“Anthropomorphic? You better bloody believe it! Conservation is emotional stuff. It’s time to put hot red blood into our science!” The words pulse with the energy of a gathering lowveld storm, rumbling over the deck dotted with fire-finches and blue waxbills, towards the distant Mariepskop mountains.
Poet, Psychiatrist and Wilderness advocate Ian McCallum is deep in it now, blue eyes blazing with joyful passion. “Wilderness is all about sex and vitality. It’s libidinous, pregnant with meaning,” he continues.
Two Nyala bulls pass by, absorbed in an elaborate dance for dominance, moving around each other with a choreographed precision. Except it’s not choreographed, its instinctive; a dance learnt over generations and bristling with the tension that makes their white manes stand on end as they posture and position themselves to claim mating rights, genetic survival, their place in this world.
Ian is soon engrossed in the spectacle. “Look’’ he says. “It’s sensual, involving all the senses. ‘Wild’ is demonised by religion. Commodifying it makes it sounds like it is external to us … it diminishes it. The true meaning of wildness is to be self-willed, self-contained, autonomous,” he says as Brenden Pienaar and Wayne Te Brake of Lowveld Trails Co. listen in thrilled recognition of a kindred spirit.
They are also disciples of the Wilderness, beholden to it for their daily bread as trails guides in southern African parks, but also for the sake of their souls. Ian has been a trailblazer for them, and through his writing, has given them a language to talk about what they do. His work encompasses their deep feelings about Nature and their role as its ambassadors.
Brendan and Wayne have long looked up to Ian, as one of the original proponents of Wilderness philosophy. Like two young askaris on a journey of discovery, they follow Ian’s thoughts as they twist and turn through a lifetime of experience; an anecdote here, a poem there.
“There is a wolf in me . . . fangs pointed for tearing gashes . . . a red tongue for raw meat . . . and the hot lapping of blood — I keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me and the wilderness will not let it go,” Ian growls, reciting Carl Sandburg’s poem, Wilderness by heart.
Since publishing his seminal work, Ecological Intelligence, Ian’s been building on his thesis that rewilding the human imagination is vital to not only the survival of the remaining wild life in the world, but to our own survival as well, a sentiment he also explores in his poetry.
“We need to not just turn to Nature, but to rediscover ourselves in it … that we are a part of it in order to check our out of control exploitation of the world, our only home. Think of this in the context of climate instability, human arrogance and how urgent this has all become,” he says.
As humanity grapples with its own frailties, and the idea that somehow, we’ve brought this pandemic on ourselves through our collective behaviour, no words have ever run more true, as Ian slips between poetry, metaphor and the literal experience of orienting oneself in the bush.
“Ask yourself: How much intelligence, resilience, consciousness am I willing to grant a tree, plant or animal?” he says. “The answer to this question will be a measure of the depth of your sense of co-existence and respect for species other than your own.”
These themes occupy his thoughts more and more, as he crafts his next book. After all, the most endangered or scarce phenomenon of our time is the experience of Wilderness.
“None of the technologies we have, virtual reality, augmented reality, or documentaries, can substitute for time spent in the Wild and how it can benefit us,” he says, drawing on his years of practice as an analyst. It’s not much of a stretch for him to move from talking about the literal exploration of the Wilderness, to the Wilderness of the human mind.
“People today are lonely and isolated. So much travel today is high end, disconnected, bug free, ‘been there-done that’. Whatever happens around you is just something to look at,” he says, lamenting the lack of reaching out to nature, to the mystery of its existence and its fierce battle for survival.
Directing his gaze to Brenden and Wayne, he says “your job is to find a place between biology and meaning by creating metaphors that link them. Where science ends, Nature begins.”
This is something that Brendan and Wayne have realised through their own experience.
“We want to stimulate people to reconnect with Nature so that their time on trail feels like a home-coming. We want the experience to jog a genetic memory of a deep connection to Nature and promote an intuitive empathy with its wild inhabitants,” says Brenden.
Ian’s eye’s blaze, his body animated and full of energy. “And why do you feel like you’ve come home when you’re on trail? Because you realise this place — this Wilderness — has something to do with you! … that your and my life depends on it. Our sanity depends on it. The wild part of our psyche needs it!”
Ian believes that minimalist, unsupported, trails in wilderness are a powerful way to change how people think and feel about conservation.
“They can provide a new consciousness. A new way of being. What is prayer if not an act of reaching out?… and in a wild church,” he says, gesturing to the landscape around him, “you reach out by listening. You reach out by standing still and seeing nature reach back. That reciprocity is what people are searching for in the modern world. Its fundamental to our ecological, spiritual and psychological wellbeing.”
