This is the follow-up to The Book of Trespass and it moves from manifesto to action plan. Hayes and a dozen contributors argue that the English are locked out of ninety-odd percent of their own country and the answer isn’t just a right to walk but a right to participate — foraging, coppicing, fishing, swimming, planting, caring for a place you don’t own. There are essays from people already doing it: community woodland, urban foraging, wild swimmers who won river rights, a Dartmoor camping fight. Hayes’s woodcuts run through it. The title comes from a tree, the wild service tree, that used to be a marker of ancient woodland.
Wild Service