Simon Barnes Author and Journalist

Sacred Combe Safari III

What the hell day is it today?

There are moments on the Sacred Combe Safaris when even the most harassed and pressured of us becomes time-rich. Sometimes these periods are close to being the best part of the trip: idle hours in a hut which has no luxury but its location: the Luangwa Valley: the finest and wildest place on the planet.

These moments come when we reach the bush camps. Here we spend five days without seeing a vehicle: walking and sitting, looking and listening. It’s just us and the bush, the days and the nights, the barred owlet calling obsessively, the impalas tiptoeing by for a drink, and the richness of life going on all around.

Sometimes I sits and thinks and sometimes I just sits. Perhaps the latter is the more profound state of being. Occasionally I write in a notebook. On some occasions it’s been the first stirrings of the plot of a novel, on others a line of thought that goes nowhere.

Last year, as I was co-leading Sacred Combe Safari II, I made notes for a book of spells: for a book about magic: for a book about making hidden things visible. It all began with elephants: I was so still and quiet that they walked right up to my hut, and it was as if my stillness and quietness had called them into being.

I began to make a list of ways of bringing the wild world closer to us harassed and time-poor people of the 21^st century. Sometimes you can do so with the help of a bit of equipment that costs a few quid. My own favourite bit of kit is a supermarket carrier bag: place one in your back-pocket and you will be forever richer. You can see how that works in the book.

That’s because those jottings actually went somewhere: published today as Rewild Yourself: 23 Spellbinding Was of Making Nature More Visible.

Here is a clue as what the damn thing is all about.