23 Jo Roberts on the power of wilderness therapy to change lives

In Mann Woods in central Essex, therapist and outdoor leader Jo Roberts chats about the work of the Wilderness Foundation and the transformative power of being in nature. We sit around the fire as winter sun falls. She talks about the value of learning small competencies for young people, and how nature interferes to remind us of something greater. Just look up, count the stars. There’s a surprising finding about young people and social media too. She also talks about how discomfort takes us into deep places. Jo says, “the tears fall quickly when you’re in the wilderness.” But that, too, faces will be softer by morning. 

Jo’s heroine: Wangari Maathai, founder of the Green Belt Movement in Kenya.

Her recommended books: Peter Wohlleben’s “The Hidden Life of Trees”; and Victor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning.” 

Jo recommended action: Be attentive, take time – see the world in a grain of sand. 

The Wilderness Foundation: https://wildernessfoundation.org.uk/ 

My new book will be supporting this podcast, and will be published in March 2027 by Unbreaking/5m. It’s called "Bamboo and Butterfly: Transformation and Story for Climate and Nature Recovery."

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_01 0:09

Beautiful wood owned by the Wilderness Foundation and Joe Roberts is with me today. And Joe, you are founder of the Wilderness Foundation and chief executive for more than 20 years. Welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_02 0:24

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 0:25

You're stepping back for a bit now, but you've been the leader of therapist assessing the impact of nature on our health over that time, especially on young people. So perhaps you could start by just telling us a bit about yourself and Man Wood and the Work of the Wilderness Foundation. Let's start with that.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

What a great opportunity. Thanks, Jules. I think you know every story has a beginning, and I think mine was being a child of Africa and growing up maybe as a very lonely child, maybe not as happy a childhood as I would have loved to have pretended to everybody. But I was a very solitary, creative child that would spend my life playing in nature to escape maybe whatever it was. I found nature was my playground, my therapy, my art, my kitchens, my little living rooms, and I would spend all day out in the garden. But I also had a chance to spend time in real wilderness. My father was very involved in conservation, and I would be taken up to the mountains of Lesotho into Big Game Reserve. So I had that privilege of maybe a white child who had a father who was a doctor who was involved that took me into places that most younger African children would never have had the opportunity for. Went through school, started to really feel passionate about what we did about nature and people, you know, Africa and conservation and people's lives and social well-being and health became very important to me. And I think there was a driver to try and address the inequality of what I'd had that other people hadn't had. And then I went to university and I studied social anthropology, which I absolutely loved as a subject. Terrible student, I used to study all night, trying out my exams the next day because I've been writing too much.

SPEAKER_01 2:15

We're in the place of anthropology by the fireplace, of where stories begin. So this is a perfect setting for that.

SPEAKER_00 2:22

DNA is kind of quivering with delight, aren't they? But anyway, so I then uh started to look at how could we do more work around keeping and nature, and then believe it or not, started to work with the mining industry, looking at migrant workers and the displacement of families where people came from Mozambique and Zambia, men were away for 11 months of a year. So I started to get into much more kind of philanthropic anthropology about what happened in these communities and how did we kind of try and redress this incredible imbalance of migrant labour. So it was political, it was activating, it was exciting. Um, and then moved to Johannesburg and met what was going to be my future husband came and lived in London, where I then attended Catherine's dock and various places, totally displaced, totally out of my comfort zone. Um, and then finally, eventually, we moved to the countryside in Buckinghamshire and to Luxembourg, where we had giant old forests, we had beautiful wild landscapes and not that many of a big urban population. And during the time in Luxembourg, I started to really look at how I could do more in Africa to put something back. And I found this beautiful project called Mbeiru, which meant seed in Zulu, and it was taking young urbanized black youth back into their ecological heritage, working alongside black game rangers who might have come from smaller villages, not always literate, but their knowledge of nature was profound with storytelling and narrative, and so started to raise money for that project. And that's how I came into the whole wilderness world here. And I've never left that, but it started with this deep quest to readdress people's connection with nature and to work with people who haven't got the privilege of access to the world. And how did we really give that to them as their gift for their lives where they then have the courage and the confidence to do it for themselves and their children in generations to come?

SPEAKER_01 4:29

So the focus of a lot of the work from then and now with the Wilderness Foundation has been on immersing, especially young people, but we kind of know if this works for all ages, but that was that's the focus to begin with, especially those who who haven't had the experience, um uh just as part of their normal lives, as you can describe it. Um, so immersing people and um through that experience of being out in nature for a certain period of time overnight, um uh the aim is to change people, to create a kind of transformative moment where thereby something kind of some ratchet changes. So tell us a little bit about a typical experience then. You know, we're sitting round the fire here in Manwood. Um, uh, we'll have some tea in a moment. Um, it's a gorgeous spring afternoon. Um tell us what happens when you've got some young people into nature where they haven't really been here before.

SPEAKER_00 5:36

So I think we we try and make nature not your enemy. So we make sure people are well dressed and well fed and they're warm and they're comfortable, you know, very Maslow, kind of making sure that they'll be in a space where they can take it in rather than be pushing it out because it's uncomfortable. But actually, this the story I want to tell you is about discomfort because I think part of Western life, whether we're coming from poverty or not, has some level of comfort that when you're out in the wilds and the wind picks up and the rain starts falling and your shelter blows down, um, that takes you into a completely different space of something quite primitive and something of enormous ability to dig deep in yourself and survive. And I think we've forgotten how to survive because it doesn't feature in Western life, busy lives any longer. And so one of our trails, it was actually the very first time that we did turnaround and we went up to the Isle of Mull in winter, in the in the end of all, you know, really end of autumn coming into winter, but we must have been without the rockers because it was dark by four o'clock, and we had a group of young people who were extraordinarily challenging in terms of managing their behaviours and how they were coping with life. And we had two guided groups that carried different pieces of our general equipment. It's a very big learning I made on that trip because we lost one of the groups, but they had the tent poles and they might have had the trangiers for cooking, or they might have had the cups or the spoons. And so I ended up with this wonderful group of four of us young people, ourselves and a guide, on the edge of a mountain in you know, shoulder-high heather, thinking, what are we gonna do? Because the night was falling, and the kids were really panicking. The fear had come up about how are we gonna do this. And one of the girls picked her backpack down the mountain, and we ended up creating a nest for ourselves in this heather, managed to get a tarp over us, we managed to find a trencher, we managed to get hot water, we shared cups, we shared a bowl, we managed to get some noodles on, um, and we sat or curled up like little dolmice in our sleeping bags, and we had the most transformative conversations once the fear had gone about what we were capable of and what this experience brought to us, and how they felt this enormous sense of pride. And in the next morning, when the sun came out, believe it or not, you know, that day in Scotland it did come up. It was a completely different group of human beings together than it was the day before. We weren't in conflict, we weren't separate, we were united with soft faces and a warm glow, and a really deep sense that I am more capable than I ever thought I was, and I can do it. Isn't that interesting?

SPEAKER_01 8:30

So you you uh one of the kind of things we feature on this on this podcast is the simple idea of we're in a hole and we don't know how to get out of it. I mean, that's the case with climate crisis, with the worldwide nature crisis, all sorts of other ones. We kind of don't know what to do, and we don't know that we can do something somehow. And what you've described there is is um those young people not knowing that they could do something very different, and so you go you go to a kind of a limit, it's still kind of safe, you know. But but it doesn't feel like it, and then something changes, a ratchet changes everybody. Uh that's interesting.

SPEAKER_00 9:11

And I like the story of going on a bear hunt. I think it's just as important for adults to read that book because sometimes we have to go through something to be able to discover what lies on the other side than we're capable of. And if you avoid it, you never learn and you never find, and you you can't you can't actually go to that next stage of where you could do something or feel something.

SPEAKER_01 9:35

Exactly. So the the the the experience of of going into a natural place that feels wild, um uh I mean it is wild to ourselves if we haven't ever been there before. Very often, quite young people won't have walked on an uneven surface, for example. If you live in a city, then even just to walk in a woodland like this, walk a few hundred metres would probably be challenging, let alone sleeping out at night when there are noises, and then suddenly someone says, look at the stars, and finger that kind of happens, something something starts to change.

SPEAKER_00 10:13

And I think you're right, you know, looking at the stars, we all forget to look up. We're all so busy looking at our devices or looking down. And we had one trail once with a young lad who was actually um dealing drugs and then a gang, and he came from a highly urbanized uh Asian community, and we stood once on trail, and he just kept going, oh my god, look at the sky. Look at the sky, look at the stars. He had never in his 17 years of life ever seen a sky like that. So you're right, it's primitive, it's transformational, and it created the world's greatest skill sets to being at the stars.

SPEAKER_01 10:54

Oh, and so this to this this kind of theme of immersion. Um, do you think it takes a little bit of time for that to happen? I mean, it doesn't happen five minutes, and it doesn't happen in an hour. Um I mean you can you know on a on a spring morning go outside and listen to the birds, it can be completely beautiful, you know. So actually, five minutes can work as a kind of dose of nature. Um, but actually, if you're trying to make these deep transformative changes, there's a bit of a process that you need to go through. Is that is that how you would feel about designing the experiences for young people?

SPEAKER_00 11:31

Well, and I'm driven by our early origins, the Wilderness Leadership School, and there was a wonderful Jungian who wrote that Western culture is five days deep, and that really to go through a transformational experience, you needed at least five days and nights. Um, you needed to shake off and re-find yourself and then re-establish in a new beginning. Um, we can see big changes in people in a day. How long it how long it lasts, how deep it sticks, we don't really know, but it you can watch people's faces in a day transform and soften from when they first arrive. But ideally, we have found the best way is a facilitated experience for our youth where you have someone who helps guide you into that process. It's almost a wilderness guiding to notice, to start, to see, and then you can do it for yourself. It's almost taking their hand into a new space, but then you want them to do it on their own. Um I think that you are right. Something I was going to talk about was that beautiful William Blake poem, you know, to see the world in a grain of sand. If we take time and stop and look, and you get a little magnifying glass and you start to look at a flower or you look at the soil, suddenly the whole world transforms into something bigger, and you're caught in a present moment. And that present moment is where the transformation happens. It doesn't happen when we're thinking about what am I cooking for supper tonight? Have I finished my last assignment? You know, I hate so-and-so, I've been dumped by so-and-so, and do they still love me? None of that really works for transformation, but that moment of stillness, when you can really be mindful and present, something shifts, always shifts.

SPEAKER_01 13:17

Over the we we first met more than 20 years ago when you came to the university and we talked about how we could help with evaluating the impacts upon um people who come on on experiences like this. Um, and over that period of time, we've gone from pre-smartphone days to post-smartphone days to an era where everybody is used to having them on and available all the time. So that's a kind of really big thing. And I remember in the early days you you have a bucket and people would chuck their old phones in there reluctantly, but they would be the old models where you could only text people. Um tell us a bit about um because in order for people to be immersed in the place, there are certain things that you don't want to happen as well as certain things you want to happen. You want a fire, you want people to sit around, to feel togetherness, you want that kind of the basic security food and drink and to feel feel kind of content, and then the words and the stories start to kind of flow from that. But what about phones? Well, and and with the kind of worries about social media at the moment that there are. Um, how how have you approached that and dealt with that?

SPEAKER_00 14:37

Do you know? I think the trouble is that people are addicted now, and I've done us that word lightly. People are panicking and patting their pockets, or they're missing something in their hand. And particularly our young people, it's a form of connection and belonging to each other in a very kind of unreal way, but it's very real to them. We really, really try and encourage no phones. Because what we notice is when there are no phones, we actually talk and we look in each other's eyes, and we are present and we are collected as a species in our little kind of human bubble. Um, I can tell you the tragedies of where we've had phones interjecting into a wilderness experience, and it's never a really a good thing because it might be a message from home that's unwanted, and you've lost that wilderness moment. You're back in Sharmsville somewhere else. But we rarely try. And actually, do you know that we've got more problems with children talking about their parents on their phones now? You know, when this all started, it was parents moaning about the youth on their phones. Now it's the youth saying, I come downstairs and I'm trying to talk to my mum, and she's on her phone the whole night, and then I just go back to my room because what's the point? So it's not the youth, it's it's a whole world of people who have scrolling addictions. Um, but just very quickly, Jules, something happened yesterday in the supervision I was running with one of our therapists. I can't say too much about the client, but this is a young person whose exbox was removed from them in December, who wasn't communicating at all with significant autism, significant struggles to socialise and speak and communicate. And the therapist was telling me, because they walk for four hours together a week, how the conversation has changed between this young person who's noticing things, opening up conversations, raising curious questions. Their world has shifted from 20 hours gaming to belonging in a world that's full of water. And it's coming out in the relationship. And so, you know, this is a case that almost brought me to tears yesterday, listening to a simple punitive action that's actually maybe been the salvation of this young man in his whole life. It's really, really extraordinary.

SPEAKER_01 17:04

So some of the people who are coming, um some of the programs you run are therapy designed. I mean, they're to bring people who are struggling for some reason or another, uh mixture of uh nature and nurture, a range of different reasons, kind of set that aside, but people are coming with with challenges. Um, so it's not just the hope, there's something much more of that. Um, how how do you then provide them with the kind of direct therapeutic interventions to help? The focus is being here in nature, sitting around the fire, staying out all night, doing that for several nights if you can. Um but there's a kind of therapeutic design behind it, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 17:52

There's a serious therapeutic design. I think the joy of our nature-based and wilderness work is it's not obvious. You know, and and another therapist who doesn't work outside of the therapy, they say, Well, what are you doing? But every single thing we do has therapeutic intention. Us sitting around the fire has a therapeutic intention. The conversation of how we look and talk with each other has therapeutic intention. It's all about a connectivity again, a reconnection to yourself, a reconnection to the other, a sense of belonging to the world. And through our research with Essex University, which you know I mentioned to you is transformational in terms of our impact, we could see that the more connected we were to nature, the more our self-esteem improved, the more our confidence grew, the more our mood changed, the higher our resilience, and the more our hopefulness. And these were you know research led by Essex University on our wilderness programs. But I think wilderness therapy has a magic to it because we take ourselves away from what's known to the unknown, we create a safe space where people can start to build a different way of being together, caring for each other, offering each other a cup of tea, nurturing, um, being able to be honest, holding a safe conversation, um, and know that they're held by the therapists, but actually learning to be connected to others and to find that primitive age-old monkey safety of being part of something. And the being out of your comfort zone is very much part of wilderness therapy. You know, everything stays the same, we don't move forward, um, but it's holding people safely in a very, very carefully constructed but not that obvious process from the way we greet people when they arrive to how we hold them when they're with us and how we say goodbye and hold them as they transition away from us. And we use a lot of symbolic work, we use a lot of art therapy, we use a lot of nature craft, we use a lot of uh lying in stillness, hanging in a hammock, which is extraordinary trauma work. We we use all kinds of idea therapeutic tools, but we weave it into the nature-based therapeutic process. And the skill is to make it not that obvious, that it's just woven in as if the wind is just blown through the trees, and you get the effect of cooling your brow. Um, and that's that's the skill that comes with all my therapy.

SPEAKER_01 20:22

So, and the way you describe it, beautifully described that, is um that we often don't realise that that with intent, you were saying, with with choice, with intention, that we can change ourselves or change the world to some kind of positive vision, you know, possible positive state. Um, and if we don't feel that that sense of agency, then it's not gonna happen. So when we think of the big challenges in the world, let's go back to climate again or nature recovery. Um, lots of people know that we face problems, but they don't know what they can do about it, and they don't even know they can do something because they don't know they've got it inside them. So you're starting from kind of quite a way back to kind of say to people, you know what, you can change, and you can be in charge of this, and might feel a bit uncomfortable in the first little bit, but it's okay, we know what we're doing, we're gonna help you through this. So um going from small school to big school, big school to college or your first job, losing a job, getting in a relationship, losing a relationship. I mean, these things are these transformations happen across our lifespan, stuff like that. But they often happen to us, not because of us. Whereas actually you're describing another process which is through intent. You can you can perhaps go away from something like this with a sense of hope and agency.

SPEAKER_00 21:53

I think so, and I kind of love the the concept of competence. You know, if you know you can be competent. I know how to make a fire. I know how to manage my mood when I really dip to where previously I would think of taking my life. But now I know that I go there, I know what to do about it, I know how to bring myself back from it, I know that tomorrow's another day, I know that I might be low for a week, but I know that if I do X, Y, go for a walk, I volunteer, I try and do something good, I'll feel better. So it's kind of exactly what you're saying, but I think one of the biggest, most breathtaking things that happened was the whole development of neuroplasticity. Because we all grew up thinking that just because you're like this, you're going to be like this forever and ever. And it's not true. That working and working your brain and understanding how your brain can read roads, connections, that there's possibility, is one of the most extraordinary findings of the world.

SPEAKER_01 22:52

It is absolutely. So laying down memory is a pretty good kind of thing that your brain does. And that's all that's kind of all it is, really. But you need to be immersed, you need to notice stuff. You need to say, Well, that tree is there, and it's shaped like that, and I walk that way. This is what I saw here. There was a pheasant calling in the background. Uh, there there is, and so you're mapping the place, then coming back through that map and changing your brain at the same time. Well, that's very interesting because it says something about choosing the context and the behaviours and that intent all over again.

SPEAKER_00 24:11

When you feel good somewhere, you know, when you've gone somewhere that was beautiful and it made you feel good, and that's not like the nightclub downtown, it could be. But you'd be mortified if someone was going to tap damage it, or take it down, or change it, or use it for the wrong purpose. So when you go for your walk in nature and you do notice the leaves coming out on the spring branches, when you do notice that bird in the background, when you do notice your feelings, when you hear the crunching of leaves under your feet, and then you hear that a motorway is going to go right over that sacred space where you were immersed and felt contented and part of, that's when you start to get that surge of connectivity, of protection, of seeing nature, not because it's only good for us, but because it's so beautiful in its own right. And I can look after it and I can do something you for me and me for you. And I think the Wilderness Foundation is all about nature's offering to us to heal, but then teaching and encouraging people to find ways to heal the earth in return. Yes, exactly. Because it's our family. We're sharing our DNA with bananas, but we share a lot more DNA with other things too, trees and things we'd never imagine in a million years. So, you know, these are relatives, it's not just something alien.

SPEAKER_01 25:30

So when people talk about, I mean, we talk rather kind of blithely sometimes about connections to people and connections to nature and the importance of both of those things. And you can see how that emerges from a wilderness experience or staying in a wild wood as we're in at the moment. Um, but actually that thing called a connection is actually quite deeper. It's about giving and receiving, it's about establishing different sorts of relationships between us and the nature and us and other people. Um and that might take a little bit of time to get to that point, as you were saying.

SPEAKER_00 26:05

Not everybody gets there that quick, but there is something around I think the way we work with the nature, so we're very non-confrontational, we're very respectful. I meet a young person who might be 14, but I don't think of this, you're a young person you're 14. I see you as a human being with lovely bright eyes, and you've just been dropped in the car park and you're carrying a bag, and you know, who are you? You know, but with the curiosity and kindness, and I think our team use curiosity, kindness, and respect, and it comes back in partners. And if we use curiosity, kindness, and respect for the natural world around us, it will flourish and grow. You know, there's something about our relationship with each other and our wider relationships that that function well with the good value system and an ethic that stands in a and and and something filled with a lot of loving kindness. Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 26:58

Great, it's what a good paper. Just in the background, drumming on the branches, uh coming to us as we sit here. Um well let's let's come to um some of the the questions that we we put a wrap on when we when we're talking about the um the the uh running through this pod. Um you've you've described the these experiences which which sound transformative, I mean, as you said. Um uh I normally ask what are people what are guests really proud of having achieved? Is it is it kind of getting a lot of young people, giving young people uh an experience they wouldn't otherwise have had, but also I guess it's that they would be transformed.

SPEAKER_00 27:42

I think we what would you I think it's about offering. I think it's about offering with good intention, of saying let's open a door. A bit like Alice, you know, you let's open a door, let's see what lies behind. You know, is there something different that you've never seen before that can fill you with some awe and wonder and something that is yours to hold? We don't want to take ownership of what you experience. This is going to come into your own conscious DNA or whatever you want to put it in. But we want to open that door for them and let that door enable them to see a different way of seeing themselves, seeing the world, you know, putting a spark back in sometimes. And that that's what it's all about. And I think the pride is the team, you know, the passion and the commitment of this group of human beings who I work with, that we we might challenge each other, we might, we might be constantly teaching each other. But we all come joined in this passion to open the door into the world of wonder of nature and yourself and others. And and that I'm really proud of. I'm proud of our team, and I'm proud of the courage of our participants to trust us. Because OMG have we asked them to trust us at times, you know, where we've been struggling, and they're trusting us to walk alongside them.

SPEAKER_02 29:19

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 29:20

But we we we don't do anything to others that we don't do ourselves. So that's one of our if we're gonna ask you to climb that mountain, we're gonna climb it with you. If you're gonna have to paddle that big lock in a storm, we're paddling with you. Um, and I think it's that sense of we've got your back. That lovely Irish saying about I'll be the wind behind your back. That's that's how I see our world.

SPEAKER_01 29:46

Gorgeous, lovely. Um, as we mentioned earlier, that one of the themes of the pod is being in a hole and getting out of it. Is there a personal experience of being in a hole and getting out of the hole? Um, what would you what would you share?

SPEAKER_00 30:01

I think I've fallen in a lot of holes.

SPEAKER_01 30:04

Right, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:05

I think life is full of holes, and and actually, you know, I'm really grateful for all those holes. Um I did fall in a hole deep in snow in Norway in the winter months, which genuinely calling it a hole where the snow came over my head. Um, but I think emotional holes have been probably finding my own understanding of my own neuroplasticity, and my biggest hole was spending a life of pretending everything was great and wasn't everything wonderful. And the hole was masking and pretending, and the coming out of the hole was a deeper self-compassion and an ability to be kind to myself because that's I ask people not to. Yeah, and so I think the holes that I see others falling into are the holes that I've been through and I still will go through. I think my biggest hole that I still live with is sometimes maybe being too rushed and busy, which is a real good ADHD, and not taking time to look back and to say, wow, look, look what's happened, look what we achieved, look how far we've come. So often people say, gosh, you know, what do you think about the Wilderness Foundation and what you achieved? Isn't it wonderful? And I'm kind of going like, what? Where? What? Because I'm looking forwards all the time and around me, and I'm not looking behind me.

SPEAKER_01 31:27

Yeah, that's well, there's something in that as well, isn't it? A lot of what you've described about is overcoming vulnerabilities, and and uh we often find it difficult to talk about those. Um, it's an essential part of story, is saying, um, you know, we are vulnerable, we're vulnerable as a world, world referred to as vulnerable. Our lives are often in that that kind of that state. How do and then we need to believe that we can get out of that. But just talking about that, I guess that kind of vulnerability is a central part of the of the experience of being in the bullets, being out in the wild.

SPEAKER_00 32:06

And we don't ask people to force them into being vulnerable. But actually, when you're in the wild, you are vulnerable. You know, you're all going for a wee behind a tree and picking up the spade who we call Douglas and disappearing with your own blue paper. You know, those those things we hide away from in everyday life, that's part of our humanity, just come to the fore. You know, the tears fall quickly in wilderness. You know, your mask of everyday life of makeup and dressing up and looking smart, and all these kind of maybe emperor's clothes. The emperor's clothes fall off in wilderness, and you get the raw rawness of the human. And actually, the harder the experience, the more the human emerges in a in a newly found form of self-contentment, actually. Um but it it it I think what happens to us in the wilderness is that we become, and I can only speak now purely for myself, I'm far more real, I'm far more present, I'm far more connected, I feel grounded, I'm able to be present, and and it brings the most joy. So to be able to be infectious with that, yes, with the disability.

SPEAKER_01 33:17

Give it to others, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 33:19

Can be very helpful, it could be very nauseating. I was I was told once by a group to stop saying how beautiful everything is. Because I was just saying, oh beautiful, isn't it beautiful? Oh, that's beautiful. And so we set each other challenges. You know, you're gonna wash the dishes without complaining. A man was will you please not say beautiful all the time?

SPEAKER_01 33:38

That's a bit a bit unfair, but I can see where it's coming from. Um do you have uh a heroine or a hero? I mean, it could be it. This could be a more generic thing, like you know, the communities of people you work with, or it could be sometimes it's uh it might be a kind of a teacher or somebody you look to or somebody that you felt um kind of helped you along the journey a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 34:04

I think there's a lot of that, and I really struggled with this question because you go to all the kind of you know, the usual, you know, David Attendee's music had to be bloody marvellous. And at first I looked at Wangari Mokai, who I'd heard speak in 2003 at a conference. You know, here is a woman who really enabled women to plant trees. Um Kenyan woman back with rural women, earning lifestyles from planting trees and reforesting a country which had 6% of its forests left. I think it's less now, but but enabling women to improve their lives through improving nature. But actually, there's one person who at the moment, in my present state, I'm so inspired by, and and it's not recognizable. I've been very cautious with my words, but we run our domestic violence program, Blossom, and I have a woman who volunteers now for the Wilderness Foundation, and this woman is working in nature to cleanse her soul, and I watch her every day arrive with her hood on, planting flowers, cleaning out weeds, working her body close to the earth, and by the end of the day, I watch her walk away with her hood down and her back straight, and a sense of where she's immersed herself in doing good for the earth and enabled her brain to stop ruminating and reflecting on the pain that has been so profound in her life. Um, and she's my inspiration. You can't hug her, she won't be hugged, and I'm such a hugger. But the respect for her and her boundary and her ability to face adversity and to keep going, she's my real hero. Perfect.

SPEAKER_01 35:54

That's great. That's good. Let us imagine that person. That's gorgeous. Um, a book that you might like to recommend?

SPEAKER_00 36:02

So again, I've read books I read, you know, avidly. Uh Jules Brittany's book's very good. Um, but actually, my transformative book is The The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Woller Wollengall. I mean, you know, he brings trees to life where trees become your family and you understand what goes on under the surface and the hidden world that's beyond our eyes that we just know nothing of, but actually is everything. And so that book I read, and I devoured every word and every page, and I recommend it and I give it to people. And the only other book that I give all my godchildren and anybody whose child I have any responsibility for is Man's Search for Meaning. And it's probably one of the more profound books about whatever adversity you may face. You can look to the sky, you can look to the stars. There's something else out there that will help you see what else there lurks rather than the evil that surrounds you. So really important.

SPEAKER_01 37:08

And as we sit round a fire, I mean that's that's kind of what happens. If we sat here for another hour, it'd be dark, and the shadows would have advice, and the fire will still be burning, and we could be a family or a community sitting here talking about the day, talking about the events of the day, um, and in the shadows there the demons lurk, but actually we know about that thing because we feel comfortable going out into it and coming back. Um and we've we have we feel an agency to be able to engage with that human cultures through history. Um and the reminder of that is important. That's kind of great. Um top action, what would you recommend for people? What would you say would be the top action that you'd like?

SPEAKER_00 38:05

So for individuals, not for policymakers. I know, but we all have these kind of actions of you know, I pick up litter all the time. I never leave litter. And I think if every human being picked up three pieces of litter, you're doing pretty well. So just those tiny actions. But actually, the one I really wanted to share was one I need to remember for myself. And it's back to William Blake, and you know, to see the world in a grain of sand. And we need to stop, even if it's for a minute, and look around us and find something that really touches us, that allows us to feel the connection. Um, because if we can fall in love with nature, we can fall in love with that tiny little bud that's starting to come out, that smell that comes in the air from jasmine blooming or wood smoke or these things that are profound, it makes us more human and it makes us more part of the world. And if we're more human and more part of the world, we want to take better care of things that really matters. And if we just intellectualise environmentalism and just think about it at the time, it kind of almost paralyzes us. We need to get into our hearts, and then it needs to come to our hands, and then we do something because it matters. So, you know, that would be stop, stop and smell the roses. Um, just every day give yourself a minute of being outside, close your eyes, open your eyes, smell or feel, or touch, and it just brings you back into connection with your humanity.

SPEAKER_01 39:40

Joe Roberts, thanks so much for coming on the podcast. Gorgeous discussion about the life in the wilds. It's more than just health and well-being, it's something very much neat that we've touched upon here. Um, wonderful. Thank you very much indeed. We're in Manwood, the a wood of small leaf limes, which is kind of unusual, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 40:00

Um it's got different sections actually. Um the birch, but this is a profoundly wooded part of small leaf lime, which is very unusual for this part of Essex, so it's very precious.

SPEAKER_01 40:10

Lovely spot as well. Thank you very much indeed.

SPEAKER_00 40:13

Thank you, Jules.