What Drives Our Nurture of Nature?

My mum and I went away for a few days towards the end of summer, to the Forest of Dean, where my mum was born. I was excited to explore the beautiful countryside and visit some of the historic sites such as Tintern Abbey, inspired by studying the Romantics at A-Level. They would sit well in discussions and representations of the nurture of nature, though they went so far as to deify the natural world. But the Romantics did illuminate the ability of nature to touch the deepest parts of ourselves in a way that we recognise as being transcendent: Wordsworth describes “the meadows and the woods/And mountains; and of all that we behold/From this green earth” as being “The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,/The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul/Of all my moral being.”    

One way I had always wanted to immerse myself in nature was through wild swimming, partly due to the health benefits it promises. As your body is plunged into the cold water, the flight or fight response is set off, but when you then emerge back into the relatively warm air, a flood of endorphins is released. Current thinking posits the experiencing of these two extremes as priming us to better handle stress. The cottage we were staying in recommended a local outfit, “Angela Jones Swim Wild” – “The Guardian’s recommended Top Adventure Days.” This sounded like the one for me!  However, there had been little time to plan. I rushed off an email to Angela, feeling rather foolish, as I hadn’t even brought a swimming costume! I wasn’t expecting to be successful, but to my surprise, Angela offered me a one-to-one swim early the next morning.  

I didn’t know anything about Angela Jones, but as I read more on her website, it was clear she is a very special lady. Her wild swimming school is run from a passion to educate people on how to look after our rivers, and in particular, the river closest to her heart, the Wye. She has become an activist in the process, not by design, but by necessity. She spends hours in the river every day, in all seasons, and she sees first-hand the effects of pollution to aquatic life. She is quietly unapologetic about the point of no return the River Wye teeters on. She has made headlines through her media appearances, including on primetime TV, and her creative ways of driving her point home: she swam down the River Wye trailing a coffin. But she is also passionate about people, and clearly loves the inclusivity of wild swimming and the opportunity it affords her to introduce others to the healing serenity of being outdoors and immersed in nature.  

As I read about this incredible lady who cites the river as being her home, office and playground, I began to feel rather star-struck at the prospect of meeting her! Angela Jones is a professional. She exudes a motherly warmth, but from the moment of our meeting it was very clear: safety first. In Isaiah 11:6–9, we hear of a promised utopia where “The wolf shall live with the lamb,” and tellingly, “They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord.” It seems that true knowledge of God yields peace and harmony in the created world. For Angela, it seems that we need to approach creation almost as the ancient Israelites might have approached the temple; with reverence, awe, and above all, respect. So much of what she says is common sense, you wonder why you didn’t think of it yourself. For example, she asks that before planning a wild swim, you refrain from using cosmetics, even deodorant, on your body, because anything on your skin will be transferred to the ecology of the water. She also talks of entering the water gently, remembering that you have entered someone’s else’s habitat, and being careful not to disrupt it.