My bookshelf·Index No. 0294

Wild Service

On My Shelf, Not Yet Read

The follow-up to The Book of Trespass, and it moves from manifesto to action plan. Hayes and a dozen contributors argue that the English are locked out of ninety-odd percent of their own country, and that the answer isn’t just a right to walk but a right to participate — foraging, coppicing, fishing, swimming, planting, caring for a place you don’t own. Essays from people already doing it: Community woodland, urban foraging, wild swimmers who won river rights, a Dartmoor camping fight. Hayes’s woodcuts run through it. The title comes from a tree, the wild service tree, that used to be a marker of ancient woodland.

Wild Service
By Nick Hayes. Seaquine Publishing, 2023. 176 pages.