In Kate’s humble opinion, we fail to respect country pursuits
PEOPLE who live in the countryside and do practical work are “belittled” by those who live in the city, the former president of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds has said.
Kate Humble, the wildlife presenter, said that attitudes towards the countryside were “disparaging” and innovations which came from animals and nature were often ignored due to a dismissive view of the countryside.
Speaking after her talk at Henley Literary Festival, Ms Humble said some ideas by rural pioneers were often seen as “cranky nonsense”.
She said: “A lot of people are very disparaging about people in the countryside full stop. They think they spend lots of time leaning on gates chewing on bits of straw and doing not much else.
“Actually the countryside is full of people innovating and being incredibly inventive, partly because a lot of the time we don’t have the resources and the facilities that people living in towns do. Our default is sometimes to be a bit disparaging or dismissive of the new and what might be seen as quite quirky, but history tells us that quirky can and often does become mainstream, to our eternal benefit.”
She added that young people were in danger of losing “contact with nature” including survival skills which could sustain humanity in the event of an apocalypse.
Citing the novel Station Eleven, by Emily St John Mandel, about a pandemic which leads to the collapse of society, she said: “Deep inside all of us we haven’t forgotten our inner caveman – and it’s the best bit of all of us.”
She added she was “ashamed to say” she did not have practical rural knowledge such as how to skin a rabbit. She said: “I think it’s really dangerous if we forget the knowledge of our ancestors.
“We’ve only got the knowledge we have now because of the people who came before us, and to slightly dismiss it as old fashioned or as primitive is a big mistake. That ancient knowledge, or the knowledge of people who live not in the Western world, is every bit as valid as the knowledge of some great scientist.”
She said that “as a species we are just f------ crap” at acting on evidence of new ideas.
Ms Humble who, as well as presenting wildlife programmes, runs a rural skills centre from her farm in South Wales, said her next book, about the psychology of walking, would examine the positive mental and physical impact of being outdoors. She said it “would be wonderful if part of the curriculum was more practical”.
“Mucking about in nature is far more valuable than having 28 GCSES and Alevels,” she said.