Respecting land
Access
I talk a lot about how people are part of nature, how distancing ourselves from the natural world is detrimental to our mental health and how finding connection with more-than-humans could be the way to solve the problems of our world.
Yet, while this remains true, it depends on people’s ability to access nature easily and that’s not the case for many people, beyond the parks and gardens of towns and cities. In England, people only have access to a miniscule 8% of the land.
I have spent many years working in ecotherapy, with both adults and children, and I have seen the tremendous benefits to people of spending time in nature, both for their mental health and in creating a love of and desire to protect nature. However, the challenges of finding land for people to access in these projects has been a defining feature of my work.
During lockdown, I was fortunate to live in the countryside in a beautiful location. Despite this privilege, local walks were largely restricted to country roads with a few pathways alongside fields of sheep. All the local woods were private, there were “no entry” signs everywhere and many footpaths were overgrown or blocked.
I am grateful to the ramblers who have been campaigning for many decades to create and maintain the network of public footpaths in this country. But our system of land ownership continues to benefit the few rather than the many, where less than 1% of the population of England own more than half the land and prevent the public from accessing it.
Since lockdown, I have been thinking a lot about this lack of access, about the benefits to people of spending time in nature and about the ecological crisis which continues to increase, with little hope of change within the current political climate.
Like many others I have felt a lot of grief around ecocide, where the populations of birds continue to decrease each year, while farmers and gardeners continue to spray pesticides on their crops and woodlands and hedges continue to be grubbed out. England is one of the most ecologically depleted lands in the world.
Over the last few years, something has been growing inside me, a knowing that I need to do something, to speak and contribute to the wider work being done to help bring change into our world. I am, therefore, about to embark on PhD research into land justice.
Woodland for Sale
I had a lightbulb moment with the sale of a local wood. During lockdown, the only place I could possibly gain sanctuary in nature was a woodland a short drive away. Whilst privately owned, there was public access throughout and I went there a lot. It was a truly beautiful place. I got to know the trees and plants, the birds and animals who lived there. I got to know the land and felt safe there.
One day, the gate was blocked up and there was a “no entry” sign along with a big sign saying “Woodlands for sale”. Further investigation showed this was a company logo… the woodland for sale was the wood I had come to love and, to rub salt into the wound, the company intended to break up the wood into small chunks and sell it on, piece by piece.
There was a local campaign to save the wood but nothing much changed. It had been owned by a farmer who decided to sell it, as surplus land, and the price Woodland for Sale had paid was above the market value for it. Nonetheless the company were to make extraordinary profits, selling each small parcel of land within the woodland separately.
I spent a while looking into this and talking to lots of people about it. The marketing strategy of the company is to appeal to people who want their own slice of wilderness, those who support ecology and ecotherapy. And as each small parcel of the larger woodland is sold, there are restrictions written into the legal documents, to maintain the woodland and safeguard the more-than-humans.
Yet, the company divided up the woodland and built fences. Through this process, it showed scant regard for the more-than-humans who lived there and for the public, whose access had now been prevented. Indeed, the company were making money from land and from people’s need to spend more time in nature. It was a sick irony.
Lessons from the land
About a year later I spent 4 days and nights on Dartmoor, alone and fasting. While there were other people having their own individual experiences relatively nearby, I saw no human during the 4 days and nights and did have many visions… which I am still integrating.
There were two lessons from my time on the land during those 4 days and nights that impacted me strongly. One, it was clear that I needed to leave the place of beauty, yet restriction, where I lived. My soul needed to have access to wild places. Over the following year both Dartmoor and the sea were calling and we made the move to Devon soon after.
The other lesson was that access to nature, though vital, is a privilege which we humans often take for granted, paradoxically, given our lack of it. While we tend to respect and adhere to “no entry” signs, where we can walk, we do, irrespective of the more-than-humans who might prefer we didn’t.
When I spent the 4 days and nights on Dartmoor, I largely settled on a little area of woodland, with a beautiful stream running through it and moor either side. I got to know the land, and the beings who lived there. Enough to know that I was making an impact.
I arrived with a rucksack loaded with a tarp and hammock, sleeping bag, clothes, water… to be fair I didn’t bring much but it was enough of modernity to make me feel dis-connected from my surroundings. As the hours passed, I felt the impact of the rope pulling on the trees, where I had attached my hammock. I had disturbed birds by coming into their territory and making camp.
I felt the desire to do away with everything I had brought with me and live amongst the more-than-humans as they did. The more time passed, the clearer that became. What right had I to come to this place? When I asked permission of the more-than-humans to make camp there, had I actually listened to the answer? Had I invaded their space?
I spent a lot of time in ceremony during my 4 days and nights. Trying to make amends for my awkward invasion, asking the spirits of the land to help me live a more connected life.
One of the messages that came during that time, is of the importance of boundaries, of listening, of walking away when there is a clear “no”. We live in a world where land is viewed as an economic resource, that anyone who can afford to buy it can do as they like with it, ignoring the rights of the more-than-humans who live there.
In other places and other times, this was unthinkable. We all have ancestors who understood that there were places that humans couldn’t go to. Places of spirit, and places where other beings dwelled in safety from humans. The location of my vision quest happened to be a sacred place, a place of the Fae. Indeed, this was what had attracted me but it is foolhardy to assume I could go wherever I chose. There is always consequence.
I was lucky to survive my vision quest, after a lengthy experience with the Fae that I may not have returned from. It taught me to respect the land in ways deeper than I had ever thought to do so and I have learned much from this experience.
Mission and purpose
I left the vision quest with a clear mission and purpose – to try and help the world more than I had ever been able to do. To step up and speak. I was gifted a name by spirit and given the task of speaking up for the more-than-human realm, bringing the gifts of my life experiences and knowledge to help.
I have spent the last few years feeling into what this might look like. I have found many answers; to advocate animism and a deep respect for more-than-humans, to speak out about the problems in our world. But the path has taken me to this new project – to speak up and challenge land ownership and the assumed rights to do as we please on the land and in the world. To fight for land justice.
Land justice
The specific nature of land ownership in England today and the dynamics of wealth and power that derive from it, come from a history of land seizure and the forced displacement of people, both within the land of England itself and overseas.
The islands of Britain have a long history of people invading and settling. While we often focus on the violence of the Vikings or the control of the Romans, it was the Norman invasion that had the biggest impact on Britain and their descendants continue to hold much of the wealth and power today, stolen from the ordinary people who had lived here for generations.
The British Empire was built on slavery and land theft. Headed by the Normans and their European family, they created a culture where morality was based on justifying inequality, with horrific impact.
One by one, whole countries of people were displaced and consumed by the British Empire, growing fat from the wealth of stolen land and people. Including Ireland, North America, Jamaica, Barbados, Nigeria, South Africa, Zimbabwe, India, Australia and New Zealand… too many to list here in full.
Despite the ending of the British colonial project, the ownership and control of land around the world today remains unequal, often continuing to be owned by the very oppressors who stole the land in the first place. As political power is often skewed towards those who maintain control of land, the global power structures remain problematic.
Nothing much has changed in Britain either, where ordinary people are being continually squeezed, locked into an increasing housing and financial crisis whilst the elite buy up more land for their shooting estates while getting their tax bills slashed.
The link is land, and the unequal power and financial structures associated with owning the land. Land continues to be seen as an economic resource, despite dwindling resources and despite the ecological crisis. This needs to be challenged.
Custodianship
Some environmentalists view humans as a virus and campaign for areas of land to be free of human presence. Often the views of Garrett Hardin, who wrote “the tragedy of the commons” in the late 1960s are used to support this view. Hardin’s argument was that if left to their own devices, people will always over consume and are innately self-serving.
There are many issues with Hardin’s views, the subsequent impact on the global environmental movement and its impact on people who live on the land. Put simply it assumes that all people behave the same way, which denies the existence of cultural difference, particularly cultures who engage with the more-than-human realms very differently from the self-serving neoliberal world.
I do not believe that humans need to isolate themselves from our more-than-human kin or see ourselves as separate and innately damaging.
We can trace the development of the view that the Earth can be owned and used as an economic resource. We can trace the development of capitalism and neoliberalism. This way of being isn’t inevitable or the only way.
There are many peoples on the Earth who live differently or try to live differently to the predominant culture and economy. A few hundred years ago all our ancestors lived differently. We know their ways, how they lived more sustainably with our more-than-human kin and the Earth’s resources, practicing true custodianship of the land.
We have spent millennia working with the more-than-human realm for mutual benefit. Where humans have had a role to play within nature, having a strong sense of responsibility to the more-than-human world, living among them with boundaries and respect. In these cultures, land isn’t and wasn’t owned and privatised, nor used as a resource solely for human benefit.
Access to land
It is vital that people have access to nature – to roam in the wild places, to forage and make camp, to get to know the more-than-human realms and feel their own place, as animal, in the land. We need this. The current mental health crisis won’t be solved unless more people have this access, so they can truly feel at home in their bodies and on this Earth.
Equally the current environmental crisis won’t be solved until most people feel deep connection for the more-than-human world, knowing that we cannot survive as a species without it. We cannot continue to own and treat land, our living mother, as property and all the more-than-humans we share the planet with as our slaves.
It’s not about a separation between humans and nature. Humans are not intrinsically bad; we have just lost our way. Or, perhaps more accurately, the philosophy within which most of the world lives is doomed to destroy us all.
It’s about the political and economic structure of our world. About the philosophy of property, ownership and entitlement to roam and take whatever we want. It’s about the philosophy of colonialism and the ever-expanding frontier.
Until we face our history and face the problems at the core of how we live, we cannot hope to change. Yet we must. The answer is to learn how to live in respect with our more-than-human cousins, to understand and minimise our impact, to understand our entitlement and challenge it. To learn some of the old ways of our ancestors, and find our way back to respecting the land.
© Samara Lewis, April 2025