'Don’t wish your life away': Ray Mears invites us to reconnect to nature

If there was one man who was unperturbed by lockdown, it was Ray Mears.

The father of British bushcraft welcomed the opportunity that so many took to get back to nature.

And that – a reconnection with the natural world – will be the subject of his forthcoming tour. Simply titled We Are Nature – An Invitation To Reconnect With The Natural World, Mears will be on the road from February next year. It takes in Shrewsbury's Theatre Severn on February 22 and Birmingham Town Hall on March 23.

Mears will take the audience on a journey that will explain how to get the most out of our surroundings by developing and more fully using our extraordinary natural senses of sight, sound, smell, and taste, at the same time as raising awareness of the vast richness of the natural world.

By utilising both demonstration and audience participation, Ray will share knowledge that has, until now, only been accessible to students on his Woodlore courses – which many of whom have described as ‘life-changing’ and ‘as though the blinkers of modern life have been removed’, enabling them to experience the natural world in all its beauty for the very first time.

In a relaxed, accessible style, Ray will entertain audiences with a fascinating, inspirational, and educational show. He will teach them to understand what it means to 'see' with their ears and 'hear' with their eyes. He will also discuss the methods and equipment he uses when tracking rare wildlife for television. He will talk about the future, taking the audience on a fascinating exploration of the advanced technology of night vision and its future benefits - is it truly possible to see in the dark?

“This is all about exploring our hereditary sensory awareness and improving it," he says.

"Modern life doesn’t encourage us to use our abilities, it does the opposite. When you go to the supermarket, everything is laid out in a set order. If you’re looking for a deal, it’s marked with a day-glo sticker. In nature it’s the opposite.

"The concept is this: I want to get people to love nature. The more we can see in nature, the more we will appreciate it. At the moment, even though we go to the countryside, the majority of people are not seeing as much as they can.”

Mears is well placed to effect change. He’s been teaching bushcraft for almost 40 years, professionally. Of all the things he teaches, the one skill that is transformative is the one he’ll teach on tour. In sharing secrets of the natural world, he hopes to encourage people to wonder more, question their role in nature and care more for nature.

“Recently we have learned to value our green spaces more than ever. We need the wilderness as much as the wilderness needs us, it is time to cease being frustrated at wanton crimes against nature and to act to prevent them. Enhanced powers of observation can make a huge difference, protecting the lives of wild creatures that are unable to speak for themselves.”

Over the years Ray has become a bestselling author, photographer, programme maker, broadcaster, and founder of Woodlore, Britain’s oldest established school of Wilderness bushcraft and tracking. Recognised throughout the world as a leading authority on bushcraft and survival, Ray has spent his life travelling the world, communing with nature, observing animal behaviour, and researching primitive life skills.

He is a man who walks more than he talks, he has presented and featured in countless TV programmes and series – in 2005 he survived a helicopter crash while filming in the mountains of Wyoming and in 2010 assisted the Northumbria police, tracking a murderer during Britain’s largest manhunt.

His television series include Wild China, Australian Wilderness with Ray Mears, Tracks, World of Survival, and Money Can’t Buy with Ewan McGregor, and The Real Heroes of Telemark, all of which have inspired generations from children to their grandparents.

“The tour comes at an interesting time. We’re experiencing the effects of Covid and during that time people have learned more about the value of green spaces.

“It’s not just Covid. We live in a period where we are identifying that our current life way is making the planet toxic to life. We are learning how connected and interlinked with nature we are.

“Being in woodland for a period of time is beneficial for people. It’s good for us and even a short term exposure to nature can have a long-term lasting effect. I don’t think we should be surprised. For 2.5 million years we lived cheek by jowl with nature. In terms of our evolutionary lifestyle, in the blink of an eye we have removed ourselves from the natural world. We are children of nature bound by its rules.

“People are waking up to the reality. I still think the politicians have a long way to go. I don’t think the protestors are managing the protest properly either. Insulate have alienated a lot of people. if they’d perhaps gone down a different route they might have won friends and received more support. People might have done what was asked in a way that might have surprised the Government.

"What irritates me is politicians talking about saving the planet. The planet is not a threat. When we are not here, this planet will keep going. It doesn’t care about us. What we are doing is making the planet toxic to life. We are creating a pressure cooker by polluting the air, the rivers, the sea. We are reducing the diversity of life on earth. We are destroying the capability for the planet to maintain life as we know it.”

There is hope, however, albeit it slim.

“At last, at Cop26, I heard the Chinese use the term ‘an existential threat’. That’s what it is. It’s very serious. This tour isn’t necessarily about that. I want to teach people that you can enjoy nature. Maybe we can make the world a better place. We should be passing on an environment.

“There were 120 world leaders that went to Cop26. They are not there because they want to be. Their electorate expected them to see that. Change is going to be driven by the people. I hope it will be driven by the people of the world in response to wisdom, rather than fear.

"I suspect we might not get proper change until the world’s population becomes fearful. What I think is interesting was that totalitarian states were not represented, which is a lasting shame. President Putin should be thoroughly ashamed. I think Cop26 was a massive victory for democracy. Democratic nations are trying to make a change. We can be certain there were very serious conversations were taking place.

"As time goes on these problems will worsen until we address them. I would predict totalitarian states will not survive these issues. If they come to rule the world, the world will end. If not, the people of those nations will rise up and those states will end.”

Ray’s discourse is anything but ‘preacher-ey’. Informed, intelligent and aimed at bringing people through the presentation of facts, he’s a soothsaying educator. He doesn’t wag fingers or tell people what to do, instead, he presents options and facts so that people become more aware of the consequences of their actions.

“I don’t like to tell people what to think or what to believe. I like to stand up on the side of common sense. It’s not about left wing or right wing. I believe in dialogue and people. I believe in communication.

"Tours are about communication and sharing, about having fun. It’s like a campside chat. We’ll have a lot of fun on this tour. I’ll be involving the audience and hoping they will leave the theatres and become better observers so that they enjoy nature more. I want to change people’s situational awareness.”

That’s been Ray’s mission throughout his life. He fell in love with the countryside as a kid and that bond runs deep.

“I just fell in love with being out in nature. Tracking was where it all started, from tracking foxes. I wanted to learn what things you could eat in the countryside when I was very young. I found a book with photographs from the early 1970s with not many colour pages.

"It was a good book. I went out and I found a plant and I decided it was edible and it was wonderful and I’ve never looked back. I remember seeing two fledgling jays out of the nest and I was enthralled. I remember going to Longleat and I wanted to see the rhinoceros. I remember staring in awe of these incredible creatures.

"Now as an adult I can tell you about tracking those animals and knowingly them intimately and being scared by them. I’ve walked amongst them and seen the carcasses where poachers have brutally murdered them for the sake of their horns. That early experience had a profound impact of me.

“I have a lot of different hats and I enjoy that. it means life is interesting. We have 80 summers on earth and that’s not very much at all. That’s the greatest gift of nature. You will be born and you will die. What you do in the middle is up to you. I would encourage people to follow their dreams. Don’t wish you life away. Go and do it.”