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How can you reach your 50's and still not know what to do with your life? I remember standing in a sand pit as a young boy, identifying paw marks left by wild animals. This was a test for Wolf Cubs in the 1950’s. Later, as a Boy Scout, I took Backwoodsman and Cook badges: I made a shelter out of lashed poles, leafy branches and turfs, and put in a thick mattress of cut bracken. It was a cosy few nights out. I caught fish, gutted and cooked them on a wood fire; and gutted, skinned and cooked rabbits (we salted and cured the rabbit pelts, but not very successfully). Most of each summer was spent living and sleeping outdoors; hiking, sailing and swimming. It was a normal boyhood of that time, perhaps fortunate in having a dynamic Scout group with its own woodland campsite, and a local sailing club of sensibly artisan approach. I had fun without troubling whether these skills of self-reliance were needed for equipping me for later life. I started adulthood with immense enthusiasm for science. I got two degrees, worked in the pharmaceutical industry and then in a teaching hospital in America. I did not do anything in science that would remotely change the world. Instead, the isolation of living in small town America gave me time to ponder my condition. I made a discovery - I had absolutely no career ambition at all. The things that I excelled at were the things that I did for my own interest. Anything else would end in anxiety that would make me ill. Coming back to Britain, I ditched science without a backward glance. Changing jobs turned out to be less easy. A self-employment course encouraged me to think up a business idea. However, rather than launch into business, I did what every other able bodied man with time but lacking ambition has done before – I stuck some seeds in the ground and watched them grow. Over the decades since then, growing food became a metaphor for me to understand the place our species has in the kingdoms of life. Such are the turning points. I started writing articles in about 1993 as a means to connect with my thoughts and acts, and with the people around me. I reported the progress of two public demonstration gardens, built with friends in the corner of an old walled garden in Halifax. I designed the gardens to have contrasting styles: an ornamental kitchen garden inspired by the late Geoff Hamilton; and a forest garden on the lines of the late Robert Hart’s experiment in Shropshire. The first would be a touchstone for natural/organic gardeners and the latter was considered the archetype of the Permaculture movement at that time. I had set up a contest of ideals that I thought I knew who the victor would be. It is going into extra time. Over the years, I have designed and built more demonstration and working gardens, mostly with mixed function, and broadened my experience of the properties and use of plants. I learned much while helping to develop Springfield Community Garden, a 3-hectare horticultural project to the SE of Bradford. This was the first publicly funded project in Britain that was designed and developed using Permaculture Principles. I teach people how to grow their own food and how to design and build their gardens in a style that complements nature. Teaching is another way to connect with thoughts and actions, and so is the shared working in designing and developing new sites, and in supporting community involvement. It seems therefore natural that I grew into Permaculture as a fitting expression of what I do, and found support in its community that gives me recognition for my learning and achievement. It is to this evidence of accomplishment, and the experience that it has brought, that I owe my broadening canvas of work. This has ranged from community facilitation; landscape design; and low impact area design through to training programs; rural small business advice; management of a farm business advice service; a regional business support program for farmers' markets; research on rural aspirations in a semi-upland District; and rural proofing local governance. I waited a number of years before I started teaching Permaculture. I wanted to feel that I had sufficiently absorbed its meaning and could look past an unease at its origination from the experience and ideas of only two people. Its teaching has in many ways become my way of understanding natural systems and human organisation. Its tenets of frugal self-reliance and resourceful and deliberate living are poorly accommodated in a society of mostly landless people. But through its land ethic, principles and design-led approach that mirrors natural processes, I have come to develop a view of how I want to relate to the world around me. You can read the notes for my Permaculture Design course by following the link Learn About Permaculture. I can probably point to at least a decade of thinking about wilderness and its relevance to Britain. My understanding of Permaculture gave me the eyes to see that our use of British landscapes is so comprehensive that we have no example of what is truly natural, or what has been lost, and thus have no basis for a value system for landscapes. Overlaying this is a dissatisfaction with the patterns of land ownership and access that exclude all but the wealthy. However, it is only in the last few years that I have felt sure enough that my instincts and unease about the British landscape were valid. The turning point was the prolonged exposure to the North American attitude to wilderness and land ownership that I experienced during a 10-week period of walking its national parks and open spaces in 2003. After returning, I researched particularly the American situation (legislation, public land ownership, institutions and voluntary organisations) and sought comparisons within Britain. I used the findings in a manifesto that I emailed to statutory or voluntary nature conservation organisations, DEFRA departments and wildlife groups. I had few responses, but there were invitations to write for magazines, and support from those who have had similar revelations. This commitment to promotion of wilderness and self-willed land is thus a personal motivation, but which has resonance for those that give themselves the space and freedom to think across history, and for whom the future has to hold promise. I have no intention of a return to a Stone Age, although I am more equipped for it than others. It is more likely to be a gliding path to the energy descent society that we all will face (see for instance Urban Ecology). Using reason and rationality, I take views on the land of my birth and cast a new future for it. The articles, reports and research on this website grapple with that future. My name is Mark Fisher and I live on the side of a hill, at the edge of a moor in West Yorkshire.
January 2004 www.self-willed-land.org.uk mark.fisher@self-willed-land.org.uk |