Tile & me: Adele Aitchison

MY TILE + ME

1. What’s your name? Adele Aitchison

2. What’s your What3Words tile? ranged.following.pacemaker

3. Where is it? Waterfall on The Lugg

QUESTIONS

1. What does wildness mean to you? 

Watching or experiencing wildness feels like freedom to me.

I think anytime you’re outside, it’s possible to get that slightly giddy sense of wildness. Feeling the wind, rain, snow, and sun on my face. Just taking down the manmade barrier and getting closer to nature: getting soaked to the skin on a grassy common, crunching through unspoilt snow on a mountainside, jumping into an inky blue lake. Being amongst it makes me feel alive. And anything I can do to support it feels like the right thing. 

I love spotting moss or weeds growing in unlikely spots. It’s a reminder that, really, if all our manmade trappings weren’t here, wildness would rule the roost. The more we can let it, the better for the whole ecosystem.

2. What first drew you to Wild Mosaic? 

I like the idea of democratising rewilding. That, tile by tile, a group of individuals can make a difference in an affordable and scalable way. 

Rewilding can feel like quite an exclusive thing, the preserve of landowners, so I really appreciate the fact that Wild Mosaic chunks land into affordable little squares that give lots of individuals the pleasure of being connected with nature and feeling some agency amongst the doom and gloom of the larger environmental narrative.

3. Can you describe your relationship to your tile?

It’s joyful. I love Jon’s dispatches. I chose it for the location rather than the words: next to water where I thought there may be some interesting wildlife returning. Next time I choose one, perhaps when our baby daughter is born, I might pay more attention to the words too. 

4. And how do you bring more wildness into your life? 

It starts in the garden. After reading that any little bit of water introduced increases biodiversity, we’ve let an old concrete basin fill with rainwater. There are frogs around the garden, so hopefully there will be frogspawn at some point…and that would naturally help with the slug invasion. Last year, we accidentally left a buffet out for the slugs. They ate pretty much all the veg we tried to grow. At least something enjoyed the fruits of our labour!

5. If you could be a ‘Wild Thing’, what would you be? 

A gazelle, speeding and bouncing through the open plains. Hopefully, without bumping into any predators.

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Become a rewilder

Whether you’re longing to reconnect with wildness or wanting to deepen your relationship with the landscape you call home, Wild Mosaic is a simple way to become part of Britain’s rewilding story.

Your 3m x 3m tile will support the restoration of wilder life. You’ll receive regular updates about your tile’s transformation, watch as drainage ditches become ponds, and witness land burst back into life season after season.

Join our 130+ strong community of rewilders and claim your own patch of wildness today.

www.wildmosaic.eco/adopt-a-plot