Head space

The wind blew threatening clouds towards us as we walked out onto Hengistbury Head this afternoon, threatening clouds who, once we were at the furthest point of our walk, carried out their threat. I sought shelter amongst the stunted wind sculpted trees of the head and found myself transported through time back to the late 1970's, when the 'Head' was one of our playgrounds. Good times (for the most part). I read more and more articles these days about young people suffering a type of 'nature deficit' through a lack of interaction with nature, and how this is to their detriment and to the detriment of our natural environment. I have to agree. 

In my early teens I began wild camping, sounds good, well it was and it wasn't. Hengistbury Head was one of those early camping sites, and the spot I found myself sheltering in today was one of our old favoured camping spots. A gully tucked away on the amongst the remnants of quarrying, long overgrown when we camped there, and even more overgrown and naturalized now, we had the opportunity to learn camp craft. The reason I see that young people don't interact with nature is they're not given the opportunity to become socialized to it, the spectre of stranger danger, new distracting technology and a lack of opportunities through development of open spaces and the imposition of restrictive regulations and laws. Yeah, lots of the things we got up to as kids weren't strictly undertaken within a legal framework, and certainly there were restrictions and dangers. Although from a legal standpoint our transgressions (riding mopeds over common land, camping, scrumping) would have only resulted in us being told to bugger off, or threats to tell our parents or at worst a clip around the ear, and that would have even been from the Police too! Now though a minor transgression too often results in criminal sanction. I've seen kids (those who get out) hassled for building camps over the common, or digging dirt jumps (both mainstays of my youth); yeah, the kids get it wrong sometimes, but hey.  We had the opportunity and space to make those mistakes and to learn through them. 

As I say, camping was both a good and bad experience, but we learnt and we developed.  We got wet, and learnt how to build better shelters. We got cold, and learnt how to build fires, and more importantly, how to respect fire. We learnt the places to camp and not to camp, to look at a landscape and understand it and how best to use it and its resources. Not only that, but we were socialized to nature osmotically and came to love and respect it. And those opportunities are missing for kids now, where's the space to learn and develop naturally...gone! I find that sad. One of my great fears (beyond the harm modern life does people and the experiences they miss out on) is that young people are not socialized to nature and to love her, and increasingly will not really care when a woodland is cut down for a car park or a common consumed by development, as they have no investment in it, no bond to it and no connection.  

Wild camping for all!