Who gets to survive and 'rewild' themselves?

I recently read a book on human “rewilding,” the idea that modern, first-world peoples should learn ancestral survival skills, such as foraging for food, making friction fires, hunting and breaking down animals to make use of meat, bones, skin, building shelter, etc. I’m not going to name the book or the author because I don’t want to seem like I am pointing fingers at anyone in particular, but as a disabled person I came away with a lot of concerns. 

A major theme of the book is that climate change is coming, and it may very well be devastating to modern culture. We will need to have these survival skills, otherwise the human race may not carry on very well. It also argues that the kind of survivalism that’s popular now, the bushcraft in which a solo person, usually a white able-bodied man, treks out into the wilderness on their own and survives for some length of time, isn’t sustainable for human culture. 

Most people can’t do everything needed to survive: build structures, hunt and forage, cook food, make and repair clothing, etc., especially if they’re alone and become ill or injured. Humans have traditionally lived in groups or small villages, where everyone worked together to keep their community afloat. Don’t get me wrong; I have spent hours watching dudes on YouTube dig and build their own shelters in the woods, and part of me wishes I could do that, too. But it’s not a strategy for long-term success as a species. 

But let me go back to the book for a moment. The author briefly mentions that learning and using early-human survival skills might not be available or accessible to everyone, particularly the ill or disabled. They touch on it, but quickly move on. So where does that leave the many of us who rely on daily medications, treatments  and regular access to healthcare? 

Let’s say we go through a climate apocalypse. Absolutely, there are plant medicines that can treat a wide range of illnesses and chronic conditions, but even they can only go so far. What will humankind do to help people who need dialysis, insulin, respirators, cancer treatment, or other life-maintaining medical care? 

Lamar Johnson as Henry and Keivonn Woodard as Sam in HBO’s “The Last of Us.”

I know HBO’s “The Last of Us” is fiction, but I can’t help thinking about the brothers, Henry and Sam, and how Henry became an informant to the federal police in exchange for leukemia treatment for Sam. Maybe our future won’t be so dystopian, but I do wonder if my life, post-climate catastrophe, will involve hoarding meds or taking desiccated pig thyroid and berberine which, I guess, is available in a wide range of plants. And will I have to take care of that on my own, or will the larger culture be willing to provide for its disabled and ill?

Early in the Covid-19 pandemic, disabled and chronically ill folks led the way in terms of masking, socializing online, and mutual aid. Even before most lockdowns started, disability activist Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha put together a guide called “Half Assed Disabled Prepper Tips for Preparing for a Coronavirus Quarantine,” which covered how to store two weeks’ worth of water; how to stock up on shelf-stable foods; power and fuel; sanitation and medical supplies; and much more. Piepzna-Samarasinha released their book “The Future is Disabled” in October 2022, asserting that the future is going to have disabled people in it, no matter what that future looks like. And indeed, after three and a half years of Covid-19 and Long Covid, more people are disabled now on this side of the pandemic. For most people, particularly as we age, disability is an inevitability. 

Disabled and chronically ill people have a variety of survival skills in their tool boxes that non-disabled, non-ill people largely don’t have. So it’s frustrating to see a book on rewilding and survival written with almost no consideration for those perspectives, especially a book written during a global pandemic that disabled 1 in 13 of those who contracted Covid-19.

Regular readers know that I often return to the intersection of disability and access to nature. I wrote about it after I read Robert Macfarlane’s “The Old Ways” early last year. I returned to it, internally, when reading Sharon Blackie’s “If Women Rose Rooted,” in which she describes leaving cities and the corporate world behind in favor of a series of remote homesteads that, while peaceful and restorative, required a lot of physical labor to survive in, and a lot of travel to connect with things only available in urban centers. 

It’s great to talk and write about the ways in which rural life or nature trekking is healing to the human body and mind, but you have to think about who might actually benefit most from having such opportunities — and the many barriers keeping those people, in particular, from accessing such a life. I often wonder if I’d be less chronically ill if I could live in a more remote, woodsy or “natural” environment, but it’d be a gamble finding out. 

Another YouTuber I enjoy a lot is Kalle Flodin, who lives in a cabin in a Swedish forest. He gets his water from a pond on his property (though he has to break the ice in winter), and he’s lucky to be able to grocery-shop nearby and have neighbors who help him with large-scale projects. But his is clearly a physically arduous life of building and maintaining structures, dragging heavy objects up his long driveway when delivery people won’t drive up it, etc. His videos are idyllic and calm, but a recent one asked, “What if More People Lived Like This?” 

Images courtesy Kalle Flodin.

I commented that his lifestyle isn’t available to all of us. One commenter replied to me, “I live with numerous chronic illnesses alone in the forest.” But when I asked them how, they just said “healthy living,” adding that they didn’t need to see doctors very often. They said, “I find that worrying about health makes health worse — so I don't. It simply is what it is. I recommend that approach.” I replied, “Many of us would die if we followed that advice.” And then they said, “If you need a doctor every week, simply live close to one,” which pretty much proved my point. 

The conversation in my mind is joined by other books, including “The Hidden Life of Trees” by Peter Wohlleben. In the book, he writes about the complex ways in which trees communicate with one another, including through underground mycelial networks and chemicals released into the air. The air in forests benefits humans, too; it’s richer in oxygen and it’s cleaner, because the trees act as huge air filters. Some trees release phytoncides, which kill germs in the air and soil. 

It seems as though all humans could benefit from more time among trees, particularly forests or even small, naturally formed woodland areas (trees planted in forestry contexts often can’t communicate with or look out for each other). But I wonder whether natural, wooded environments wouldn’t be especially beneficial to people whose nervous and immune systems are off the rails, whether through trauma/oppression or illness or both. In other words, could disabled and chronically ill people benefit even more from living closer to the land? And if so, how do we open up conversations and skill-building around survivalism and rewilding to include these considerations? 

Is there a way to create rural, nature-filled communities where people can live off the land, not have to trek for miles on aching legs to secure food or water, maintain access to life-sustaining medications and treatments, and meet with a range of medical experts who can diagnose hard-to-pin-down chronic ailments? Is there a way to make the world of rewilding and climate-survivalism truly accessible — and also welcoming to people with different abilities and needs? 

I don’t know the answer. Some ancient humans sacrificed disabled community members — and others with certain medical conditions, or even simple infections, wouldn’t have survived before the advent of antibiotics and other modern treatments. I don’t think we have to go back to that. But I also hope that it won’t just be up to disabled and chronically ill people to determine how we will survive in the future. 

'Places only hold us; they only let us in.'

I’ve just finished reading Kerri ní Dochartaigh’s memoir “Thin Places” and I can’t stop thinking about how she describes being “held” by certain places in nature. 

Her book is partly about the trauma and PTSD she suffered as a result of growing up in Derry during the Troubles, and how those experiences made it impossible for her to feel safe in most places. And it’s about how she discovered áiteanna tanaí, caol áit – “thin places” – in the landscape (which Duolingo has recently taught me is tírdhreach in Irish), where the distance between the earthly world and the world of spirit is shrunk to nothing. “They are places that make us feel something larger than ourselves, as though we are held in a place between worlds,” she writes. 

“The natural world in the wilderness on both sides of that unseen border [between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland] dragged me back to the land of the living, and it held me there,” ní Dochartaigh writes. She describes the Atlantic as her favorite body of water, “the one that held me over the last three years.” 

I know this feeling, this sense of belonging and deep safety in certain places, when it’s rare for me to feel that way among people or in urban environments. In wild spaces the land practically vibrates with energy, often a welcoming one. But I’m rarely able to visit the places that feel that way to me, and I struggle to find similar ones in the middle of my densely packed urban city. We have beautiful parks, both ones landscaped by human hands and others left to their own devices, but it’s difficult to plug into them while a steady stream of hikers, children and dogs pass by. 

"Places do not heal us; they do not take the suffering we have known and bury it in their bellies. Places do not gather the broken parts of us up and stitch them back together. Places do not make the light shine on crow-black nights. Places do not take away our sorrow; they do not unearth the words buried under frozen bog-land; they do not call the birds back when they have been long gone from our sky,” ní Dochartaigh writes. “Places do not heal us. Places only hold us; they only let us in. Places only hold us close enough that we can finally see ourselves reflected back."

Casting about last night for something soothing, I turned to a recording of Patrick Wolf performing two songs for his Patreon supporters earlier this year: “Penzance,” a B-side from years ago, written about a town near the southern tip of England, followed by a cover of “Ari’s Song” by Nico. The recording is just piano, a loop of ethereal violin, and Patrick’s clear, steady voice. Listening to it felt like coming home. Like being held. 

Like ní Dochartaigh, Patrick Wolf often writes about the wild places that have held him, places where he saw himself reflected back. They’re frequently the landscapes of the southwestern UK: Cornwall, Penzance, Godrevy Point, Land’s End, Teignmouth. Places that felt enchanted, áiteanna tanaí, when I visited them, places captured gorgeously in Katherine May’s book about circumnavigating the southwest of England and coming to terms with her autistic mind, “The Electricity of Every Living Thing.” 

“There were devils in the winds that night, walking fire among the hills,” Wolf sings. “And many voices called me out to the cliffs, but you held me safe. You wrestled me still.” And then, in “Ari’s Song,” “Sail away, my little boy. Let the rain wash away your cloudy days. Sail away into a dream. Let the wind send you a fantasy of the ancient silver sea.” Nico was singing to her son; Wolf sounds like he’s singing to his younger self. 

And, perhaps, to my younger self, too. I grew up in rural northern California, with regular visits to places like the Sonoma Coast and Armstrong Redwoods, and even the feral places near my home. The trees that grew tart Gravenstein apples and the tall silver birches that swayed in the breeze held me. The woodpile, that endless treasure trove of insects, spiders and reptiles, kept me open and curious. The gate to the field behind my house, and the ring of willows beyond it, were a wardrobe to Narnia. As I got older, music began to offer new worlds I could inhabit, in-between places where I could be held and seen just as I am. Music and nature have been my steadfast companions. 

I’m grateful for new music, or new spins on older music, from some of my favorites, like Patrick Wolf and Hozier, who released his gorgeous new song “Swan Upon Leda” Friday. (Like ní Dochartaigh, it, too, crosses that unseen Irish border in one verse.) Their songs are like cozy forts I can curl up inside, escape hatches where I can let my mask slip. But even songs about wild places, about áiteanna tanaí, are no substitute for the real thing. I feel the pull so strongly, but I don’t know where to go. I hope an answer comes soon.

What the trees want

Detail from a painting by Tomasz Alan Kopera.

“But what if the knowledge being forbidden to Eve was … a kind of deeper communion with and understanding of the tree and the fruit itself, an awareness of her kinship with them?”

–Maud Newton, “What Did the Forbidden Tree Want?”

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this quote since I first read it, more than a month ago. My regular readers know that I think about that moment in the Garden of Eden with the Tree of Knowledge often, and I’ve written about it several times. There are so many theories on just who (Lucifer, Lilith, the Simurgh) that serpent in the tree was, so many theories on what kind of knowledge was forbidden to Adam and Eve. Genesis never explains it; it only says that if they eat the fruit, they will “surely die.” Why would our supposed creator threaten us with death just to keep us from knowing things? Why would they want to keep us naive and ignorant? What would they not want us to know?

Newton’s quote connects my ruminations on the Tree of Knowledge to another of my interests: the Green Man. This figure (like the serpent in the tree) is connected to many different deities and characters: Jack-in-the-Green, Robin Hood, Gawain’s Green Knight, Pan and Dionysus/Bacchus, the woodwose, Cernunnos, Herne the Hunter, and others. He’s also connected to the foliate head carvings so often seen on churches, particularly medieval churches, across Europe and into the Middle East. 

Why were the builders of Christian churches so eager to depict a figure that was clearly pagan in origin? Yes, there is plenty of evidence that Christian leaders adopted (or wholesale appropriated) earlier pagan traditions, in part to make it easier to convince people to join them. The way Christmas supplanted celebrations of the winter solstice and Yule, which we’ve just finished celebrating in the northern hemisphere, is a prime example. But to me, it feels like there’s something else at work. 

A foliate head in Llangwm, Wales.

Many foliate heads appear miserable, terrifying or both. Leaves sprout from their noses, mouths and ears. Their mouths are often open in surprise, or perhaps a scream; their eyes are wide, bewildered (literally) and frightened. In earlier, pagan times, these figures were comfortable with (and celebrated for) the close connections between humans and the rest of nature. But under Christianity, this connection becomes sinister. The woods and wilds become dark, dangerous, terrifying places. This becomes a pretense for domination; we seek to control the things we fear. 

But humans and the more-than-human world, as Queer Nature calls it, have long relied upon each other. While it’s true that, if humans disappeared from the planet, nature would be just fine, it’s also true that a wide range of plants and animals depend on us, just as we depend on them. Robin Wall Kimmerer writes about this extensively in “Braiding Sweetgrass,” including a story about how sweetgrass grows back stronger and healthier when a certain amount of it is regularly harvested. Regular pruning and proscribed burns strengthen plants and ecosystems. Wild animals depend on humans, not just for the ways in which we function as part of larger ecosystems and food webs, but also for our wildlife rehabilitation efforts. The Green Man’s woods and wilds were once our home; we were once much more consciously a part of nature and the environment than we pretend to be now. The Green Man, in his hybrid form, represents that history. 

Dominance over nature has allowed humans to flourish in many ways as a species — and Christianity has abetted that process — but we have also lost a great deal. We have lost the ways in which our nervous systems settle when we’re tracking, foraging, working the land or resting among the trees. We have lost the friendship and medicine of plants, the awe and wonder of seeing wildlife going about its business, the humbling sense of vulnerability and interconnectedness that is our natural place in the world. We (especially white people) chase romantic notions of Native Americans and their “connections to nature,” appropriating imagined spiritual practices because we have long since lost our own sense of indigeneity; either we became colonists, or our ancestors were victims of colonization. 

Racism and other forms of bigotry play a role here, too. Once white people saw wild nature as something to fear and dominate, we began treating Black, Brown and indigenous people as subhuman, as savages. Likewise, queer and neurodivergent people are marginalized for being too uninhibited, too transgressive to belong in human society. In “Black Skin, Green Masks: Medieval Foliate Heads, Racial Trauma, and Queer World-Making,” Carolyn Dinshaw connects these ideas back to the foliate heads and representations of the Green Man. “These aesthetically intricate, affectively intense images represent bodies that are strange mixtures, weird amalgams: they picture intimate trans-species relations.” She connects them to festivals like burning man, queer subcultures like the Radical Faeries, and “traumatic postcolonial contexts out of which new queer worlds are imagined.”

The Green Man in my mind isn’t shocked or terrified by his hybrid nature. He’s calm and present, glad to bear the horns and greenery that grow from his head. He knows what we have largely forgotten; that we are nature, and nature is us. He doesn’t mind if we eat from the Tree of Knowledge, if we remember our connection to the natural world. In fact, he’s waiting for us.

We Are Here to Help Each Other

Photo by Ralph (Ravi) Kayden/Unsplash.

When we’re together, humans constantly influence each other’s emotional states. A grumpy person on our bus can leave us feeling cranky, while a calm doctor can soothe us from the moment she enters the exam room. When our kids or partners are testy, it can make us short-tempered, escalating a moment of tension into a fight. And when we snuggle into a loved one’s arms, both of us quiet and breathing slowly, we settle into a bubble of calm and safety.

In psychology, this is often called “co-regulation,” especially that last example. Scientist Stephen Porges believes that humans, like all mammals, were designed to settle their nervous systems in connection with others. We learn to self-regulate through the safety that co-regulation teaches us, and teaches our bodies.

“Our ability to achieve a state of regulation—and especially to be able to support others who are in distress—actually comes from our capacity and opportunity to lean on support ourselves. And we need the support of not just one strong relationship, resiliency research shows, but of many. We need a distribution of support, so that we have access to a wide range of relationships to keep us resilient without overtaxing any one of them,” Porges said last year.

Growing up and even now, it’s hard for me to feel 100% safe leaning on other people for support and comfort. I think it’s for a combination of reasons: being on the autism spectrum has made it more difficult for me to understand human behavior sometimes, especially when I am too trusting and wind up getting burned. I’ve been hurt a lot by people, and I’m still learning that, while some interpersonal harm is abusive, we also accidentally hurt each other even in the best of relationships. And then we mend again.

Co-regulation doesn’t happen only between mammals of the same species. Anyone who’s had a close relationship with a cat, dog, horse, or other sweet critter knows that we can soothe and support each other across species. For much of my life, I’ve sought comfort and safety from animals, cats in particular. They have helped me immensely.

The brilliant folks at Queer Nature talk about the idea that co-regulation can go beyond mammals, beyond other critters, to other beings in nature (trees, stones, rivers), or the earth itself. As someone who instantly settles down when I am among trees or by the ocean, I love the idea of co-regulation with these spaces. But is it “co”? Am I helping them return to calm and safety in the way they’re helping me? Sometimes I would swear I feel a tree lean into me when I lean against it, or the playfulness of water as it laps around my ankles, certainly.

Getting to these ideas, and accepting them, can be challenging, especially for those of us raised in white privilege, a white/human supremacist culture, and/or in a culture that values individualism and doing everything on your own. Humans in leadership have been dismantling close connections to nature for centuries, especially in an effort to eradicate those connections among the indigenous people of the Americas. But when you look at how many ways different species rely on each other for survival, it begins to make more sense. In her book Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer writes about how the sweetgrass grows better and healthier when some of it (about 50 percent) is harvested by humans. Or think about how our gut flora couldn’t live without us, and we couldn’t live without them. Nature is full of such examples.

I have been reading these ideas and absorbing them, ironically, in an effort to reach out more often to my fellow humans for help, comfort, and safety. I’m lucky to be at a point in my life where I have a lot of people around me who understand the value of community, particularly communities of care, and of not enduring something alone. And, slowly, it’s getting easier to reach out to them when I need. But that hasn’t diminished the value, for me, of finding comfort with my kitty, the shoreline, the birds in my backyard or a quiet grove of trees. I’m very lucky to have that, too.

The squirrel and the barbecue grill

I was lying in bed reading the other day, enjoying a breeze through the open window, when I heard a scraping noise outside. I tried to ignore it -- my mental image of "me time" just then didn't involve that particular sound -- but I couldn't. 

Scrrrch, scrrrch, scrrrch.

I turned around and saw one of our backyard squirrels on top of the dome of our barbecue, nibbling the white plastic handle. 

"That is not food!" I said, because I talk to animals as if they can all speak English.

I climbed out of bed and went out the back door, waving my arms like I was trying to flag down a police car. I figured if I looked scary enough, the squirrel would associate the delicious grill-cover handle with danger and not want to eat it again. It skittered up the wooden fence and disappeared into the trees.

It doesn't seem like any good can come of a squirrel eating our grill handle. A, the squirrel is ingesting something that isn't edible. And b, it leaves us without a way to lift the cover on the barbecue, including when it's hot. And it's not like we are starving this animal. We fill our bird feeders regularly. The squirrels leap onto them from nearby trees and hang upside down to get at the seeds. It's impressive, actually.

Now, maybe this is one of those times you're supposed to let nature sort itself out, but I just couldn't. I tried to think of something I could cover the handle with that would make it seem even less like food. Foil! Nobody likes biting down on foil, right? I wrapped a layer around the grill handle, feeling clever.

A few days later, I went outside to see how my plan was working. I had to chase the squirrel away from the grill again. Not only had it not been turned off by the foil, but it had peeled off a long strip to get to the handle. I looked around on the patio for shredded aluminum, but found almost none.

Great. Now the squirrel thinks the foil is food, too?

Meanwhile, the critter was sitting on top of the fence, halfway behind a frond of leaves, as if it believed I couldn't see it. It sat very still, regarding me with one cautious eye.