A Life More Wild - Series 5, Episode 4

On this next walk in season five of A Life More Wild, we’re in the woods with Sophie Pavelle, a science writer and communicator who started investigating our relationship with nature and ended up, to her surprise, writing a book about parasites.

So this fallen tree that's blocking the path is an oak tree that came down in one of the storms a few months ago in the winter. We've just learned to adapt and walk around it like we're doing now and you can actually cycle on here. This is one of my favourite gravel biking routes that I can do from home and it's always quite fun shooting around the tree there and I always think I'm not gonna make it and I shoot out the other side and think, “oh I did it”. It's just lush, I love it here.

One of the things that's really special about being in a woodland like this is that it's changing all the time, so not only are the communities of plants and animals and fungi who live here changing all the time but they feed off one another and I find that very inspiring and comforting in equal measure. We're coming to the end of a very sunny, very dry May and the canopy above us is in full vibrant green and the river's actually quite low because we've had one of the driest Springs in 100 years which is a different story in itself but it's just so luscious and green at the moment and we've got brand new ferns coming up, we've got oak saplings revealing their new leaves and it’s just full of life here. 

To Have or to Hold centres around relationships, whether that’s relationships between species, our relationship with the planet and also our relationship with one another. And I use the really beautiful, brutal lens of symbiosis to view the theme of relationships. So symbiosis is the stunning situation where completely different species have evolved to live together to survive. What arises is when species come together, like a flower and a bee for example who have evolved to live together in a very famous partnership, it’s not an equal partnership. One species is always getting more from the relationship than the other, but in that, nature has found this amazing balance that has been sustained for millions of years, where both species are getting something from the other but it’s not equal, but that’s not a bad thing.

The big surprise to me early on was that I ended up writing a book about parasites. Parasites are the dominant form of species in a symbiotic relationship – over half of all animal life relies on a parasitic form of survival, so where the suffering of one species enables the survival of another. And parasitism is everywhere, it’s in our bodies, it’s in the woodland, it’s in the river, it’s in the sea, in the soil and it suddenly presented a new way of how we can be better to the planet.  

And I started to notice all these concerning but very interesting parallels between how a parasite goes about their "dirty work" and how we conduct ourselves on this planet in an almost parasitic sense. But the amazing thing about parasites is that they are masters of sustainable exploitation. They only take what they need from the host they do not want to kill the host and yet we here on the planet are in danger of taking so much from our host, mother earth, the planet, whatever you want to call it, that we're reaching a tipping point now, so it felt very important to me to be spotlighting nature's relationships at a time where I feel like our relationship with the planet is really on the rocks.

I mean, every day there's something new that I see in the news about how we've gone too far. The ice sheets are melting, temperature rising. I said earlier that we're in one of the driest Springs for a century and we desperately need rainfall, such that she's, and I write in the book, you know, the planet's kind of writhing in pain and rearing her head. And even in her agony, there are still moments where she holds us and cares for us and gives us resources to use and water to drink and safe refuge and seasons that guide our agriculture and our food production and all of this. And so, you know, the planet is sending us warnings and reminders that we’re pushing it too far. 

When I sometimes feel a bit overwhelmed with, you know, the state of nature and the state of the crisis, just coming to a place like this is such a literally grounding experience and I think it will never get old, just getting outside and being around trees especially. There's something about trees that I think really calms our nervous systems and sort of clarifies stuff such that we leave a woodland feeling, kind of, in a state of, “okay, we've got this” like there is hope we can do it. You know, we know what to do. We just need to kind of get our heads together and tell the right stories and galvanize the right people and we can give nature a brighter future.

But this is it's such a common occurrence that it's likely that we've all at some point seen a shore crab that has at some point in its life been parasitized by a barnacle in this way and I just find that amazing because I think well what else are we missing? What else have we seen but not truly acknowledged or bothered to look at again? So symbiosis, it binds the world together and it definitely, I think, for me at least, illuminates Earth and our planet as she was meant to be seen.  

We’re walking back upstream now and we’ve just come to a clearing, so there are more significant openings in the canopy. You can still hear the river and I love it when you can’t tell whether the rush in the background is the river or the canopy and the leaves rustling. We've kind of opened up into an area of meadow and one of the highlights of childhood was coming and having a picnic here and just staying here for hours and hours and falling asleep on the grass so there's a lot of nostalgia here. Oh, there's a lot of butterflies. Lots of fritillaries here. My butterfly knowledge isn’t great but I know last year was one of the worst on record in Britain for butterfly numbers, so it’s great to see them playing around and fighting with each other. That’s always a very hopeful dose.

When it comes to reconnecting with nature, that’s a very personal endeavour. What looks like connection for one person could mean a completely different thing to someone else. And so, yes, for me, coming to a place like this or to the woods, or dunking my head under the water in the sea for a few minutes, that’s my nature connection and also writing is my nature connection, which was something unexpected for me but I feel very grateful that life has given me that curveball.  

But I think it’s just finding what works for you and that’s an instinct that I can’t describe or label or prescribe for you but I think it’s one of those weird things where you kind of know it once you’ve found it. So if I had any advice it would just be to get out there and see what resonates, whether that’s just going for a walk or, one of my favourite things to do is just to switch up your time spent outside in terms of the time of day.

So, sunrise and sunset are some of the best ways to experience nature in the absence of people because not many people are up and around, especially at dawn. And there’s nothing better than feeling small, feeling outnumbered by nature, and there’s nothing better than dawn to give you a sense of that. But it can also be through the books you’re reading the films you’re watching, what you’re doing with your spare time, a lot of people find gardening and even something as simple as potting a houseplant or growing some herbs and using them in your cooking or in teas. That’s a great way of physically getting your hands dirty, getting dirt under your nails and connecting to nature.  

So I can think it can look like a myriad of different things and in that sense it’s very exciting. It’s finding what works for you and what might be sustainable and manageable amongst what’s no doubt a very busy, full life. And it’s quality over quantity, but don’t put yourself under pressure to suddenly have a eureka moment where you’re suddenly connected to nature because it probably won’t manifest in that way, it might be a bit more subtle, a bit quieter.