“Realising the transformative and powerful experience of feeling that resilience from being able to gather things from the natural world and provide for yourself…it’s a really important thing I try to encourage, that it’s not an exploitative relationship, that it’s a reciprocal relationship, that you give back”
Robin Bowman is a true inspiration. The co-founder of The Old Way programme, mentor of teenagers at WildWise camps, tracker, bushman and expedition leader in the Kalahari and proponent of the ecological restoration movement.
Recording this podcast episode gave us so much to think about as we listened to his stories and examples.
Such as spending time with the San Ju Bush people of the Namibian Kalahari learning indigenous bow hunting and tracking skills, and grass hut making.
At his rewilding project Moor Barton, mimicking the behaviour of native animal species long since gone from our land to help rewild parts of the Dartmoor moors, gathering oysters and cockles on the bank of the river Dart, encouraging people to sleep outdoors and spend time in the woods at night and not be scared.
These are just some of the range of topics we cover in this podcast.
Robin is a champion for being a participant in nature, rather than an observer, and leaves us at the end with a real call to arms… now really is The Great Turning.
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Our guest
Woodsman, tracker, falconer and bird language expert, Robin has 20 years’ experience of running nature connection, wilderness skills and bushcraft programs and courses. As the co-founder of The Old Way (www.theoldway.info) program Robin offers a deep dive into human rewilding, exploring the hunter- gatherer lifeways in 21st century Devon. Within this program Robin also runs expeditions to the Kalahari desert in Africa to work with and support the remote San Ju/Hoansi Bushman communities.
He has taught at Schumacher College for many years on various programs with themes around tracking, nature connection and trees as well as on the Call of the Wild program.
When he’s not tracking cheetahs in Africa, he may be mentoring teenagers whilst running the Hunger Games themed camps, a Trojan Horse of nature connection for teens he founded with WildWise (www.wildwisehungergames.co.uk) or working with prisoners and people in addiction recovery with the charity Write to Freedom. He has also been an integral part of the Art of Mentoring and 8 Shields movement in the UK.
You’re as likely though to find him behind a chainsaw or with a pair of binoculars in hand as rewilding and ecological restoration is his other passion. Robin manages The Moor Barton Rewilding project on Dartmoor; a 62 acre site of developing wood pasture, wetlands and mature woodland where the land and people have been rewilding for over a decade.
In his spare time (ha ha ha) he lives in the heart of Dartmoor on a smallholding with his family foraging, fishing and doing the school run!
