WHEN OUTDOOR MAGAZINES wheel out their ‘most remote places in Britain’ material, it’s usually a cue for another piece on the Fisherfield. Otherwise known as the Great Wilderness, it deserves its reputation as mountainous and majestic but perhaps gets undue attention on the remoteness front, given it’s a mere two-hour walk from the nearest road.
Surely that’s it for Britain though, isn’t it? We’re told over and over that we don’t have ‘wilderness’ – we don’t have the scale or the same system of public lands as the States, say. Learning more about our own history of enclosure, as well as that of other countries, I’ve grown to understand how our own domestic trauma was exported to foreign fields in the form of colonialism and wondered if we’re looking for answers in the wrong place. Maybe we have more in common with others, despite our size. Perhaps our wild frontiers might still be best sought at the fringes, just like the ‘Wild West’ of the past. The ‘wilderness’ of America was certainly populated by native peoples, as was ours. And remote from where, exactly? Does human presence make it less wild, or do we need to rethink?
