The Call Of The Mild
The most remote parts of the Bannau are a full 6km from any road, a distance that could easily double if you find yourself on the wrong side of a raging torrent, stinking mire and/or attack helicopter
Happy Friday!
And a warming-yet-jittery welcome from the dreg-end of a coffee.
For anyone who knows me, this is about as radical a welcome as I could write. I can count the number of coffees I’ve drunk on the fingers (but not thumb) of one hand:
That freddo espresso I had in Greece last year, shortly before cycling an extremely long way.
That instant coffee I had before the final 140km day of Spell It Out in 2021. I felt great until about lunchtime, when I realised that the coffee had made me horribly constipated and I nearly passed out.
That cardamom coffee I couldn’t politely refuse at a clothes shop in Palestine back in 2010.
This coffee, today.
For those of you new around these parts, welcome 👋 My name is David and I’m a writer, outdoor instructor and cyclist-at-large with Thighs of Steel. In this newsletter, I write stories that help you and me understand the world (and ourselves) a little better.
Sometimes I go really wild and drink coffee.
Everything I Know About Nature Connection, Part 3: The Call Of The Mild
Last week, I spent five days in the New Forest, supporting over a hundred kids as they stomped, squelched and sang their way through their DofE expeditions.
I worked with a team of instructors from around the country, including one chap who’d never been to the New Forest before. Fun!
Now then.
This New Forest Newbie lives inside the Bannau Brycheiniog (Brecon Beacons) National Park. At his doorstep lie 1,344 square kilometres of mountain forest wilderness, including Pen y Fan and another 33 peaks over 600 metres.
As the crow flies, the most remote parts of the Bannau (‘peaks’ in Welsh) are a full six kilometres from any access road, a distance that could easily double if you find yourself on the wrong side of a raging torrent, stinking mire and/or attack helicopter.
In contrast, the highest point in the New Forest is a proud 125.1 metres above sea level and, by my reckoning, the most remote part of the New Forest is about 1.5km from the nearest public road (with plenty of much closer access tracks).
So imagine my surprise when, looking out over the patchy heathland of the UK’s second smallest National Park, this fella turns to me and says: ‘You know, sometimes I wish I lived somewhere more like this.’
Five minutes later, as my laughter was dying down, the Welshman explained his thinking.
‘Sometimes I just want to go for a nice little walk, you know? You can’t do that when every direction from your door is up a mountain. And when the weather’s bad, there’s nothing you can do. It’s totally exposed. You’re either in for a soak or you’re indoors.’
Hearing this mountain man extolling the virtues of gentle paths, gravel tracks, simple navigation, clement weather and easy access really gave me pause for thought.
As a soft southern Englishman, born and bred within earshot of the London line, eyeshot of Didcot power station and footshod with lawn-cropped grass, I have always assumed that we all dream the same blue-green dream of unbounded miles and mountains, far from the compromises of industry and urbanity.
From the shelter of my hedgerow, the loudest call I hear is the call of the wild. It drowns out the quiet sounds of the ladybird, the robin and the worm.
But something shifted when I saw from my friend’s perspective. What I’ve learned is that, sometimes, those who live in our wild places, they hear The Call Of The Mild.
And, the mild, that’s no bad place to be.
Three Tiny Big Things
1. A Pandora’s Box Of Non-Games
Beck and Fowler’s Pandora’s Box (Manifold 3, 1969, p32ff) is full of exquisite ‘non-games’, including the first recorded rules of Finchley Central, now known as Mornington Crescent (see also: how to win).
But my favourite non-game is quite possibly Come To Dinner:
Two players, Source and Sink. Mr. Source offers dinner to Mr. Sink (‘Come to Dinner’). Mr. Sink refuses, indicating that he would like dinner, but courtesy forbids (e.g. ‘It is late, and your wife is not expecting me.’) Source insists (‘We have Stroganoff tonight, and Denise always makes plenty.’) and Sink ducks again.
Finally Source says, ‘Very well, some other time.’ Or Sink says, ‘All right, since you insist.’ Whoever says this line WINS.
The game is played for two prizes, Dinner and Honour. The principal object is to get (resp. avoid giving) Dinner, and to do so while obtaining as much Honour (measured in rounds) as possible. Both players accrue Honour, but no amount of Honour can compensate for the loss of Dinner. The pay-off is not Archimedian.
2. Do politicians break their promises once in government?
2024 is going big on General Elections, with about two billion people eligible to vote somewhere or other in the world this year, including in eight of the ten most populous nations: Bangladesh, Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Pakistan, Russia, the United States and, recently, fascinatingly, India.
This 2019 article by political researcher Fraser McMillan offers nuanced conclusions to the question of whether we should pay any heed to the silvery promises that spout so fluently from the greased lips of electioneering politicians.
The tl;dr version is that the more garish the promise, the less likely it is to be kept.
For people living in the UK, under the Conservative yoke for the past fourteen years, this has often been a very good thing. For example, some of their most awful policy promises on immigration have, thankfully, been broken.
But, actually, looking across the whole raft of pre-election pledges, large and small, governments in power tend to do quite well — and British politicians have historically been among the most successful, with 85 percent of promises kept. (I know — surprising, eh?)
The lesson, then, is somewhat reassuring. The thundering grandstand racket you hear right now, the arguments, the controversy, will, once the new government is seated, likely end up having been just that: noise.
Where we should be looking is at the fine print, the smaller policies that will slide through parliament with barely a whimper of opposition or media comment. These are the pledges that will almost certainly be passed, almost certainly affect our lives — and soon.
In the UK, the Public First Policy Tracker live spreadsheet is an easy way to compare policies as they are announced by each party — and, when the time comes, either hold the new government to account or pray for expedient forgetfulness.
3. H5N1: A Good Case For Veganism
The third human case of H5N1, reported on Thursday in a farmworker in Michigan who was experiencing respiratory symptoms, tells us that the current bird flu situation is at a dangerous inflection point.
Reading this New York Times piece about the transmission of ‘bird flu’ H5N1 via cows to humans (and other articles, like this one from The Guardian) made me reflect on the possibility that humanity’s best chance of avoiding future pandemics is a global (but I’m looking hardest at the wealthiest nations) shift to a plant-based diet.
Rather than scrambling to contain a runaway problem caused by industrial-scale animal husbandry, why not cut the link in the chain?
It’s doable.
Every year in the UK, the average human eats the meat-equivalent of 160 beef steaks:
🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩🥩
In India, that number is seven:
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Thank You
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Big love,
dc:
I definitely feel the Call of the Mild up here in the North Pennines.