Volunteering 

I bent down and blew air into the base of the bonfire, the coals grew bright and wood smoke curled up, blending with the mist of a damp autumn day. Around me the other wildlife conservation group volunteers were busy clearing scrub from the hillside so that next year this patch of chalk grassland would sing with flowers and butterflies.

My hands were mud smeared, my hair smelt of smoke and my fleece was peppered with burn holes so why was I so happy?

It’s been 15 years since I first met this group of volunteers. For six of those years I was the group leader but now I go out as a fellow volunteer, just one of the gang. We cut scrub in the autumn and winter, waymark footpaths in the spring, scythe hay meadows in the summer. Over the years we have seen each other through good times and bad. We have been cold and sodden and grumpy and we have laughed until we cried while wading down rivers through clouds of mayflies. Slowly this group of people have become more than just a bunch of individuals I see once a week to pursue a hobby, they have become my friends, more than that, they have become my family.

Conservation Volunteering

The happiness I feel when out with this gang is partly because conservation volunteering provides all 5 ‘Ways to Wellbeing’ the charity Mind suggests we practice daily to sustain good mental health. Step one is to connect with others and I have made some of my most important friendships within the group. Step two is being active, which is great for improved sleep and mood. Step three is taking notice and living in the moment. Being out with the volunteers helps put my problems into perspective. Step four is learning new skills; as a volunteer I have grown in physical confidence and am now much more willing to have a go at DIY around the home. Lastly, Step five is giving something back. Most volunteers are motivated to make a difference in the world.

Over the years I have seen the positive impact that being part of this group has had on the mental health of young and old alike. Young people, crippled with social anxiety, felt accepted, grew in confidence and moved on with their lives. Older people, recently retired, found a sense of purpose and made new friends. I also found the volunteers at a low point in my own life and still, to this day, feel a sense of belonging and surety after a day out working alongside them that I don’t think I would get in quite the same way by going for a walk with a friend.

My belief is that working with our hands, outside in the woods as part of a multi-generational community taps into something fundamental to human happiness. That’s a big claim but the work the volunteers do is part of a long chain of land management that goes back centuries and somehow still feels familiar. If our great, great grandparents could step into a clearing in the woods around one of our bonfires on a winters day they would instantly feel at home. The tools we use; hand saws for coppicing trees, billhooks, curved knives used for lopping off side branches, long handled forks for turning in the bonfire, are similar to those used by woodsmen down the centuries. They would recognise our faces, smoke smeared, our clothes, patched and singed, our muscles working in the way they were designed for. They would recognise the laughter and the gossip, the shared lunches eaten while seated on a pile of cut logs, the tiredness of a day spent outdoors.

The reasons we do the work may well have changed. Coppicing, for instance, is a centuries old form of woodland management. It involves cutting trees down at the base from which they regrow as long straight poles. It was once used to produce small timber for creating everything from broom handles, to sheep hurdles and wood fuel for the blacksmiths. Now we coppice to create a chequerboard of habitats, some areas flooded with sunlight creating a rush of woodland flowers and nectar for butterflies like the chocolate brown and orange Duke of Burgandy. Some areas with a denser canopy, ideal for nightingales. We no longer use the cut wood for firing ovens, instead we use it to protect riverbanks against erosion.

Although the reasons for the work differ, the volunteers and I are still part of the working life of the English countryside. Working in the woods alongside my friends I feel in harmony with nature, part of the cycle of the seasons in a way that is hard to replicate unless you get your hands dirty.  Like our ancestors we are also bought together by a common purpose. In our case to give something back to a countryside that has given us so much pleasure and to feel we have spent our day doing something positive for nature even if only in a small way. It is this sense of common purpose that has bonded our group of eclectic individuals together.

In their book; Self Care for the Real World, Nadia Narain and Katia Narain Phillips suggest that we all look for a tribe, a group of people who will “provide you with a primal feeling of belonging.” Your tribe, they say, may appear on first site to be nothing like you “but you may find you have a deeper connection that’s less about where you come from or what you look like and more about beliefs.” To the outside world the volunteers, whose ages range from their twenties to their eighties, may appear to have little to bind them. Many of them have differing politics and personalities,  but in our world of rag tag layers and mud splattered boots we have learnt that what unites us is stronger than what divides us. Conservation volunteering is a great leveller as Roy, one of the volunteers says, “we may all walk from different parts of the city but once we are gathered together for a day out in the woods we are all on the same starting block.”

We are held together by our love of Nature. Nature is hardwired into our genes but increasingly we are alienated from it. We spend our days working indoors cut off from such life-giving essentials as fresh air and sunlight. Our towns are lost amid noise and traffic, our every move watched and followed by gadgets that we welcome into our lives. Small wonder that our systems are over stressed and anxiety, depression and social isolation are on the rise and, even those of us who can’t put a label on things, feel stretched thin.

Conservation volunteering can not hope to cure all societies ills but for me and the other volunteers the woods offer a respite from the stresses of modern life. A chance to return to the world of bird song and dirt beneath the fingernails, to regain a sense of community and shared purpose. All I know is that when I am breathing air into a bonfire, cheek pressed to the dirt, eyebrows singing from the heat, a crow calling overhead and the chatter of my gang all around, the self doubt and ‘To Do’ list cease to matter. That feeling of happiness will wash over me and I will know that this is where I belong.

Carol Donaldson

Carol Donaldson is a writer and naturalist. Originally from Essex, she has worked for many of Britain’s best wildlife charities and currently works as a freelance ecologist advising farmers across Kent and Essex to restore wetlands and rivers and manage land for waders. Her first book, On the Marshes, was published by Little Toller in 2017. She is a regular contributor to the Guardian travel pages and was BBC Wildlife Magazine’s Travel Writer of the Year in 2011. Carol lives in a very old and slightly crumbling house in Kent and enjoys wild swimming and dancing the Argentine Tango. Her new book The Volunteers: A Memoir of Conservation, Companionship and Community is published by Summersdale Publishers summersdale.com/titles/carol-donaldson/the-volunteers/9781837993277/