Searching for the Realm of the Boar in an Ancient English Forest

Emergence Magazine is a quarterly online publication exploring the threads connecting ecology, culture, and spirituality. As we experience the desecration of our lands and waters, the extinguishing of species, and a loss of sacred connection to the Earth, we look to emerging stories. Each issue explores a theme through innovative digital media, as well as the written and spoken word. The Emergence Magazine podcast features exclusive interviews, narrated essays, stories, and more.

In this narrated essay, Nick Hunt ventures into the Forest of Dean, an ancient mixed woodland, where he searches for the unruly, twilight realm of the boar—a creature who brings him to the boundary between wildness and civilization, history and myth.

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Listen to the rest of this story on Emergence Magazine’s website or by subscribing to the podcast. 

Nick Hunt is a writer, journalist, and storyteller. His published books include Outlandish: Walking Europe’s Unlikely Landscapes, Walking the Woods and the Water, Where the Wild Winds Are, and a work of gonzo ornithology, The Parakeeting of London. Nick is a contributor to and coeditor of the Dark Mountain Project.

Henry McCausland is an artist, illustrator, and author, whose debut graphic novel is Eight-Lane Runaways. His clients include The New York Times, The Guardian, The New Yorker, GQ, and Outside. He lives and works in the farthest reaches of South-West London, where there are exactly as many trees as there are buildings.