Miles Irving has been writing, speaking & teaching on the topic of wild food for over fifteen years. He hosts the World Wild Podcast connecting foragers, foodies and philosophers from around the world. Miles is convinced that the biggest factor in our current ecological crisis is people’s disconnection from landscapes and wild ecosystems, therefore the most urgent task is re-connection. Since food is the most direct means through which this can be accomplished, Miles is exploring the edible possibilities of the wild as a “route back into a functional niche within wild ecosystems for humans.”

Led by Miles, he describes the event as follows: We will walk off campus and discover wild edible and medicinal plants and taste, touch and smell them as well as learning their visual characteristics. As we do this, we will consider how we are entering and engaging with the campus perhaps for the first time as animals, as biological organisms who share the same ecosystem as the plants and whose bodies, once we have digested them, will have made these plants part of us. We will think a lot about synergy and symbiosis, how for example, the wild plant plantain contains a fungus in its cells which allows it to taste like mushrooms and gives it its antiseptic properties as a pulse healing herb. We will consider our own gut flora which are also in a sense our ancestors, to this day using basic neurotransmitters they also make for us. We ourselves are an ecosystem! Equally when humans become part of an ecosystem again by knowing and making use of wild plants and making them part of our culture, we re-enter a symbiotic relationship with the other members of our multi species community.

Miles will explore how plants can benefit from us being involved in their life cycles. The outcome will be to have enough staff and students for a lived experience of participation in the campus landscape and ecology which will in time enable a world view shift back towards a paradigm of ourselves being an integrated part of our surroundings, which I hope they will make a cornerstone for their lives, and careers.

NOTE ON ACCESSIBILITY: Due to the hilly and uneven terrain that will be explored outside of the campus during this event, regrettably it would not be suitable for anyone with restricted mobility or who would require wheelchair access.