Call from the Wilderness Forest of Dean Wilderness Centre

State­ment from the Wilder­ness Cen­tre : On the day of Glouces­ter­shire Coun­ty Coun­cil meet­ing that will deter­mine the coun­cils next course of action.

Two activists jedi’d their way into the meet­ing, and hand­ing out our “state­ment of intent” (link below) to the offi­cious types sat around with mem­bers of the police, var­i­ous coun­cil offi­cers and advi­sors in Shire Hall, Glouces­ter, before being ask­ing to leave ‑all was very polite, civ­il and in good humour.

We await their deci­sion, which will dic­tate our next move.

Call from the Wilder­ness

Here in the wilder­ness we are try­ing to find our way home. How did we come to dwell here in the wilder­ness? For over 40 years the wilder­ness has been a pio­neer­ing envi­ron­men­tal edu­ca­tion cen­tre. Then last year Glouces­ter­shire coun­ty coun­cil decid­ed that it was no longer in the pub­lic inter­est to sus­tain the cen­tre. Bet­ter val­ue for the tax­pay­er to sell it to the high­est bid­der? We dis­agree. We believe that edu­ca­tion is the great­est source of wealth in our com­mu­ni­ties. Sure­ly the exploita­tion of our envi­ron­ment can only be dri­ven by igno­rance. Edu­ca­tion is our great­est tool in the strug­gle against exploita­tion.
The coun­cil seem to think oth­er­wise. The coun­ty coun­cil, or in their words “the pow­ers that be” think we are home­less. Trav­ellers, squat­ters they tell us to… move on. They want us out of here. We don’t belong here. They tell us we have no right to be here. They’ve set their wolves to prowl around the grounds lock­ing things down. They want our names and pre­vi­ous address­es. They don’t trust us. They are con­cerned about health and safe­ty. The pub­lic are a lia­bil­i­ty. We tried to talk about respon­si­bil­i­ty. We tried to assure them that we ful­ly com­pre­hend the impli­ca­tions of a com­post toi­let. But they are doubt­ful.

Exact­ly who is bewil­dered?

We came here on the first full moon of the year with the inten­tion of cre­at­ing an envi­ron­men­tal edu­ca­tion cen­tre to dis­close a process of learn­ing the skills and tech­niques required to move towards a home found­ed upon the prin­ci­ples of eco­nom­ic self-suf­fi­cien­cy and eco­log­i­cal sus­tain­abil­i­ty.
To be a force of res­o­lu­tion we need peo­ple to join us. Deci­sive peo­ple who under­stand the con­se­quences of there actions. Com­mit­ted, hard work­ing peo­ple. We need peo­ple with a respect for food. We need gar­den­ers and grow­ers who can cul­ti­vate the ideas that have been sown in our soil by the dif­fer­ing schools of per­ma­cul­ture and bio-dynam­ics. Who know how let these ideas grow organ­i­cal­ly. We need peo­ple with the deter­mi­na­tion to dig. Reflec­tive peo­ple who look for their reflec­tion in oth­ers. Peo­ple who can prac­tice the hos­pi­tal­i­ty of the guest. Peo­ple who do not wait for oth­ers to make nec­es­sary changes.
Here in the wilder­ness we make our­selves at home. You are wel­come.

State­ment of Intent : protectthewilderness.org.uk/protect.html
Web­site (still in progress) protectthewilderness.org.uk

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Pro­tect The Wilder­ness