Wanderland

Jini Reddy, Wanderland: A Search for Magic in the Landscape (Bloomsbury, 2020)

What does it mean for a landscape to be magical?  Jini Reddy’s Wanderland is simultaneously a search for magic in the landscape and a search for belonging.  As someone born in Britain to South Asian parents from South Africa who grew up in Canada and now lives in London, Reddy is well travelled and multicultural.  But she is also looking for connection to place.  This sense of connection does not come from the exclusive idea of a ‘mythical landscape’, which Reddy contrasts starkly with a magical landscape.  This contrast is explained most clearly towards the end of the book (248-249):

What is the mythic landscape anyway?  The features of land, river, sky that become associated with stories of heroism and courage?  I have to look these things up, for they are not native to me.  What is so wrong, I ask myself for the umpteenth time, with wanting to connect with the land on your own terms?  I am all for operating in a world of spirt, of having a direct experience of the magical, of the Other, as the indigenous people from all cultures have done.  But which specific culture am I meant to identify with?  If you come from a multicultural background, it isn’t an easy question to answer (248). 

In contrast, a magical landscape is much more inclusive: 

A quest for the magical feels to me inclusive, open to anyone of any culture, any background.  It could include the mthyic landscape of this land, and all the mythical characters and ‘players’ and stories if you wanted it to, but it doesn’t have to.  It could be about connecting with mystery, seeing things with the eyes of wonder, the eyes of a child – no cultural baggage attached.  That is much easier to access (249). 

I like this contrast, and I like the ‘take it or leave it’ attitude towards the mythical that is included in Reddy’s understanding of the magical landscape.  Much of the book does engage with mythical landscape, albeit frequently in highly ambivalent ways. 

It’s not entirely clear where Christianity fits into the ‘mythical’ landscape that Reddy is challenging.  She’s clearly not comfortable with the Christian faith, although she’s open to experimentation, as demonstrated by her first visit to Lindisfarne.  There are several comments about the imperial dimensions of Christianity, and the fact that Christians attacked pagans in Britain as well as around the world.  But it tend to be the ‘Arthurian’ myths and legends she is most sceptical of. 

In response to a comment about sycamores being non-native ‘bullies’, there is a really interesting discussion of non-native trees: 

I have always felt uncomfortable with the whole ‘native’ and ‘non-native’ trees talk.  If you were to replace the word ‘tree’ with people it would all start to sound ominous.  It may feel invasive, but it’s hardly the fault of the tree.  It is only doing what it is hardwired to do: grow.  I know that native species are a part of the local ecosystem and have lived for thousands of years in perfect harmony with their environment.  A non-native tree is a foreigner tree, an outlier, an interloper.  I know the mantra – I’ve heard it intoned often enough.  (123)

Reddy goes on to describe taking part in a conservation project in the wilds of Scotland that involved killing trees through ring-barking (‘In the end I skulked off from the group by way of protest.  I will always have a place in my heard for the refugees and the migrants of the wooded world’ [123]).  Race and gender are both present throughout the book, but neither dominate the narrative. 

The contrast between urban and rural is also present throughout the book, but in a way that doesn’t create a binary contrast.  Reddy frequently seeks solace in a local woodland near her house in London, perhaps suggesting something of a nature-culture divide, but less of an urban-rural divide. 

The book contains a wonderful attempt to define ‘wild’ (223).  ‘What does wild mean to me?’ She asks.  Going feral? Living in tun with the rhythms of nature?  Following your desires?  Liberating yourself from fear and the expectations of others?  If so, this year I’m living wilder than I ever have.  And what does ‘nature’ mean?  Everything that’s not man-made?  The natural world, including humans?’