This Christmas, we extend out a call to you. A call to find your happy place, a call to spend time in nature, a call to let yourself heal, a call to escape the busyness of everyday life, a call to go back to your roots and let yourself go this Festive Season…

Merry Merry Christmas to all of our beloved Blog Family wherever you may be around the world today!

Growing up, Christmas was always a very special time in our family, we didn’t necessarily have the extravagant decorations of the ‘White Christmases’ that many people experience in the Northern Hemisphere. But what we did have was a subtly decorated house with many natural decorations, reindeer made out of wooden stumps, pine cones painted gold with a natural wreath hanging up, a Christmas playlist on in the background, and of course, a natural (real) Christmas Tree, harvested from the plantation on our family farm.

Then came the decorating of the tree, where amongst myself and my two brothers, we would always cause trouble with each other altering and changing the decorations until finally, hours later the tree would be done. We love Christmas not for the materialistic presents, although that is also a highlight, but rather for the invaluable time together and the whole ambience around the Christmas feeling. It is the only time of the year where it is only family and the time is spent uninterrupted.

This particular Christmas is an unusually special one for me, as I get to celebrate it with an enormous bundle of joy, my little son Sebastian’s first Christmas. He is only beginning his journey into years of celebration and I hope that he begins to understand that the true excitement of Christmas comes from the opportunity to connect with the things, places and people that really call to us…

Merry Christmas – we hope you hear ‘the call of the wild’ this Festive Season.

The Call of the Wild – Robert William Service

Have you gazed on naked grandeur where there’s nothing else to gaze on,
Set pieces and drop-curtain scenes galore,
Big mountains heaved to heaven, which the blinding sunsets blazon,
Black canyons where the rapids rip and roar?
Have you swept the visioned valley with the green stream streaking through it,
Searched the Vastness for something you have lost?
Have you strung your soul to silence? Then for God’s sake go and do it;
Hear the challenge, learn the lesson, pay the cost.

Have you wandered in the wilderness, the sagebrush desolation,
The bunch-grass levels where the cattle graze?
Have you whistled bits of rag-time at the end of all creation,
And learned to know the desert’s little ways?
Have you camped upon the foothills, have you galloped o’er the ranges,
Have you roamed the arid sun-lands through and through?
Have you chummed up with the mesa? Do you know its moods and changes?
Then listen to the Wild — it’s calling you.

Have you known the Great White Silence, not a snow-gemmed twig aquiver?
(Eternal truths that shame our soothing lies.)
Have you broken trail on snowshoes? mushed your huskies up the river,
Dared the unknown, led the way, and clutched the prize?
Have you marked the map’s void spaces, mingled with the mongrel races,
Felt the savage strength of brute in every thew?
And though grim as hell the worst is, can you round it off with curses?
Then hearken to the Wild — it’s wanting you.

Have you suffered, starved and triumphed, grovelled down, yet grasped at glory,
Grown bigger in the bigness of the whole?
“Done things” just for the doing, letting babblers tell the story,
Seeing through the nice veneer the naked soul?
Have you seen God in His splendours, heard the text that nature renders?
(You’ll never hear it in the family pew.)
The simple things, the true things, the silent men who do things —
Then listen to the Wild — it’s calling you.

They have cradled you in custom, they have primed you with their preaching,
They have soaked you in convention through and through;
They have put you in a showcase; you’re a credit to their teaching —
But can’t you hear the Wild? — it’s calling you.
Let us probe the silent places, let us seek what luck betide us;
Let us journey to a lonely land I know.
There’s a whisper on the night-wind, there’s a star agleam to guide us,
And the Wild is calling, calling . . . let us go.

– Robert William Service