Ben West
I'm Ben West, a lover of landscapes, wildlife and the outdoors and a lifelong ‘student of nature’.
My interest in natural history started around the age of ten when I discovered an abandoned fledgling in my garden. In an attempt to identify it I borrowed a copy of ‘The Complete Guide to the birdlife of Britain and Europe’ by Peter Hayman and Rob Hume from my local library and quickly became an avid birdwatcher with a particularly keen interest in bird song.
Whilst birdwatching in a local wood in my teenage years I stumbled across an ancient badger sett which led to a lifelong fascination with badgers and badger watching.
Growing up alongside a marvellously overgrown stretch of canal I also became hooked on fishing at an early age and came to know the names and habits of a wide range of freshwater fish species in the process.
During my work as a landscape gardener in my twenties I developed a passion for plants, in particular the wildflowers of the local woods, hedgerows, waysides and riverbanks. This inevitably led to an interest in the insects which depend upon them for sustenance with a strong initial focus on butterflies later expanding to encompass moths, bees, dragonflies and hoverflies.
Moving to the South in my early thirties satisfied a childhood desire to explore the chalk landscapes of the North and South Downs of Surrey and Sussex and the chalk hills of Hampshire and Dorset. Here I became a disciple of the wildflowers, butterflies, birds, badgers and fish inhabiting the chalk steams and downlands and a passion for orchids blossomed.
In recent years, fuelled by a wish to more deeply connect with my environment and my ancestry, I have studied wild food and bushcraft with some of the finest teachers in the country.
It is these teachings, my knowledge of edible and medicinal plants, seaweeds and fungi combined with the lessons learned through my lifelong study of nature, I now wish to share with you through ‘Where the wild things are’. Connecting folks to their environment enables me to pass on my passion for the natural world and hopefully sparks the same awe and wonder in the next generation that I experienced as a child.
A connection to nature is the gift that keeps on giving. It provides deep nourishment to body and soul and helps us appreciate the interconnectedness of all things; how each strand in the web of life depends upon all others to hold it in place. This realisation can be a transformative experience and it is this transformation that I’m looking to achieve with ‘Where the wild things are’. After all, if we no longer have an emotional investment in the natural world who will protect and nurture that world in the future?