Ray Mears on his new book, the power of our senses and survival

Virgin Radio

25 Mar 2021, 11:12

Nature's finest Ray Mears joined the Chris Evans Breakfast Show with Sky to talk about his latest inspiring offering, becoming one with the wild and cracking into kids' curiosity to get them loving the great outdoors. 

He told Chris: “I got asked to write a book about rewilding but everybody's written about that and they've done a much better job than I could. I thought what we need is to rewild ourselves because if we're going to have all this nature we need to know what to do with it. "And so I sat down to share some of my experiences and my feelings on that and then lockdown came along and all of a sudden it felt really important to write it down. Maybe I felt mortal."

On staycationing this year, he said: “I think this is the most beautiful island on the planet and the diversity that we have is astonishing - not just in the human population but in nature and landscapes too. These are the things we should celebrate and enjoy and get the most out of."

On survival tricks for all, he said: “It’s all about using our senses, it's about opening your eyes, opening your sense of smell, our taste, touch, all of these senses. 

"We were hunter gatherers for most of our history so we have hardwired into us these incredible abilities that we hardly use and what I want to do is encourage people to use them.

"Of course once you start using them you'll start to become more adventurous, like crikey this is good, where can I take it and so I've tried to provide the information to keep people safe if they take those skills to a more challenging environment or situations.

“If you just basically deny yourself a sense and your brain starts to crave it. What we're doing is we're talking to the brain, because the brain is the control box.

"Our senses are working all the time, but our brain is choosing to filter information in or out. When we use a microphone in television, it can't filter out the sound of a train or a plane going past, but our brains do.

"What we have to do is tell our brains, I want to hear everything, don't deny me the information that's that I should be receiving."

It's important - and pretty easy - to teach our kids to get back to nature. He said: “The key thing is it's really difficult with youngsters to get them to be quiet and to be still but if you can crack that then nature takes over because then they start to see things and they become curious.

"Children's curiosity is all that's needed for learning all you have to do is support it and provide the information to answer the questions.”  

We Are Nature is out today.