Feral 101

01/10/2025

As I pack up for another deep wilderness immersion — maps checked, kit squared away, plan in place — I can't help but notice the martyrs are out in force again. You know the type: tragic guardians of the countryside, declaring online that wild camping, swimming, hiking, or whatever else they occ...

28/09/2025

Just a pic of the hicap looking pretty today 😊👌

29/08/2025

27/08/2025

Why I Lead You Towards the Uncomfortable Bits

"Shouldn't therapy make you feel better?" my client asked, teeth chattering after her first wild swim. It's a question I hear often & one worth exploring.

We've become brilliantly efficient at avoiding discomfort. Central heating shields us from seasonal rhythms. Processed meals spare us the inconvenience of real hunger. Soft chairs cradle bodies designed for movement. Yet somehow, in making life easier, we've made it harder.

Our ancestors (the Hadza people still live this way today) moved constantly, adapted endlessly, earned their rest through genuine effort. Their bodies knew the satisfaction of warmth after cold, of nourishment after hunger, of sleep after meaningful exertion. They experience fourteen times more physical activity than the average Brit, not as "exercise" but as simply living.

For 2.5 million years, our nervous systems evolved for this rhythm of challenge and recovery. Now we're flooded with modern stresses, deadlines, notifications, endless decisions, but without the physical release that would complete the cycle. We sit, marinating in stress hormones, whilst our bodies cry out for movement, for temperature variation, for the honest feedback that only real experience provides.

This is why I might suggest a morning swim in October, or foraging for lunch, or sleeping under stars. Not as punishment, but as homecoming. These aren't extreme practices, they're simply what normal felt like for most of human history.

When we gently reintroduce our bodies to sensation, to seasons, to the satisfying tiredness that comes from genuine effort, something remarkable happens. We remember what it feels like to be truly present, truly alive.

My client, warming herself by the fire with soup she'd gathered herself, put it perfectly: "I feel more awake than I have in months."

Sometimes the path to feeling better isn't through avoiding difficulty, but through finding our way back to the kinds of challenges our bodies and minds were designed to meet & overcome.

26/08/2025

Thankfully, it won't be for long!

It takes days, only days, to begin noticing how returning from the wild makes you feel.

This is what I'm feeling right now. I feel 'unwell', but there's nothing wrong with me medically speaking. I'm just in the wrong place - for now.

The cruel irony of wild places: it takes time to feel their healing, but mere moments to feel their absence. Coming back, I can map civilisation's weight with depressing precision.

Day 1: shoulders creeping toward my ears.
Day 2: that familiar knot between my shoulder blades.
Day 3: sleep fragmenting, headaches settling in like unwelcome guests.

The wild demands patience. It asks you to unlearn years of conditioning, to remember how to feel comfortable in your own skin when there's nowhere to hide. To sleep in total darkness & silence instead of constant electronic hum. To feel genuinely cold or hot without reaching for a thermostat, to sit with discomfort instead of immediately solving it.

This learning curve is precisely why more people don't venture deep into wild places. The benefits aren't instant. There's no immediate gratification. Instead, there's often initial anxiety, disrupted sleep, hypervigilance in the unfamiliar quiet. Your nervous system doesn't know what to do with actual peace.

It's an investment that demands time – weeks, sometimes months – before your breathing deepens, your sleep lengthens, that chronic tension finally releases. Before you discover what your body feels like when it's not constantly braced against invisible threats.

But once you've tasted that freedom, the contrast becomes stark. The return hits like physical weight settling back onto shoulders that had forgotten they were carrying it. The ambient stress of modern life feels suddenly unbearable.

Perhaps this is why wild places remain largely empty. They ask too much upfront & give their gifts too slowly. But for those willing to make the investment, they offer something priceless: the memory of what it feels like to be truly well.

Pic of a place I called home for a while.

08/02/2025

Trips to the local farm shops and bakery are Celyn's favourite thing to do...mine too 😋

If my pork pies and amazing bread from Snapes Bakery lasts the journey, we'll be eating them on the way back from the shooting range at Field Sport UK and then heading home to slow cooked beef cheeks from Baa Hill Farm Shop That's after we've had their sausages and eggs for breakfast, of course!

Land Rovers, dogs, fresh air, target practice, and some or the best local food... this is what weekends are about! In fact, this is what every day is about at Sunshine HQ 👌❤️