The wild is calling

As my Conserver award is nearing an end, I've been reflecting on what it's meant to me, and I think it's about connection. Connecting with people and the 'wild' on my walk last year....but I've also been thinking about the connection between Scotland and America that was not only important to John Muir, but also a turning point in my own life when I moved from Edinburgh to Minnesota aged 22 to undertake a Professional Naturalist Fellowship program at an Environmental Learning Center. That year set me on course for a life of nature and being outdoors, and gave me friends who love that too and who are still an important part of my life 25 years on. So I was surprised to find another connection recently when a volunteer doing the Sustrans artwork survey sent in a picture of a memorial to Robert William Service from Kilwinning. When I lived in Minnesota we regularly read Service's 'The Call of the Wild' at campfires for the kids staying at the centre. I had always assumed he was from the Yukon but it turns out he spent most of his childhood in Kilwinning and Glasgow. I've been remembering the end of the poem this weekend. Walking the John Muir Way inspired me to do more of Scotland's Great Trails and I've just cycled the Formartine and Buchan Way in Aberdeenshire, and it was muddy and sunny and windy and painful and joyous and full of wildlife and empty spaces and I loved it. I can't wait to do more. "And the Wild is calling, calling . . . let us go." (Memorial picture: Wikimedia Commons)