An Expression of The Past

“Reintroduction is explicitly framed as a ‘return’ to a point along a prior temporal trajectory, rather than an expression of the past in the present, with unpredictable future effects.”

What happens to our lives when we’ve lost parts of them to illness or some other force we can’t control? Often there’s a narrative of “returning to our old selves.”

When I was sick with undiagnosed hypothyroidism I was often told I wasn’t like my “usual self,” and once I had got the diagnosis it was all just a case of waiting until I returned to my “old self.”

I resented this “old self” so much. I knew I could never return to her, and that made me worry about disappointing the people around me.

I like the quote above from Caitlin DeSilvey’s essay on Rewilding Time. That excerpt was actually about the reintroduction of Ibex to an area in Portugal, but it could also be applied to our lives. What if we stopped trying to return to our old selves after periods of wasted time, but found ways to express parts of our past in our present, creating wild possibilities for new futures?

Rewilding Time

I’ve started to think about how the quietest places in the world are the most precious. When I say quiet, I mean places that don’t have a lot of residents, that aren’t built up with cities. Wild places.

Think about the Arctic or the Antarctic, or the ocean. Actually, it was this campaign to help protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in America which first got me thinking about this.

These places are precious because they’re filled with wilderness. Because the creatures and geography within them are becoming endangered. Because they run within their own time, yet the changes within them are a reflection of humanity’s time on this planet. Surely if the size of these places shrink, then the number of years before climate catastrophe shrinks, too.

WILDERNESS X SLOWNESS X TIME X HUMANITY X QUIETNESS

And what is it like to live in places either nearby or which have a similar wildness to them. Does it feel slower? Does being closer to nature make you more accepting of life’s seasons? I wonder what it’s like to live in an area like the Arctic Circle. Are people happier there?

And what about in Scotland — a country with many rural communities, such as those on the Hebrides. What is it like to live out there, or move out there from an urban area. How do we measure time with nature in Scotland? How is nature a measure of our own lives, and our time?

These questions of time and conservations have got me thinking of the phrase, “Rewilding Time.” So far I’ve found one academic article by an Associate Professor of Geography at Exeter University, Caitlin DeSilvey. I’m yet to complete reading the article but through her I also discovered a project called “Heritage Futures,” which focussed on heritage and related fields, and the ideas of conservations, uncertainty and transformation.

There was one quote on a post concerning rewilding which made me think about the question of nature, time and humanity being reflected in their quietest landscapes:

“to let go of nature would be to let go of the self that is projected everywhere around it.”

Letting go of nature is allowing it to run its course on its own terms. To stop trying to control it. To let go of time is the same thing — allowing it to run its course. This involves letting go of a projected self, too.

I’m starting to think that there is a parallel between time and nature and the way the human ego interacts with it.