A Song for the Wild Ones

Something shifted this summer. The air’s been louder. Softer. More alive.

Most mornings, I’ve been out early, boots soaked in meadow dew, dogs ahead on the path, the hush of the woodland beginning to stir. But it’s not so quiet. The wren’s call splits the stillness like a snapped twig. A garden warbler offers its looping melody from somewhere in the tangle. And then there’s the firecrest—fast, elusive, gone before you’re sure you saw it.

And one evening, just as the light slipped into gold, I heard it. The nightingale.

I stood still, barely breathing. Its voice rose out of the undergrowth, clear, urgent, ancient. A sound that doesn’t try to please. It just is. The dogs went quiet. Even the trees seemed to lean in. It felt like the land was handing me a secret I’d waited years to hear.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about rewilding, not just the land, but ourselves. What it means to stop managing everything into neatness. To let the wild parts speak.

The meadows this year have been glorious chaos. Spikes of yellow and orange orchids flaring up through the grass, unapologetically bold. Not placed there. Not invited. Just arriving, like they own the place. There’s something gloriously punk about it all, this refusal to be small or tidy or ornamental. It’s nature with its boots on. Messy. Fierce. Alive.

That spirit, the untameable edge of things, is what draws me most. It’s not just ecological. It’s emotional. Political. Personal.

Rewilding isn’t about letting everything run riot. It’s about making space for truth. For songs that don’t follow the script. For orchids that bloom in the "wrong" places. For people and places that don’t tick the boxes but still hold incredible value.

This land teaches me, again and again, how to belong. Not through control. But through relationship. Through attention. Through walking the same paths and finding something new. Through trusting the wild in me as much as the wild out there.

Here’s to the ones who bloom sideways. Who sing at dusk. Who don’t ask permission to exist.

From the forest edge,

Sarah x