Issue #53 - In which we share our hopes and plans for 2024 and beyond

Giving a little space and light to our ideas and schemes

Hello and Happy New Year from the three of us! How was your festive season? We have enjoyed the feasting and spending time with family, yet I do feel very much ready to get back to normal.

A blustery Christmas Eve walk on the Cumbrian coast

Despite our leanings towards the solstice as a more meaningful turning point in the year, I suppose like most people, we often use the festive break and the start of a new calendar year as a way of setting intentions and making plans for the year ahead. We always do so with hope and optimism, yet there is a lingering niggle of scepticism that I can’t shake, fed by memories of times where plans have failed and dreams have been snuffed out, stifled by circumstance or plain old bad luck.

There is value in writing down intentions, and for making plans, but I have learned to not give them too much weight. It’s easy to get disheartened when ideas don’t come to fruition, yet as long as we are heading in a direction that feels right to us, the milestones and waypoints need not be fixed.

Usually when we write down our plans and ideas we tend to keep them to ourselves; scribbled down in sketchbooks or hidden away on laptop hard drives. Tucking them away in secret keeps our fragile ideas safe from scrutiny and protects us from having to share our disappointment when plans fail. Yet I wonder if it also shields them from opportunities to be nurtured and encouraged by those around us? Like tiny seeds waiting patiently in the darkness of the earth, perhaps ideas too need light and connections with wider communities to germinate and flourish.

This year then, we are listing our plans and goals here in an effort to give them some space to develop and grow. We would love it if you shared yours too - you never know, maybe there is a way we can help each other thrive…

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Some ideas and plans for the year ahead:

Most of this stuff is loosely work related, but work and life for us are closely intertwined; we are fortunate to have a found a way of eking out a living doing things we enjoy. Here goes!

Start teaching workshops again

For several of our woodland dwelling years we ran a whole host of courses teaching woodland, outdoor and craft skills, Nature connection and creative workshops. We worked hard to run our courses to a high standard and to offer something a little different. We were pretty good at it and we have a raft of positive feedback from our students to back that up. Workshops have been on hold whilst we tried to find our place in a new landscape, but now we feel ready to put ourselves out there again and share the things we know. We have ideas for a few specific workshops, but we’re also keen to do more talks and events in general so if you have an idea for something then give us a shout!

Revive our shop

Our shop has always been something that suffers when we are busy doing other things. In January 2023 our plan was for me to make more wooden items as part of my work as a woodsman, but it just didn’t work out. Other work paid more and so had to be prioritised. I also struggled with a lack of suitable space to make things in. Emma had plans to make more things for our shop too. This year we hope to actually get things going - Emma has already started making some new fabric items and we have been working on artwork for tees and things.

Collaborate more

We have been fortunate over the past year or so to build friendships and partnerships with people and companies that share our love of wild things and wild places. This year we would love to collaborate further and join forces with more like-minded folks so we can better spread the word that we all need more Nature in our lives.

Substack

I’ll admit, I sometimes struggle with this space and how best to make it work for what we do and for our readers. I would love for it to grow and for it make a contribution to our income but I don’t know how realistic that is. For now, I enjoy writing and sharing our adventures regularly and that is good enough. One new thing we are toying with is occasional gear reviews. We are very selective about the things we buy and the brands we are willing to give money too - I think there could be value for others in us sharing feedback on outdoor gear and other things that help us live the lives we do. What do you think? I also feel a yearning to write more stories about our experiences with Nature over the years and so perhaps I will.

Adventures

Fortunately we live a life full of little adventures, but it’s been a while since we had a big one (other than moving all the way up here of course). We would love a family adventure this year, nothing too grand, but somewhere wild with an abundance of Nature and good food would be wonderful.

Mountain Leader Training

This is a simple one, but at least one of us would like to have our Mountain Leader qualification so we can confidently lead groups into the hills. Sadly the cost of the training and assessment is prohibitive but maybe there are funding options or grants we could look into.

New Skills

Emma is keen to learn some new skills and is currently focussed on making natural dyes - a wonderful pairing of her knowledge of plants and skill with textiles. This is likely to feed back in to both our workshops and shop.

Photography

Taking photos has become very important to me over the years; as a way of slowing down and of seeing the world through the lens of curiosity and wonder, but also as a way of sharing and documenting the richness of a simple life, lived outdoors. I would love to set more time aside specifically for photography, perhaps heading out on my own with the camera occasionally on quests for golden light and giving myself some time to crack a few technical challenges that I have yet to overcome. It would be nice to get a couple more commissions lined up too.

Eventually…

It’s interesting to ponder what the ultimate aim is - why do we do all this stuff? What do we want to get out of it at the end? Does any of it even matter? In truth I do not know the answer to these questions. We do not have a particularly grand plan - we just wish to live a simple life, close to Nature, making a living by doing the things we love. We are already close, but there is room for growth. We would like to struggle less. We do not wish to own land or property, but perhaps if we were being bold we might say that we would dearly love a quiet little corner with a few trees and the space to build a tiny home or studio. Somewhere to watch Nature go about its business as we go about ours. We have been lucky enough to live this life before, and I hope one day we will again.

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Well, I guess it feels good to get all that written down and out in the open. Now we just have to wait and see what the universe provides, in conjunction with a little hard graft of course. So, what about you? We’d love to hear, so do share any hopes for the coming year in the comments.

That’s all for this week, it looks like a change in the weather is on the way with cold, dry days for a while - we can’t wait to get out there after what feels like months of gloom.

With very warmest wishes for 2024 - here’s hoping your year is full of miscellaneous adventures!

Andrew, Emma and Benji

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