I am tired. I hear myself say this a lot at the moment, it’s not that it’s a bad emotion I have other emotions on top of it, at surface level which are all good, happy, loving, interested but in my bones I am tired.
This is a result of a lot of things, a 40 hour working week, 2 kids, wonderful friends all with 40th birthdays this year, some with difficult lives this year. In short modern life but I have never been tired like this before.
I take these deep level emotions as a conversation piece between me and my body. My body is like, hey there, I need a break and I mostly reply ‘No, we don’t have time for that!’.
However something wonderful has happened, we have come away to stay in a yurt for 2 nights, no kids, no dog, just a field, some like minded people, an invitation to eat and walk, if you want it. Ooh and flushing toilets, what a treat.
The Knepp estate is really like heaven on earth, the rewilding has created landscapes which are familiar enough to feel like England but are sometimes akin to the South African savannah. This creates a range of habitats for our familiar creatures, deer, rabbits, squirrels but they’re here in numbers so great that you just bump in to them. There are also animals which you are not so familiar with bumping in to, gorgeous red Tamworth pigs and long horn cows who are the stewards of this rewilded landscape churning the soil with the aim of creating a wilderness akin to those which used to cover this once greener and pleasenter land.
There is also good, no excellent organic nutritious food here, meat from those animals, salad from their organic garden. Everything you buy is sustainable, unlike heading to the supermarket which, if you are at all environmentally aware is a minefield of decisions, shopping is easy, though I have to say overpriced, financially this is not sustainable.
Camping also produces special people, lovely chilled people, there have been people waking up doing yoga, chats on where is good to see what animal, big important conversations on how to garden/live sustainably, a brief discussion about teen yoga which lit something in me that I shall probably have to ignore.
So it is in this wild, restful place that I now find myself. I wrote the first 2 paragraphs of this piece shortly before we left, I had cried a few times for no other reason than I was so tired. I have now, eaten, walked miles and miles, napped and slept. I am sitting in the sun listening to stalks do that clatttery thing with their beaks planning our walking route. I am nervous about retiring back to the day to day and have considered making lists of how to maintain this calm. I will do that tonight, in my own little piece of wild at home with my gorgeous babies and my silly dog. In the meantime, I have to persuade Will to do some yoga with me!!
Rewilding my family 