all Text and Images J.A. Hindle 2008