Connecting To The Land And Acceptance That We No Longer Have Agency To Change The Course of Climate Change
The English landscape is ancient and I think this ancient landscape is deeply misunderstood by many people who talk about connection to the land. The megaliths in the English landscape are a distraction. They are mostly out-of-date communal calendars, not unlike the more portable astrolabe or tombs. They are interesting, but the living ancient landscape is where we can best learn the connection to nature and the land in a meaningful and deeply fulfilling way.
My coppiced Willow Shiitake farm. I planted these trees 20 years ago and cut them on a 10-year rotation. Many of the stools died last year during the drought and then from bark beetle attack.
Sacred Earth Activism talks to Manda Scott about the books she wrote. (Read on before clicking the link). After sitting staring into her living room fire and sitting under a tree, she was inspired to write Boudica and then found a cult. This is a long and frankly quite boring video; however, the humdinger of poor research is at 1:11:17, where Scott takes us on a visualisation meditation she describes as a "shamanic journey" where she passes through coppice ", last cut in the time of our grandfathers". This is not a thing in coppice management. Intuition cannot tell you how coppice is managed. This is careless research. Modern coppice management is essentially the same as it was 3000 years ago, apart from a few of the tools.
Natural historic features in the English Landscape tell a story of missing people. The hedges and woodlands which once supported the livelihoods of whole communities of woodcutters, coppicers, bodegers, hudlers, charcoal makers and many more trades related to coppicing. The story of where most of these skilled men went is sad and it has resulted in the decline of ancient woodlands on a massive scale. Coppice on large estates is largely neglected, regarded as not economically viable for management. The self-styled "stewards of the land" have systematically neglected England's ancient woodland heritage.
England's ancient woodland neglect started with the Industrial Revolution, followed by the 1st world War. Skilled woodmen sent to die on the battlefields of Europe due to a Royal family tiff. The Second World War probably removed the last few woodsmen, and the invention of alternative materials like plastics, mass-produced ceramics, and glassware replaced many of the household products. Domestic Housecoal had already replaced most woodfuel. Charcoal was replaced by coke, wooden hurdles were replaced with galvanised steel gate-hurdles, and in modernity and industrial capitalism, Woodland became marginal land or private shoots.
The origins of Coppicing in the UK are an ancient practice with roots in the Neolithic period, or Stone Age (around 5,000 BC). It was a widespread form of woodland management throughout the Bronze, Iron (Celtic), Roman, and Saxon periods and became even more central to rural life in the medieval era, providing a steady supply of timber, fuel and products already mentioned The practice began to decline in the mid-1800s due to the Industrial Revolution and the increased availability of coal, but coppicing is now experiencing a resurgence due to its benefits for biodiversity and as a sustainable source of wood and other products.
There is nothing new about the term regenerative.
Coppicing has other names too: constant spring, letting in the light, both describe the processes taking place in the woodland. Tree stumps cut regularly go through repeated springs as they regenerate. There is nothing new about the term regenerative. Letting in the light is what happens when a coup (area) is cut. The time scale between cuts is short, rarely greater than 15 years for a slow-growing species like Box, which was used to manufacture print blocks. Hazel, however, is cut every 8 years, as is ash, every 10 years for tool handles. Oak was coppiced for ship timbers. Willow, sweet chestnut, and horse chestnut for charcoal. Alder coppice and charcoal were sought after by the gunpowder industry. The herbaceous layer in ancient woodlands is an ecosystem that has evolved and become dependent on letting in the light periodically.
The Doomesday Book, a catalogue of the value of English estates measured England's Hazel coppice in Faggots (bundles of poles). Vast areas of woodlands were recorded. This 1000-year-old record of our ancient heritage is good for mapping contemporary decline. Today's output from ancient woodlands is negligible.
Other rural skills related to coppicing are pollarding, wood pasture management and hedge laying. All follow similar rotation times to coppicing.
Our ancient coppice woodlands that have been neglected are a shadow of their former productive glory. But our woodlands and ancient landscape have changed beyond recognition since the near extinction of the iconic English Elm. The biggest tree in the woods. Mightier than the Beech, the English Elm was the tree used to build the pilings for docks in the port of London and Liverpool. It was the wood of boat builders for its durability underwater.
Every wood from every tree has properties for which they were well known by those who harvested and utilised them. Plain was known as lacewood for its patterned grain. Lime was used as butterwood for its softness and was sought out by decorative carvers like Grinling Gibbons. Ash was for tool handles and Morris traveller chassis because of its shock absorbency.
New Problems For Nature Education, & It's the Fake Shaman & Those Who Platform Them That Are The Problem.
Now have a 21st century problem, its not a new disease, it is the "intuitive" knowledge of the self-styled neo-pagan new-age shaman, who have spent zero time in deep nature, let alone, worked in the landscape, or done any actual research before talking endlessley about their fantasy shaman-role-play world-view, one that does not reflect the reality of the historic landscape, coppicing in the past or now, or even the climate emergency. But they are platformed by the new agers and podcast endlessly about connection, initiation cultures and sitting under trees
It is clear from the above that Dreaming awake, and "That which you hold to be true" cannot be applied in the real world of Nature. Scott seeks to imagine a new world post-capitalism, post-ecological collapse.
"We seek to hospice late-stage capitalism and usher in a new paradigm which can and will bring out the best in humanity"
Through a paid membership program, (the irony). Unfortunately, the reality is that it's not that late-stage capitalism that is in hospice, but rather the planet.
Our Ancient ancestral woodlands have been in trouble for some time and while people like Scott might argue that this is only perceptible by botanists and biologists. The fact is that everyone I know who works in the woods agrees that the increased heat and drought are stresses. Temperate trees cease to photosynthesise when it's too hot.
Connecting to our ancient woodland, hedges and landscape heritage takes more work than sitting in the woods and asking what the trees want from us. Or using catch phrase sound-bytes like "connection rather than consumption", but what do they mean?
Not this, surely?
This requires connection, skills and knowledge, not one of these new-age plastic-medicine-people has demonstrated anything remotely close yet, apart from "birthing" a drum made from off-the-shelf machined parts.
Imagine learning the skills to cut a pole and make the drum hoop from it yourself, with hand tools. I am not saying you should kill a deer for the skin, but how close can you get to a deer? Close enough to slit its throat with your bare hands and a knife?
There is great power in ceremonial items made from foraged resources and then made from scratch without involving industrial capitalism's machines.
These are the skills that help us connect.
Planetary Hospice
Fossil Fuels and the greedy industry are destroying the planet at an alarming rate. The notion of hospicing capitalism which remains in eternal growth mode, is just utter nonsense. Gaza is the example of what happens when you fight back. Genocide is the normality of capitalism. Cultural appropriation is the normality of capitalism. Fakery and the big con are the normality of capitalism. The New Age is rife with plastic-medicine-people pontificating on nature and the spiritual connection to the land, while charging handsomely for teaching it, but publicly embarrassing themselves. These people insert themselves into movements and, as we already see, just spout nonsense. The problem is that it gets repeated through social media.
Pseudohistory is everywhere. It's the Graham Hancock effect.
Manda Scott has an obsession that modern Britain is still under the yoke of Rome. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of modern capitalism, based on historical fiction.
"Because the system is king. ‘Do you know what the Roman Empire runs on?’ asks David Morrisey in his role as Aulus Plautius, the Roman general? ‘Taxes.’ And he’s right. Not gold, or slaves or legions, though all three are involved, but taxation of conquered peoples who send back a proportion of their value to Rome, so that the one per cent of the one per cent can have households of five hundred slaves to do all the work without having to lift a finger. And if that sounds familiar to you, it’s because it is."
Earlier in her post she states
"Because actually, as long as we’re not trying to pretend that Britannia is historically accurate, it’s brilliant."
Source
Because essentially she's talking about pseudohistory, which is always more compelling than boring old science.
The legacy of colonialism is another post at some point if I can be distracted from ecological collapse and looking after my trees.
These are collapse cults. People struggle to learn their methods, and then are gaslit into paying for extra tuition. These are the classic operations of cults.
Planetary Hospice
Planetary hospice is a process of acceptance that we no longer have agency to change the course of climate breakdown. BUT it's not the same as giving up. I am still coppicing, I am engaged with the land for rewilding, management, practising nature connected skills and periodically teaching those skills. It is through skills like this and the philosophy of walking lightly upon the land that I /we experience the web of life, and it connects to us through our limbic system.
The cognitive dissonance of the juxtaposition of acceptance of ecological collapse and hope of survival is the emotional tide of acceptance. Internal spiritual conflict about objective reality- that our life support system is, due to human activity in ecological collapse, is unsurvivable.
"We are in the midst of abrupt and irreversible climate change. We are in the midst of the Sixth Mass Extinction on Earth. As a result of these two, ongoing phenomena, we are faced with near-term human extinction.
Earth is currently at the highest global-average temperature experienced by Homo sapiens. There is no known technology to reduce the global average temperature. We seem intent upon raising the global-average temperature until all habitat is gone, for humans and many other species."
Link
I'm with Guy.
Dunning-Kruger Effect
I often use the Dunning-Kruger effect to talk about nature & survival skills and people who set themselves up as authorities on these subjects.
The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias which can lead people to believe they know more or are more skilled than they actually are, but are unaware of what they don't know or their skills/knowledge shortcomings.
Our planet is in trouble, pretending it isn't is not helping. Scott's response to me saying we should tell the truth about the climate emergency was to say, What if people freeze?
People don't freeze for long, and if last summer's heatwaves are anything to go by, but joking aside, when I say we have lost agency, the agency we have gained is acceptance and the need to recognise that many of us have much more than the basics to learn, even if we are going extinct.
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