Where the Wilding Led Me
A day of coaching in the wild left me with fewer questions, more clarity, and a poem I wasn’t expecting.
Image: A curved, weathered tree branch arches across a grassy meadow under an overcast sky. In the distance, green trees and a farmhouse sit quietly under soft grey clouds, a landscape of stillness and quiet presence.
Last Saturday, I stepped out of structure and into stillness.
Into birdsong, wide skies, and the kind of listening that doesn’t rush to reply.
I’d heard about Knepp Estate before. It had been on my ‘one day’ list, one of those places that pull at you for no tangible reason. But the trip never quite came together.
Then Anna Brown mentioned a Wilding Day retreat curated by James Farell and Karen Liebenguth. Something about that invitation felt like a calling. I signed up before I could rationalise it. Sometimes your body says yes before your mind catches up.
We gathered in nature, not to strategise, fix, or achieve. But to be. To listen. To walk and to wonder.
The coaching spaces I’m used to are rich with frameworks and reflection tools. But this space was different.
It was shaped by Silence. Curiosity and Trust.
I noticed how quickly we fill space with words, with reassurance, with doing.
But nature doesn’t rush.
She listens longer.
By the end of the day, I felt lighter. As if the land had absorbed something I no longer needed to carry.
I left with answers to the questions I had brought in.
And something more. A poem, shaped by stillness.
I read it in the coming week at an Open Mic, a few quiet verses about what it means to be seen by silence, and held by land.
From stillness to words.
From wilding to witnessing.
The fire within her is up for the fight.
The water within her will help her feel and flow.
The call of her soul is all she can hear.
The rest, for now, stays in my notebook, waiting for its place to bloom.
It was a joy to meet new people, reconnect with those I had only known virtually, and feel held in the presence of others doing this work.
James and Karen’s facilitation didn’t just guide the day, it allowed for deep, personal unfolding. For that, I’m truly grateful.
What I learned that day was profound… and yet incomplete.
So I’ll return in autumn, with new questions and a few more soliloquies waiting to be written.