RE-ENCHANTMENT FOR RESISTANCE

When a wealthy landowner filed a case in court effectively revoking the right to wild camp on Dartmoor, there was uproar across the outdoors community. This change in a historical law reignited a dormant debate around our access rights to wild landscapes and the benefits experiences in these spaces can provide. Emma Linford is an International Mountain Leader and Right to Roam campaigner and has played a central role in the counter activity to the case, organising and speaking at rallies in both London and on Dartmoor. Here, she dives into what this ruling might mean for us as a society and future generations of outsiders.

Virtually and in person, we assemble to debrief. This touchstone had been our anchor since the organising group of The Stars are for Everyone, formed in October 2022. A union of five strangers, from the Totnes Trespass group, fattened to 15 souls then 80, that have stitched together the largest mass protest for land access since the Kinder Mass Trespass on 24th April 1932, all within two weeks. On January 21st 3500 wild campers and allies gathered in Cornwood in defiance of the wild camping ban on Dartmoor. Seven days hence, in a state of depletion, we gather to share emotions and ruminate over what’s been awoken here.

It appears we have returned to the generational pasturing of land injustice and severance seen during the agricultural and industrial revolutions, when the commons were enclosed and land was appropriated by the wealthy. Access to green spaces continues to be contracted, commodified and enclosed.

The story begins with the plaintiff. Alexander Darwall, a wealthy equities manager, who owns 4,000 acres in South West Dartmoor and who filed a case against the Dartmoor National Park Authority (DNPA) seeking clarification about the legality of wild camping on his land. This tiny slither of land was part of the last relic of space in England and Wales where it was thought to be legal to wild camp, spending a maximum of two nights, in one location, abiding by Leave No Trace principles. On December 12th, outside the Royal Courts of Justice, alongside Caroline Lucas MP, I spoke of the elemental experiences of wild camping that transform people’s lives. Sitting behind Darwall in the courtroom, so very far from moss, lichen and birdsong, I witnessed the reductive power of law against that expansiveness of being in, with and belonging to the land.

On Friday 13th January, it was ruled that wild camping has never been legally bound in law due to its omission in the 1949 National Parks act, as a form of ‘recreation’. The judgement wholly ignores the need for ‘everyone to get out into the open air and enjoy the countryside’. Clearly decades on, a new interpretation of recreation is required. Wild camping on Dartmoor is now considered to be ‘civil trespass’ just as it is in the rest of England and Wales. However, moving swiftly to gain control in a vulnerable moment, a financial deal has been struck between landowners and DNPA to allow wild camping to continue permissively. That which was free for all, now comes at a cost to the taxpayer, an 18% shrinkage in land mass including those areas on the periphery that are easy to access for less able bodies. A cruel turn of the screw. This new permissive deal provides no certain future for wild camping and organisations such as Ten Tors and the Duke of Edinburgh

Award who introduce younger generations into this space. This is blatant commodification of land where a right to access has been replaced with a fragile permission that can be rescinded at any moment.

Yet, these past few months have illuminated the public appetite for protest. Generated by the polarising status quo of governmental politics alongside the pandemic, this agitation was enough to mobilise mass numbers in Princetown, London and Cornwood. One woman determinedly pushed her mobility frame 5km up and downhill over uneven ground to participate. Consequently, this exceptional visibility of feeling was instrumental in influencing DNPA to appeal the ban and for Jim McMahon, Shadow Secretary of State, to announce that Labour will lead with a Right to Roam bill if elected. Unearthing and bringing life to an old story has energised the politics of access and perhaps a pyrrhic victory for Darwall.

Perhaps the existing wild camping community will not be affected by this loss, continuing to wild camp as they have always done; pitch at dusk, leave at dawn, stealth-style. New legalities will however deter many who do not like to operate in secrecy. This is an opportunity to revise this covert archetype of land access. What would it feel like to camp in such places without someone metaphorically looking over your shoulder? What freedom and love could you carry instead of access restrictions and urbanity strapped to your rucksack? And, for our younger generations, tasting wildness for the first time, replacing a permissive right with a generous welcome would naturally hand over an innate responsibility of being a steward for the land.

ABOVE: Local residents and many from further afield, the young and the old and the in-between, joined the impassioned crowd.

Back in that courtroom, I reached out to Darwall to seed an alternative perspective. Looking to his solicitors for counsel, he refused. This refusal to see another’s perspective is the fear of difference that seems to permeate our culture; an us vs them, hero vs villain narrative. And herein lies our reasoning for choosing a mythical story as the centrepiece to the protest; Old Crockern, totemic puppet and defender of Dartmoor. Risen from granite, transformed by ice ages, rainforest and at one time covered by sea, Dartmoor is seeded with stories, myths and legends. The mythic world carries the imagination of our ancestors and helps us to make relational sense of ourselves today. Unearthing this old parable of a greedy landowner proved there is a huge appetite for disrupting a prosaic rhetoric. The magical, demonised during the industrial revolution as evil and unproductive, is having a renaissance. At its very source is a wholesome, joyous relationship. Old Crockern appearing over the hill was enchanting, filling us all with childlike wonder. I felt a rare but tangible companionship and love inspired by this magic.

In my 20 years of facilitating and leading groups on multiday journeys and camping in all environments this planet holds, I’ve witnessed profound transformation and can gush about its educational and spiritual value. Wild camping is the key to cultivating better, more wholesome relationships to self, others and the environment. Portable homes with permeable membranes allowing for primaeval communion with the land and a sanctuary from its wild forces. There is nothing so alive and animating. A conjoining of nature brings me what I need and shakes me out of cultural stupor; I often feel more at home in my tent than in my house.

Wild camping isn’t always comfortable, it’s mostly type2 fun, yet what it affords over domesticity is vast. ‘It is not necessarily at home that we best encounter our true selves. The furniture insists that we cannot change because it does not; the domestic setting keeps us tethered to the person we are in ordinary life who may not be who we essentially are,’ writes Alain de Botton. To camp out overnight, invites us to quiesce, drawing our attention away from the noise and quieting to presence. Connecting viscerally with the vastness of the sky, we are rewarded with joy and perspective. The challenges it brings confront and invite us to round our self-edges. A vital rite of passage for all young people.

Nature writer, Nan Shepherd affirms ‘no one knows the mountain completely who has not slept on it. As one slips over into sleep, the mind grows limp; the body melts; perception alone remains. One neither thinks nor desires, nor remembers, but dwells in pure intimacy with the tangible world.’

Out of countless examples, a female carer, late teens, comes to mind. With her long black unkempt hair covering her face, looking downtrodden, she moved through panic attacks, diet control and running away on a funded 20-day expedition programme in the Scottish Highlands. She left with upright posture, hair pulled from face and was able to speak openly to a large audience. This was someone who had found her confidence and voice out there in nature. She wrote to thank me, but I was merely an enabler of the opportunity she was afforded.

Participants of a long term 40-year impact study of wilderness experiences reported that relationships, confidence, self-worth, self-reliance, overcoming problems and gratefulness were all improved as a result of such experiences. I am from the generation when 40% of children played in green spaces. Currently, with 85% of the population now urban, only 10% of children regularly experience a green space and 40% never enter one. Being in and with the land is contrary to our prejudiced society; it openly welcomes and accepts the queerness of humanity, opposing the extractive, consumerist culture of capitalism.

Neither legislation nor social norms are currently sufficient for access to land for our wellbeing, social development and cultivating compassion for nature. How can we become better relatable citizens, understand the interconnectedness of ourselves within other-than-human ecosystems and therefore take responsibility for its conservation, if we can’t spend considerable time in wider natural spaces?

The 2019 Glover ‘Landscapes Review,’ described National Parks as ‘England’s soul,’ vowing that every child must ‘spend at least one night in a national landscape’. The experience doesn’t discriminate against social background, age or class, yet there is huge inequality in access. Let’s change the culture of a privileged outdoor education system and our right to roam, opening up a broader right of access for all. It's time to end the apartheid between wealth and access to wilder spaces. This is not an ending but a re-imagining of what connection to land could be. Reawakening an ancestral story is part of the great turning of our times. I invite you to reimagine your relationship with wilder spaces, perhaps exploring this question; ‘how can I bring enchantment to my outdoor space?’ And, those new to wild camping, I encourage you to begin, it will bring you exactly what you need, even if it’s not what you thought you wanted. Wild camping is social activism.

For more information about wild camping visit dartmoor.gov.uk/enjoy-dartmoor/outdoor-activities/amp ing

Please visit righttoroam.org.uk and @thestarsareours.uk to donate and get involved.