Stay Wild

Stay Wild is an inspiration to disconnect from the day-to-day and reconnect with the great outdoors, to experience life fully immersed in nature and celebrate truly unique moments in the wild. From lakeside cabins to orchard treehouses, yurts deep in the woods or converted circus wagons overlooking nothing but wildflower meadows, this book is a journey through Canopy & Stars’ one-of-a-kind, low-impact  and secluded getaways, stopping off along the way to contemplate how and why we should all live a little more wild.

We’ve all daydreamed about stepping out of our lives and moving to the country. In our heads we quit our jobs, wave goodbye to the city, and live in harmony with nature. Very few of us ever actually do it, but this book demonstrates that even small-scale explorations and brief escapes into nature can stimulate a sense of wonder that so often gets lost in our everyday life.

Slow travel, though, isn’t actually about speed, it is about enjoying the journey, taking detours where you feel like it, following a river, and literally going with the flow. It’s the philosophy that travel isn’t about how much you see, but about how you connect with what you encounter, an attitude that runs through every decision you make — the opposite of the destination box-ticking mentality. Nature, so blissfully empty of the things that pressure us to rush, makes slow travel easy. Its beauty is simple, accessible, and often a lot closer than you think.

Thanks to our innate evolutionary connection to nature, the benefit of time spent in and around the outdoors can be felt with little effort on our part other than the intention to make room for it. Scientific research shows that escaping the city to immerse yourself amongst the trees can reduce your blood pressure and stress levels, improve your metabolic health, and boost your immune system. At the end of the day, though, it might just be about the simplest of things like that particular deep and dreamlike sleep you have as you drift off smelling of woodsmoke in the enveloping company of wild things. Learning how to do nothing may be the most vital skill for surviving our frenetic, overwhelmed, over-stimulated city lives – a stay in the outdoors is the perfect chance to master the art of being bored.

The book includes a series of features to inspire the joy of local, low-impact microadventures:

・The Outdoor Life — by co-organiser of Glastonbury Festival Emily Eavis
・The Ultimate Life More Wild & Slowing the Pace — by Canopy & Stars’ Chris Elmes
・The Science of Stepping Outside — by psychotherapist and writer Ruth Allen
・Our Wild Future — by campaigner and environmentalist Mya-Rose Craig
・Our Outdoor Pantry — by chef, writer, and forager Gill Meller
・The Meaning of (Cabin) Life — by cabin lover Jack Boothby
・Weekend Wanderings — by expert microadventurer and explorer Siân Lewis
・The Joy of Doing Nothing — by Canopy & Stars’ David West

About the co-editor
For over a decade, Canopy & Stars has been inspiring people to reconnect with nature. As curators of a unique collection of places to stay, their aim is to make travel as low impact as possible. By working with owners who build and live sustainably, and encouraging people to appreciate the natural world, they have connected thousands of guests with Europe’s great outdoors. They also believe in business being a force for good, environmentally and socially, and are majority employee-owned company with another 24 percent owned by a charitable trust focused on environmental causes, as well as part of a B Corp. What is more, they plant a tree for every booking at one of their amazing spaces.