At Hazel Hill Wood, we treat the place not just as a setting but an active participant in the work. A practice I learnt there is, on arrival, to tell the wood what I have come to do.
What follows is a reflection on that practice (first published on the Hazel Hill site) and a question that is an underlying motivation in my work on regenerative design.
A practice I learnt from Alan Heeks, the founder of Hazel Hill Trust, is, on arrival, to tell the wood what I had come here to do. And so I sat down this morning, by the Gatekeeper tree to share a fairy ordinary to-do list. But as I started, something else came out.
The following is a transcript of that conversation with the wood.
It is hard to know if you want us here. All the people that come. Would it be better off if we stayed away? I am not attuned enough to the signals from the wood to be able to sense the answer.
So I come at the question from a different angle.
Ecosystems show us that every component evolves to play a part. Not survival of the fittest but survival of the whole. The system evolves to maximise the life-fullness that is possible within those limits.
Humans have evolved as part of ecosystems, have evolved to play a part. To live well, even, in harmony with the rest of life.
And yet, in much of the Global North, we seem to have drifted away from that relationship. At a societal level, we no-longer live in strong relation with or pay much attention to this wider pattern of life. So that our collective actions serve to deplete rather than enhance the ecosystems of which we are part.
You are a place to help restore that relationship. A small node in a much wider movement of people who want to establish and mainstream a different relationship between humans and the rest of the living world. A relationship of attention, care and mutual thriving.
At Hazel Hill Wood people can come to discover or rediscover their relationship with the living world. And can find healing and wellbeing through connecting with this wider web of life.
When we are here we will treat you with respect.
We will play an active part in seeking to grow the life-fullness of this place.
And we will bring people under the boughs of your canopy, so that they can take what they learn here and create wider influence wherever they come from.
To return to where I started, I cannot tell what you think of all of this, but I hope that our intrusion on the peace and tranquility of this place can have a positive impact here, and on ecosystems further afield.
And I hope that you feel this is worthwhile. In the meantime, I’ll continue trying to listen out for an answer.