I’m Mila, and this week I’ve been doing some work experience with the RSPB Cymru in Cardiff. As my Auntie works for the RSPB, I’ve been lucky enough to grow up knowing and understanding the importance of nature and protecting it. I fully support the work that the RSPB does in conserving areas of natural beauty - which host some of the nation’s rarest species, protecting them for future generations.
I think it’s relatively easy to forget about nature and take it for granted, because for as long as we can remember it’s been all around us. But have you ever thought about what your life would be like without it?
There would be no long walks with your family trekking across big muddy fields, no holidays on white sandy beaches surrounded by vast faces of rock stretching up into the sky. I think that we’ve got so used to having so many places like this that it’s easy to say, “let’s build another estate in this forest”, “let’s put another train line across this stretch of coastland.”
Top left: Mila and friends exploring the local countryside Top right: summer walks along the beach in SouthwoldCenter: feeding some orphan lambs at my Grandparents farm
The thought of people cutting up these clean open spaces bit by bit, and turning everything into the concrete jungle that the world is slowly becoming, deeply saddens me.
Because to me nature is an escape.
An escape from a world full of technology, where it doesn’t matter how many ‘likes’, retweets or messages you get on a social media post. An escape from school work - which seems to pile up unless you’re constantly working and revising. When you’re on the top of a huge mountain looking down at the tiny houses and trees below you - with no wi-fi or mobile service - everything seems so much simpler, and that’s something I cherish.
When I was growing up, even just 15 years ago I didn’t have an ipad, or a huge 50” TV to occupy me. And whilst I’m not at all criticising families who enjoy the odd bit of TV, I do believe that not having any technology at a young age gave me a huge respect for the natural world and everything that lives in it. Because with nothing to distract me, I got to go outside and make mud pies and ‘potions’ in our garden and made bug hotels and dens at our local nature reserve. I think that it was those childhood experiences that have made me so aware of the importance of nature and the importance of preserving it and enjoying it, so that in years to come children will have the same chance to experience the same wonder that you or I did.
So finally, to me, nature means long walks with my friends through boggy marshes, water sloshing into our welly boots. It’s having a butterfly land on your hand in summer, or seeing a herd of deer galloping across a field in front of you. It’s swimming in secluded rivers and huge lakes amongst plants and wildlife, or sitting outside in your garden or a park in the evening and looking up at all the stars.
Nature is powerful, and dangerous and devastatingly beautiful, and that’s something we need to protect.
Images - a young Mila discovering nature