In this episode of Sense-making in a Changing World, I’m joined by best-selling author and educator, Claire Dunn, who currently resides in Naarm Melbourne in Wurundjeri country and is exploring the importance of rewilding in our modern world.

Tune in to Rewilding with Claire Dunn and Morag Gamble

Back in 2014, she released a book, My Year Without Matches sharing a personal story of her year on a wilderness survival program and the profound shift she experienced as she rewilded her existence, her way of thinking, and her body.

Now back in the city, the city that has experienced the longest lockdown in all the world throughout this COVID period, Claire opens a new conversation – that of how to rebuild your life, right where you are. There’s wilderness everywhere, inside and out.

Her new book released in June called Rewilding the Urban Soul: Searching for the Wild in the City is a conversation about this. I hadn’t seen Claire for a couple of years, so it’s been great to reconnect. I hope you enjoy this conversation.

Click here to listen to the Podcast on your chosen streaming service.

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In this episode of Sense-making in a Changing World, I’m joined by bestselling author and educator, Claire Dunn, who currently resides in Naarm Melbourne in Wurundjeri country. Back in 2014 , she released a book , My Year Without Matches sharing a personal story of her year on a wilderness of survival program and the profound, shift she experienced as she REwilded her existence, her way of thinking, and her body. Now back in the city, the city that has been in lockdown for almost 12 months throughout this COVID period, Claire opens a new conversation that of how to rewild your life, right where you are. There’s wilderness everywhere, inside and out. She says. Her new book released in June called Rewilding the Urban Soul: Searching for the Wild in the City is a conversation about this. I hadn’t seen Claire for a couple of years, so it’s been great to reconnect. And I hope you enjoyed this conversation, dropping in on our chat about rewilding. Welcome to the show, Claire. It’s absolutely fantastic to have you here to explore , well, many things, but one of them being the release of your new book, not that long ago. Congratulations. So your new book is called , Rewilding the Urban Soul which I can just feel this beautiful, deep thinking around connection with where we are, what we have, which is such an important message now, but it is a difference from your previous one, which was sort of going into the wilds. And this one is sort of saying embrace the wilds where you are . So maybe just , if you could introduce your current book and perhaps a little bit of the journey in between the previous one in , was it 2014?

Claire Dunn:

Sure. Well, thank you. Yeah, it’s really great to be chatting with you Morag and picturing your beautiful land up there. Here I am in Melbourne, in lockdown , on the banks of the Yarra on Wurundjeri country and yes , so this rewilding of the urban soul is what I’ve been exploring and experimenting with for the last, well, pretty much six years since I moved back to the city. The experiment really has been it from a deep need in myself. I found myself living back in the city again, which was not planned. I always thought that I’d live out in the bush, in the country , grew up on the country and ended up in the city and thought, well, I’ve got two choices here. I can either kind of shut down the the deep connections that I’ve been developing and cultivating with the more than human world and just, you know, put my head down and kind of live a city life of human-centered life, or, u h, I can see if there’s some way some bridge that I can find in, to enable me to connect and to belong to the more human world, w here I am in the city. And to experiment wi th, in what forms, what technologies, what practices work in this context, o f the city streets and, o f the kind of urban lands. And so really the question is essentially around belonging. How can I kind of cultivate a sense of belonging where I am which for me is much easier when I’m in a kind of a na t urally dominated landscape, but when I’m in a h u m an domi nated lan dscape, the question really sharpens and deepens and it’s taken me on quite a journey thes e las t six years. And yeah, as you referenced, it’s a far cry from the book I wrote in 2014. That cam e out in 2014, My Year Without Matches , which talks about a year that I spent, um , out in the wilds, really immersing myself in the world and apprenticing myself to earth skills. Then here I find myself in the cit y. So the question’s kind of the same, it’s just the context and the landscapes very different.

Morag Gamble:

Mm-hmm and I think that’s a particularly important message as we find ourselves today. Very localized, surprisingly, like if we talked , had this conversation two years ago, I think we be very different, wouldn’t it? Because we now find ourselves in this situation where we are in a place. Needing to think quite differently about it. And there’s something that you wrote or , that I read somewhere about the work that you’re doing, which is something that you describe as the wilderness is, is all around and in you. And I, I love that thinking about it. So like, rather than that, thinking that well , nature’s out there and nature’s the other that we are nature and wild, the wild spaces are not just external to us or external even to the city, but they are everywhere. Absolutely. Everywhere isn’t it. So can you talk a little bit about that inner and outer world?

Claire Dunn:

Yeah, absolutely. Well, this is, you know, when I, when I went into my Bush experience, it was all about how do I connect with the elements and the wild world. And of course, what I, what started to happen in that process of deep immersion is really uncovering the kind of wilds within. Which is the bulk of our kind of psyches. The mysteries that live within us and the kind of , deep relationship and communication that happens between the outer and the inner. And so the question for me has really deepened into this sense of what is wildness and this word wild , which, which I actually really means , self will . That comes from a kind of comes from a meaning of self will this kind of idea of a sovereign being. So wildness actually coming from our sovereignty from our sense of our wholeness, our sense of our essence. And wildness is a quality. Our sense of , um, when I say wildness , I mean a , um, a , a sense of being at home in our bodies and at home on the land at home, in our emotions, you know, that sense of like all is welcome, that this human has such a range of spectrum of expression, of emotionality and kind of rich dream world and symbolic world and a kind of physicality and sensuality with the more than human world. And this quality of our, of our wildness or our kind of our inherent belonging, our inherent indigene to the earth, our terrestrial indigen. This is something that has been so systematically suppressed in Western culture. It’s one of our qualities of wholeness that has been really just heavily dampened. And the repercussions of that are serious. The repercussions of that are certainly a loss of wholeness or loss of sense of sovereignty, a loss of aliveness, a loss of a connection to our gifts and a loss of a kind of , language of the soul. So reclaiming our wildness, reclaiming our our inherent belonging, reclaiming our belonging to our bodies, to our emotions, to the earth. This is really what I’ve been exploring, and that doesn’t, that can happen anywhere, you know, because we are wild nature. And so put us in a city environment and it takes a little bit more effort or a little bit more awareness, or a kind of attunement to kind of cultivate the wildness, to remember the wildness, but it’s always available. So it’s that quality of our inherent belonging that this kind of question of connection has been whittled down to in a way. Which is great news for most of us who live in the city, because most Australians, we’re a very urbanized nation. So if we can’t access that where we live, then we’re in trouble. Because wildness really is , feels to me like a key. Reclaiming our wildness feels like a key to the kind of restoring balance and health to our culture and our planet.

Morag Gamble:

You talk about healing quite a lot. And I guess from what you just said then is it’s on many scales. It’s not just about healing our body. It’s about how we are in our world and the healing of planet, healing of community healing of our food systems, healing in many different ways. And do you wanna maybe talk a little bit about healing journey or where you see the importance of this healing process through reconnection?

Claire Dunn:

Mm , absolutely. Well, yeah, this whole inquiry of course started with a deep burning personal question. And when I was in my 20s I was environmental campaigner for the wilderness society and other organizations and pouring my, energy into kind of saving forests and conservation work, which was wonderful and enlightening. Um, but also it gave me such a clear understanding that the deeper problem, the root cause of the ecological crisis is our culture’s deep separation and disconnection from certainly from the natural world, but also from , uh , our own sense of wholeness, our own sense of wildness, our own sense of innate belonging. Then of course, I realized that I have that wound as well. I am part of I’ve grown up in this Western culture and I’m, I too hold the wound of, of disconnection in separation. And so part of my healing journey was the decision to go into the bBush for 12 months and to really turn my attention to healing this wound in myself. And of course, in the healing of the wound, what it did was, was flush up , waves of kind of grief, cultural grief, and personal grief around realizing how disconnected, not just myself, but the culture that I was embedded in had become, and how much that I had been conditioned into this kind of productivity mindset and worth coming from what we do and a very kind of, rational minded, western linear thinking model. So it was a kind of healing journey that really was fostered by being immersed in wild nature that is constantly in flow. It’s just constantly being itself. It’s constantly in flow and immersed in that. Steeped in that. It started to kind of work on me in that same way. And it was a very painful but necessary kind of shedding of that old conditioning , and a kind of reemergence of a more fluid, more receptive, more attuned, more wilder way of being.

Morag Gamble:

I wonder in all exploration of this, how would you describe where that deep disconnection comes from?

Claire Dunn:

Mm . Where it comes from. Yeah, well, essentially, you know, it’s so embedded in the fabric of our cultural origin. This kind of rational , scientific mechanistic thinking that goes back to the kind of early scientists of, Newton and Aristotle breaking things down into, into parts and separate parts and pieces and ignoring the truth of the relationships between things. It’s been,,it’s really stemmed from that kind of understanding of the world as a separate, isolated competing pieces a nd h ow culture’s b een built on that. And instead what we’re seeing the resurgence of a nd certainly my work really promotes this sense of how we understand ourselves in relationship again. Yeah.

Morag Gamble:

In this urban rewilding, where do people start to begin without having that deep immersive experience that you talk about in the wild ? How do we find those places in an urban context where we can feel that just becoming part of where we are and of the wild spaces or bringing the wild in? What are the things that you suggest that people do? Because I know that you run education programs and through your book, you’re also talking about this. What does that reconnection process look like to you?

Claire Dunn:

Well, it really it’s like a web and it has lots of different kind of threads to it. It’s been such a wonderful exploration, this is the question I didn’t have the answer. When I se t o ut to kind of write this book. It w as more like, well, that’s right. How do w e do this in the city? And one of the most kind of significant kind of teaching tools I had was this program. I started with a friend called Rewild Fridays, which was a program designed for city dwellers to come to gether e very Friday in different city parklands and practice the kind of core routines of nature, connection and nature awareness and observation, and kind of learning ecological literacy. I had no idea how this program would go, how we’d go in a public park, h ow the group would work, whether we could actually find a way to kind of practice these hands-on skills. What happened Morag over two years of really regular Friday meetups. And what we were doing was really simple practices. We were finding 6 sp ots a nd practicing nature, observation and awareness. We were learning the language of the birds. We were just wandering ,using our, kind of opening up all our senses. That was a big part of, it was really, really opening our senses to what’s really happening around us, a nd practicing earth ski lls li ke fire and water filters and po ttery and, all the skills of lon g te r m ki nd of ear th li v ing. A nd of course the other layer was building community. Building safety, building community, building relationships in the human world. And what started to happen over this two years quite quickly and qu ite efficiently was th a t pe ople who had, v e ry little or no ecological knowledge started to develop strong relationships with these areas that we were dwelling in. They started to find their own sit spo ts at home. They started to bring sit sp o t st ories back to the group. The group started to weave together in a way that the learning journey kind of started to just happen by itself through the kind of regular consistent practicing of literally just stillness, sensory ope ning, c u riosity, awareness, storytelling, story catching, and skillful questioning. And thro ugh thi s really simple kind of rinse and repeat practice week-after-week, these people not only started to d ev elop deep empathy and joy and kind of a ch i ldlike wonder, but also started to really kind of change other parts of their life. So for instance, one of the participants was an osteopath and he started reporting that his sensitivity during his sessions was much greater just through a weekly nature connection practice. Other people started to kind of c h an ge their careers, change their jobs, and really start to.. Their gifts. Their natural gifts started to started to just emerge. And that was so heartening for me to see that this can happen in the city. It can happen just through regular practice and through community. And that was one of the kind of elements that really popped out at me during this this urban experiment is how sense of community and village is key for this whole question of belonging. Of course, you know, but as soon as we start breaking down the kind of nuclear family model and actually start weaving a kind of intentional community structure in the city suburbs, and it’s easier in some ways, because we are l ivi ng so close together, we can easily gather transports easy. It facilitates gatherings really quite easily. And if we, if we layer that with nature connection practices with ceremony, the n we start really seeing the kind of belonging markers really going up.

Morag Gamble:

I’m gonna jump in here because there’s so many things you’ve just said that I’d really love to pick up on it. One of those being the, you talk about practice, and it’s something that I I’m hearing coming up so much more it’s about this more spacious way of being rather than say, okay, come and just do a workshop on something or just do this one thing. Or it’s that longer term it’s that , slowing down and giving that time and space for that reconnection to happen. And like you’re saying that rinse and repeat. It’s the practice. It’s just coming back to it. It’s never the same each time, but you come back to it and the relationships form and develop, and this idea that community doesn’t have to be necessarily like here where we are in an eco village, you know, and even here in an ecovillage, like my community is not just the people who live here. It’s like it’s the people that you are in relationship with. And so that I think is really important part of what you’re talking about is finding ways to connect. And I love the fact that it’s doesn’t require anything, except just turning up yep . Going and being there. You don’t need to start up a project or a community garden, which is another way of doing it. And that’s been a really successful way in many communities I’ve been involved in, but this is simpler. This is just being there and finding a sit spot . So I wanted to ask you about how you suggest people find a sit spot that feels important to them, but then also pick up on the very last thing that you said just before I jumped in, which was about, ceremony and how grow ceremony with meaning and integrity rather than it just being kind of like a thing.

Claire Dunn:

Such great points there Morag and absolutely. There’s something that is so valuable about the consistency and the regularity of a community practice. It’s just like going to a yoga class week after week. You know, you get together, you practice nature connection , and catching each other’s story and things happen far greater than if you go on have a peak experience out in some wild part of the world, which is just ecstatic for that week. And then how do you integrate that? And this is more and more, what I’m interested in is the kind of value of a kind of humble kind of consistent practice, where we are, where we live. And for me , my sit spot has been, you know, my own kind of personal practice of that. It’s just in my backyard. My backyard happens to back onto a river, which I’m really grateful for. But I have over the years of sitting in that place week after week and bringing in , you know, it’s not just about nature, observation, it’s, I’m also bringing whatever I am sitting, the questions that I’m seeing with in my life. I bring these questions to this sit spot , cuz over time this becomes a sacred, this becomes a sacred spot. It’s where I go without my phone. It’s where I go for deep listening, deep, quiet. And essentially that’s a spiritual practice. It’s a , it’s a deep listening to self and other and self in relationship to other.

Morag Gamble:

Do you have a practice that you do? Like do you , is there a kind of a ritual that you do when you’re there or you just go and sit and you’re just there?

Claire Dunn:

It’s literally just go and sit. And sometimes I feel like I just like plonk myself like, but there is, there’s a sense of, you know, the few minutes that it takes to walk down there. I’m really aware . I’m not with my phone. I slow down. My sit spot starts at the back door when I leave and like I open, I open my senses, you know, it’s just, just in an instant, just intentionally what’s the quietest sound I can hear in each direction. What’s happening around me. And just the act of that slow for five minute walk prepares me for the sitting , even if it’s just 20 minutes. It’s a lot can happen in that time. And the beauty of coming to know a place coming to know the patterns of one place, coming to know the patterns of like one family of ducks or lorikeets. It’s so such a powerful belonging practice. So in terms of your question of how do people find a sit spot ? Well the kind of general guideline is to find somewhere that’s within five or 10 minutes walk of your home so that you go there. So that any, anywhere that feels like a sense of wildish-ness. That could just be a public park. And finding a place that just feels good, that you, that you want to go and sit and leaving your phone behind or putting on flight mode and really intentionally making that time about deep listening. Really opening up this sense of smell and touch and taste and hearing and vision. Like what, how much of a sponge can you be for this place, if you are really receiving it. Then just really just really deeply listening and, and it’s a kind of a tracking that happens. It’s a tracking moment to moment awareness of what’s happening both inside of you and outside of you. It can certainly help to keep a nature journal. It can really help to have a sit spot buddy that you swap stories with. Feel guides can be really helpful. There’s all sorts of extra kind of tools that you can add onto it, mapping and really kind of tracking this place over time. But essentially it’s as simple as a place that feels Wildish close to your home and just go there as often as you can, you know, a few times a week, sit there for, maybe 40 minutes – an hour, if you have that time. And you will really, even if it’s, it’s really about the quality of time in nature, not the quantity of time in nature, you could spend all day out there and not soak in nearly as much as an hour of really intentional attunement to the landscape.

Morag Gamble:

I love the idea too, of the, of the nature journal. I wonder whether you have a few prompts that you can , how to , one could start a n ature journal?

Sure. Yeah . Oh , that’s okay. We can , we can come around there. Cause I actually do wanna just jump in a bit to ask you about something else that you just mentioned, which was about story and sharing stories with a buddy or sharing stories with the book , or this harvesting the stories. You are a writer and you are a storyteller and what are, what are some of those sorts of stories? I was like, what are the kind of stories you encourage people to share, or that you find yourself naturally sharing with other people? And then how do you see or feel into what kind of stories that you end up sharing in your writing informed by these , this practice that you’re talking about now?

Claire Dunn:

Mm , yeah. Great question. I mean, on the kind of micro level , the storytelling about your nature connection journey, I’ve discovered is just really vital. It’s like the kind of, you know, when birds just kind of companion call to each other, like they’re tweeting away, it’s like you do your sit spot, you tell the story, do your sit spot, you tell a story. It’s like that kind of companion call. And the telling of the story. It’s like a kind of a form of integration, but it also insights curiosity. Especially if someone’s asking you really great questions, but yeah, I’m passionate about storytelling. It gives me so much joy to kind of collect stories and then share in a way that really moves people because what I really wanna do is kind of stir people into a greater love for the world into kind of stepping outside their own comfort zones in a way to move more fully into a kind of deeper sense of belonging and love for the world. And storytelling for me is by far the most powerful medium for that. And I feel so blessed to be surrounded by so many incredible stories and there’s something, so there’s like a, such a sweetness for me in the, kind of harvesting of them in the, in the kind of taking the story and forming it into something that can be yeah, that can be read like an urban myth in a way. It’s like these things are happening all around us and kind of putting the spotlight, the storytelling spotlight on these, these stories that are certainly not told in the mainstream media of ways that people are choosing to put their attention, to put their time, to develop something that’s so far from the dominant paradigm of profit building and security building. Something that’s far more innate, it’s far more original and it’s these kind of traditional technologies, original technologies and how we’re experimenting and playing with them. How we’re learning from them. How we’re kind of in li and by them, these are the stories that I wanna tell.

Morag Gamble:

How do you choose which story to tell?

Claire Dunn:

There’s this kind of like, kill your darlings. Kinda understanding in book writing, which is really quite true. It feels like when I have to kind of cut out a story, I feel so gutted because they’re all so precious. They just go back into the great cauldron of stories and urban myths and they’ll come out in some other way. Yeah .

Morag Gamble:

Just before we move on, what is your writing process? I’m always curious with, with authors. What’s your writing practice for developing books. You’ve got two books out now, the first one is a best seller . I haven’t caught up yet with how this one’s going, but I can imagine it would also be in that same genre because it’s absolutely fantastic. How do you get there? How do you get to that practice of taking the time to, to develop such beautiful piece of work and yeah, I’m always absolutely impressed by writers . It’s my <laugh> .

Claire Dunn:

I am too , because I don’t know how people.. I always say that was my last book . It’s with huge resistance that I write. You know , it really feels like it is that kind of 90% perspiration, 10% inspiration it’s it takes a huge amount of discipline. Yeah because it’s just an enormous amount of work. And for me, the hardest part with writing is – the storytelling’s easy, the kind of gathering of the materials easy. It’s how to kind of synthesize it in a way that is compelling, is concise. It has a narrative, the structuring of it. The knowing what to keep and what to cull is incredibly daunting. These books, the first book felt like it was such a trial by fire. I just, it was such a steep learning curve of what a writing a book takes. And I had dreams throughout it. Like just births that were just terminable, these births that just never end. It was kind of excruciating at times, but the writing schedule that worked for me is kind of like a four-hour chunk in the morning. And it’s really that kind of discipline of switching the phone off, switching the internet off and, really, I had to set myself like times and rewards at , you know, halfway mark. I can go and get another cup of tea or whatever it is. Otherwise I just won’t do it. Yeah. You know, there’ll be so many other , there’s always, always so many other things I could do. So it was , it was kinda like a 9 to 1-ish chunk that I would set myself. Yeah.

Morag Gamble:

Yeah . Thank you for sharing that because it’s, you know, it’s a , I think it is, it’s, it’s really easy to become so distracted and that’s with anything really isn’t it , but particularly with this writing practice of crafting a story and, and crafting it in a way that is just so beautifully and eloquently shared that it doesn’t, you know, cuz like you’re saying every single moment of connection is an another story. Yes . How to find and pick those is . So maybe we can like that was a little bit of a side question. I’m sorry for going all over the place, but maybe we can come back around to the question of ceremony now, because I think I remember talking with Satish Kumar from Schumacher college and he was saying, you know, one of the biggest things that we forget to do is we forget to celebrate or forget to be in this sort of space of ceremony. We can liv a simple life, we can do all this. And sometimes we just get caught in the doing this or, you know, the slog of it or, you know, instead of actually enjoying and celebrating and celebrating the connection and creating new ways of doing that. And sometimes I guess, coming from a place where, you know, in an eco village or within community things, sometimes I do get a sense that ceremony can be imposed and I become a bit resistant to that and which is where kind of the questions come in from. So what are you finding in your community where you feel like there’s this, this emergent celebration that happens and how does, what have you noticed in creating really beautiful spaces that mean something to the people that are part of it?

Claire Dunn:

Yeah. Great question. I mean, I’ve also been resistant to ceremony, but also longing for it. There’s a longing for it and I feel like it’s so embedded in our, in our bones in a way, like we’ve all our ancestry has been steeped in ceremony. And we’re in this kind of liminal space of like, we , we don’t quite know what to draw on, but we know we want, we want techniques and tools and to mark the passing of the seasons and to mark celebrations. And, and so I’ve been experimenting with kind of contemporary forms of ceremony and really discovering how there’s, how the first for them, you know, the first that people have the hunger for being in ceremonial containers. Really something that never lies is the passing of the seasons and the kind of the cycles of nature. And so that’s one really powerful and easy way to bring in ceremony because, oh , we’ve just passed the spring Equinox that yesterday or t he day before. These are the times that we can come together i n celebration and acknowledgement of seasonal change in a way that connects us both to land and community. So I know that one of the organizations here in Melbourne celebrates the return of the sacred kingfisher in November, and that’s a contemporary ceremony that’s come about through the changes of the landscape here and just a natural emergence of a ceremony. Something that we experimented with here at my home was a couple of years back, we held a 24-hour kind of grief ceremony, over the Celtic time which w as in Southern hemisphere around May 1st. And part of the reason for a grief ceremony is the acknowledgement that in every culture, grieving rituals have been an integral part of village technologies. And in our culture, grief is a very kind of private activity. And a recognition that grieving together is such a connective tool. So we h ad this experiment of a 2 4 h our ceremony that was just ongoing. People could come and go as they pleased. There was some basic kind of protocols for how to be in the space, how to kind of enter i n space and relate to the fire and relate to each other, but also it was very open and it was such a beautiful experience of community building. The people cycled, we probably had about 150 peoples cycled through the b ackyard over 24 hours, the fire k eepers came and went, and there was food shared and stories shared and tears and laughter and many stories over h ours and beautiful, surprising things like a cello turned up at midnight and started playing. And just the beauty that can be created through a simple intentional space. So that was really enlightening for me. The possibilities of what, how, how culture and village can be regenerated through these forms that we make ourselves, that we see the need and we try something out and it’s not perfect. We know it’s, we know it’s clunky. We know we’re just kind of making it up as we go along. But I think t hat the risk in not trying it out i n not initiating ceremonies is, is too great. This point we’re in.

Morag Gamble:

And I think maybe that’s my experience with community as well is the enormous amount of confidence that a community gets and empowerment by being in a space. Creating spaces where you can make something up rather than just receiving that have existed before unquestioningly. Actually redefining how it is that you want to be in relation together and what kind of spaces that you wanna create. And so that’s hugely powerful. And I think something you’ve just said then that I thought was really interesting was you called it a technology. Can you talk about that?

Claire Dunn:

Sure. I love talking about village technologies as technologies, because they’re things that we’ve kind of either take for granted, or don’t kind of realize that there’s technologies have existed for thousands and thousands of years tried and true. And there ways that tools, techniques that we know, develop connectivity, cuz that’s really what I’m passionate about is developing connectivity, developing belonging. And there’s things that do that. Like, you know, the technology of food, sharing the technology of celebrating seasonal cycles, the technology of grieving together. These are all, they’re all technologies really.

Morag Gamble:

Can you just define technology then? How would you….

Claire Dunn:

A way that facilitates a particular outcome that’s designed like a tool. A tool, I guess that facilitates a particular outcome. So if we’re designing a village, we’re designing a village in for connectivity, then there’s certain technologies that I would suggest are really important and regular grieving rituals, I think would be one of them. Potluck dinners where you share sit spot stories, I think would be another one. But again these, some of these technologies we’re gonna draw on from our ancestry and some of them are going to be contemporary based on the needs that we have now.

Morag Gamble:

Beautiful. And talking about food, we can’t not finish this conversation without exploring food and rewilding food. Um, I’d love to hear a bit more about how you connect with your local food in and around where you are, both the food that you were growing, but also the food that you find.

Claire Dunn:

Yes. Yeah . Great question. And of course food is something so integral to this whole, this whole discussion around rewilding, which is rewilding is really, you know, countering over domestic city. So we’re looking at ways to kind of , come back into a more, more intimate, more original relationship with the earth and food of course, is such a immediate, powerful way to do that. There’s that challenge of living in the city and people have different food growing capacity. So if we can’t grow our food, luckily I do grow some of my food. Um, but foraging is a really , easy and accessible and fun way to connect with the land in the city. It’s easier than going bush. In foraging because there’s so many different environments here of natives and non-native kind of food species and there’s just food abundant in the city.

Morag Gamble:

Yeah. What kind are your favorite foods to forage?

Claire Dunn:

Well, I was just gonna say we put this to the test, I d on’t k now if you’ve read the last of chapter of my book, but in the, first lockdown, when it lifted last year, my friend and I decided we’d do a what we call the hunter gardeners ch allenge, wh ich w as ea ting o nly for a w eek. Eating only what we grew or foraged or bartered from friends, from others growing and foraged food. And it was such a powerful experience in how abundant the city is. We ate really well for that week and we ate such a variety of foods, including like seeds from up the road and garden and, u m , a ll sorts of food. But one of the really interesting things for me was how much more food I noticed be cause I had this particular commitment. So my loop walks as I go on, I suddenly seeing more food, foraged food, like apples, and, and li ke potatoes in an old abandoned garden, things that I might usually miss that I now saw with these, these eyes of like, I need to eat from my landscape. But the beautiful part about that wee k wa s how many people put us in contact with, cuz we put the call out over Facebook, you know, wit h an ything you’ve grown, that you have abundance of. We, y ou know, we’re happy to barter for it exchange. And so it sen t us off on our bikes around the city and we wer e gr inding up acorns and collecting you know, rhubarb and radish and, and fr uit from people’s gardens and, and Melbourne specializes in the re’s lo ts of fig s an d locusts and olives. Um, an d of course we we’d also put our attention into kind of into preserving a lot of food leading up to this challenge. So it really was this sense of like each meal was a celebration of the land The huge Oak tree that grows down the road fro m me was, was the source of ab o ut ac orn pancakes now acorn breads. And it was, yeah, it was jus t, i t was really a celebration.

Morag Gamble:

Yeah. Yeah. That’s so wonderful. I wonder what you’ve noticed over the last 18 months or so around food and in , in the city, I mean, it’s been a , a massive shift that I’ve noticed, but excuse me, I’m thinking, you know, like you’ve been in lockdown for most of most of that time. Yeah. What have you noticed about the shift in relationship that people have with their food and their willingness to connect in this way or to grow more?

Claire Dunn:

Yeah, definitely. Yeah. It’s, it’s such a strange time, such a rarefied time. Melbourne has been in lockdown cumulatively for over a year, which it’s so unheard of. Like to only able to go a five kilometer radius and only be in a house with your, with your household. It’s so sharply and sometimes painfully put the focus back on the local, the street, the backyard and something that’s been really beautiful is the kind of the neighborhood feeling that’s that sprung up in the street that I live on. There was just this, this kind of more, this more kind of openness and conversations that started happening on the street. Everyone was out walking, everyone was, was talking. There was , we were meeting neighbors that we hadn’t met in years. One of my neighbors out the street, a kind of an older retired couple who basically converted their, their whole property into like a permaculture farm. We started doing a lot more kind of seed swapping and, and resource swapping and talking over and helping each other out, which has been really beautiful. And our local farmer’s market became, you know, one of the few connective points of meeting up with community. Like the food gathering, whether it was from gardens or shops was the only place that we could connect outside of the home. And so they’ve become really kind of vital kind of community markets and yeah, I think we’re all feeling a sense of deep gratitude for these kind of farmers markets now but it certainly been , I’ve had so many more communications with people over the last 18 months who are learning to kind of put their roots down where they are rather than kind of go outside the city fortheir nature fix. They’re really learning to find it where they are. And that’s been one of the, you know, one of the beauties is really putting our focus on on local. Very, very, very local. Yeah .

Morag Gamble:

Yeah, that’s beautiful how you described it, how the food being such a central point of that connection, both with the natural world that you are dwelling within, but also with, with your community and reconnecting with the community . Yes . And you mentioned the couple up the road who do permaculture. Just maybe as a, sort of a , a closing reflection, where do you see, or how do you see that interconnection between permaculture and rewilding. How does that look and feel for you?

Claire Dunn:

Absolutely. There’s such a synthesis for me between permaculture and rewilding. Rewilding is not what some people think it is, which is about just completely , turning our back on anything kind of cultivated and domestic. It’s really about asking the question, what connects me and what disconnects me? What makes me feel more alive? What cultivates more of a sense of relationship between my life support systems? Where can I get more immediate with my relationship with food, my water, my shelter, my fire, my power. And so permaculture in that way is such a natural part of rewilding. It’s such a… Permaculture, as I understand it is about really engaging with our food growing systems, our life support systems in a kind of regenerative design. And rewilding definitely has that sense of kind of care taking earth and taking responsibility for our needs, our life support systems. I guess rewilding kind of also takes it beyond the, zone, the last zone of permaculture, and really looks at our kind of longer deeper relationships with the more than human world. And it feels like just such a natural marriage, I guess.

Morag Gamble:

In a way too. I think, sort of the zone in permaculture is that wilderness zone. And it just, you know, the whole idea is that you try and sort of compressed your footprint so that there’s more space for a while , but also not just keeping it out there, it’s like, bring it in, like what you’re saying. It’s like, bring it right in every single zone. It’s not like, okay, well here’s the human bit. It’s like, how can we be more human in a space that is also wild space? And how can the garden be more of a wild garden? How can you rewild it. Create a forage garden. An orchard not being an orchard, but a food forest. The whole thing is from my perspective, I think a beautiful weaving and a beautiful way to connect. It’s wonderful . Absolutely . How do people find your book? What are the links that we need to let people know in the show notes below?

Claire Dunn:

Uh, well you can go to my website, which is naturesapprentice .com.au and you’ll find the links there. It’s also in all the bookshops and online Booktopia and etc. So it should be easy to find if you’re not in lockdown, you can, you can head to your local workshop and support an independent book seller . Yeah .

Morag Gamble:

Fantastic. And I love the , being a nature’s apprentice, apprentice to nature. I was just talking to D avid H olmgren recently about the reading landscape and asking questions like how to become so deeply connected that those observations just a natural way of seeing and being in the world. And it is, it’s a practice, it’s the same k ind of terminology that you’ve used. And I think it’s beautiful and it’s calming and it’s kind of feels like t he sort of thing that we need now, particularly as we’re facing, you know, climate crisis to develop these skills, these capacities, these connections, relationships, community, and I guess resilience as well, all those things a ll together and, u h, in a , in a beautiful way.

Claire Dunn:

Yeah , that’s right. I mean, rewilding for me, like permaculture feels like such a holistic system of cultural regeneration. You know, it’s bringing back the old ways and synthesizing within you . So what are the kind of rights of passage that we need for our youth? How do we mark the transitions in life? How do we kind of care our human communities and our non-human communities and feels very much in alignment with what I know you are , you are doing there Morag. So it’s been, yeah . Really great to have this conversation. Yeah. Thank you for taking the time. It’s yeah. It’s just been wonderful. When you.. you know when you speak to someone and to just, it makes sense and you feel like calm, like you get tingles. Just this . I feel much calmer now than I was when I started speaking so thank you. That’s the best feedback ever. Such a pleasure.

Morag Gamble:

Thank you so much. That’s all for today. Thanks so much for joining me. If you like a copy of my top 10 books to read, click the link below, pop in your email and I’ll send it straight to you. You can also watch this interview over on my YouTube channel. I’ll put the link below as well, and don’t forget to subscribe, leave a comment. And if you’ve enjoyed it, please consider giving me a star rating. Believe it or not, the more people do this, the more podcast bots will discover this little podcast. So thanks again. And I’ll see you again next week.

 

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Much love

Morag

I acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the land on which I live and work – the Gubbi Gubbi people. And I pay my respects to their elders past present and emerging.

• Podcast Audio: Rhiannon Gamble
• Podcast Music: Kim Kirkman