_Wild Writings_

_Letters from the Wild_

Martyn Murray

Martyn Murray has spent a lifetime travelling in search of nature truths.

For over half a century he’s searched in some of the remotest parts on the planet and found that it was only by standing still and paying attention, that truths revealed themselves.

Many of the places he visited are gone. Here are some excerpts from his writings…

MY Name is Earth

My Name is Earth by Martyn Murray speaks with the voice of the planet, pleading for humanity to see the wounds it inflicts. It calls for a gentler dance with nature, a return to harmony, where balance is restored. It shows how the Old Way of our ancestors, still practised by Indigenous People today, can be recovered within our busy, thrusting, modern societies. It reveals how human needs and nature’s needs can be jointly met within landscapes and seascapes of the world. The economy can be greened. The wild places can be restored. People everywhere can find joy and contentment in connecting more closely with today’s nature. It is with the bioscape that we may honour Earth’s heartbeat, and safeguard life’s fragile future, through unity and care. Link to synopsis.

About the book, By Jane Goodall PhD, DBE & UN Messenger of Peace

This important book stresses the urgent need to restore our respect for and spiritual connection with nature. My Name is Earth draws on ways in which the indigenous peoples have typically understood and lived in harmony with the natural world. Today our unsustainable demands on our planet’s natural resources has put us dangerously out of balance with our environment. From his unique perspective Murray shows how we can gradually restore what we have stolen before it is too late.

Trees of Knowledge

“If man was not so ignorant, rainforests would be the wonder of the world.”

Botanist John Corner

The transformative experience of discovering the rich biodiversity and intricate ecosystem of rainforests, which changed the author’s initial perception from seeing them as dark and uninviting to recognising them as vibrant, complex, and filled with extraordinary life.

Click here for full article

Martyn in the Sumatran Rainforest late 70’s

The Storm Leopard 

MartynMurray.com

It was the summer of 1970 and it seems a long way off now, almost a different me. I’d ended up in Kenya on a 10-week trip, by accident almost.

Sitting beside me, the old-timer started to talk of Kenya as it had been in the 1920s, with remote mountains, untouched forests and endless plains teeming with game. Much of it was now gone having been turned under the plough, overrun with livestock, or converted to forestry plantations, even where the land had supposedly been protected from development.

‘People are plain greedy,’ the old-timer concluded, ‘and nothing is going to change that.’

‘Not everyone,’ I protested. ‘Some people do care about wildlife. They can make a difference.’

The old guy gazed at me a moment in silence. “You mark my words: they will all disappear one day. Every single wild place.

I realised why I had come. I needed to face up to that old-timer’s challenge… the end of the wild.

Was he right? …I intended to find out.

Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species: Bite Sized

Excerpt from Martyn’s exploration of Darwin’s seminal work, published in Wild Nature 2014

Darwin’s style of thinking, is the very antithesis of the compartmentalised mind which the contemporary world encourages. As a result he is one of the most creative scientists ever, and surely the most creative of biologists.

For me, one of the most heroic elements of the Origin of Species is Darwin’s struggle with the concept of heredity in the complete absence of knowledge about genes and chromosomes.

The Origin penetrates with its insights, satisfies with its analogies, and charms with its metaphors.

Buy yourself a copy, find a comfy chair, and enjoy the most amazing Victorian nature ride ever.

William Todd-Jones

William Todd-Jones (Todd) has had a long career in the creative industries and produced art for audiences across the globe. He is also a long-standing advocate and contributor to wildlife. His writing draws on these experiences and seeks to speak simple truths.

If you listen, you will hear… 
The geophony – the planet… the sound of a storm.
The biophony – its life… a bee sharing the whereabouts of pollen,

The anthrophony – us… a child laughing, a forest burning. 
By hearing, we remember.  

Nature Connecting.

Being connected with Nature helps us be well…

In nature, we are improved.
Being connected with others helps us be-well…

In community, we are at home.
Nature and each other is a source of solace

Immerse yourself in both.
Connecting nature & community
Is a fitting dedication of our time alive”