June Highlights
A look back at everything from Meanderings this past month – all the stories and essays in one place
A lot happened this month at Meander. Here are a few of our highlights.
Volume 3 Launch
We launched Volume 3: Wildness.
Rewilding is gaining increasing attention as a practice of ecological restoration, and one of the common perceptions is that it is about putting a fence around land and letting nature take its course. In Volume 3, we instead ask the question: what is a wild human?
We often talk about wildness as a previous state to return to. As though nature is something we fell out of, and just need to find our way back to.
But wildness isn’t a destination. It’s emergent, unpredictable.
Meander is evolving
We’re becoming more than a magazine. The magazine is going annual. Meanderings is growing – there will now be weekly posts with stories, tools, and updates from us. Meander is branching outwards: we are launched a quiz (see below) and a course on Wildness. Read more here →.
Wildness Quiz
We are excited to share a quiz we built to help you discover where your wildness is most alive. Six archetypes – which one are you? You can take the quiz at wildness.earth
On stewardship: two contrasting stories from Japan and The Amazon
Our editor, Tom Greenwood, shared a fascinating story on what happens when ecological restoration is done by domesticated humans.
“To restore the living world, we first need to restore something in ourselves.”
Japan planted trees to restore forests without listening to the land – and made 40% of its population ill with pollen. The Amazon, it turns out, is a garden, stewarded by humans. Read more here →.
Distracted? How to rewild your attention
As part of our Meanderings expansion, we will be sharing pieces from the magazine here, slowly, one by one. We started with Julian Ellerby’s piece – Wilding Attention – where he shares five rituals for wilding your inner landscape: attending, mattering, thresholding, pilgriming, and estranging. One quote from him:
“There is an Old English word that moves in this direction: wyrd. Not fate but becoming. It is the way things take form through the weaving of our attention and action. Attention, when wilded, grows into rich relationships, and it is in those relationships that responsibility comes alive.”
Read more here →.
Rewilding a creative practice
In Drawing Wildness, Beth Walrond speaks of rewilding her illustration practice. One quote from her:
“The drive towards monoculture causes a dewilding, of both places and people. It strips the Earth of the diversity of life and natural structure to which human beings are drawn. It creates a dull world, a flat world, a world lacking in colour and variety, which enhances ecological boredom, narrows the scope of our lives, limits the range of our engagement with nature, pushes us towards a monoculture of the spirit.”
More will come each week. We are so excited to be continuously sharing with you here, and we hope you enjoy the journey we take you on. If there is a specific topic you want us to touch on more, feel free to share so with us in the comments.
Thanks for Meandering with us.