Wild Women

I've been feeling a bit trapped by domesticity. Feeling the call of the wild. Particularly since my whole life now revolves around the home - it is both my place of work as well as where i bring up my child, cook and eat with my husband and friends. I am in the same space nearly every day. As much as I love it, I was starting to feel a bit too domesticated, too safe. Sometimes I look into the garden and want to become like a little ladybird and crawl into the cool blades of grass, roam around the cornflowers in the corner and bask in the sun.

wild rice harvesting New Zealand

So I did the next best thing to taking off into a jungle and started reading a book I bought for Gustavo which has been sitting on a bookshelf waiting. Wild by Jay Griffiths has taken me in a rickety canoe through the Amazon, igniting that flame inside which burns to be free, to be sensual, raw, dancing, with the richest of smells and colours. Griffiths writing is extraordinary; she is a true wild women in every sense, full of the wisdom, madness and exuberance of life.

This is an extract from the book where she describes why she wrote it:

I felt its urgent demand in the blood. I could hear its call. Its whistling disturbed me by day and its howl woke me in the night. I heard the drum of the sun. Every path was a calling cadence, the flight of every bird a beckoning, the colour of ice an invitation: come. Every mountain top intrigued my mind, for the wind at the peaks was the flautist, licking his lips, dangerously mesmerizing me with almost inaudible melodies. This was the calling, the vehement, irresistible demand of the feral angel – take flight.

I was looking for the will of the wild. I was looking for how that will expressed itself in elemental vitality, in savage grace. Wildness is resolute for life: it cannot be otherwise for it will die in captivity. It is elemental: pure freedom, pure passion, pure hunger. It is its own manifesto.

Last weekend I escaped with my toddler daughter while Gustavo was working, and went to the sea with some friends. After a hot day the thunder and rain were a cool relief. The lightening sparked that wild flame inside that had dwindled to a tiny ember.