What is Wild?

Friendly Deer      April, 2021

My writing group is exploring the theme "wild" this month.

When I first saw the theme, I felt a little bit panicky inside. In my life, I have learned how to carefully control myself in a myriad of ways, most of the time. Thinking about wildness brought up a lot of thoughts and feelings. The very first was, “What could I possibly say, or even know, about Wildness when I struggle to let myself go enough to voice what I really think most of the time?”

We often use the word wild to indicate that something or someone is being unpredictable.

The wild animals in my backyard for example, and specifically the coyotes, who have so many cultural negative connotations associated with them, are believed to be completely unpredictable. And not only that, but unrestrained as well.

Careful out there with the coyotes, they will eat your children when you aren't watching. 

I came face to face with one a few years ago, while taking a walk on our property. Coyote seemed, like me, surprised, a little unsure, perhaps curious. Coyote looked at me. I looked back. I can only assume coyote's heart was racing as fast as mine. We shared that partially fear-laden moment, but also a moment full of respect for one another, (I know this because I felt it) and then we both abruptly turned and walked away from each other. This coyote didn't feel wild.

The animal world is a world full of living beings who have not been trained, contained, or otherwise domesticated. There's an assumed brutality and/or beast like quality to that. Predators are seen as likely to attack "innocent" or "helpless" humans, without provocation. So here we learn that wild is sometimes associated with cause for fear.

You can see this repeated in the human world.

A mom once told me that she would not use the word wild to describe her child. She explained that the word has been used to (further) dehumanize Black people and Black children by equating blackness with uncontrolled behavior. Caricatures of Black people often exaggerate features in an effort to make the person look more like an animal and I can only assume this is done in an effort to further remove that person from their humanity. And even outside of caricatures, this line of thinking is pervasive. Black men are sometimes portrayed as having the same wild nature as predatory animals. And Native people faced similar comparisons and terminology (and stereotypes) when colonialists called them “savages.” Here again, we see wild being used as a reference point for fear.

But we don't apply the word wild to different humans equally. While we're busy stereotyping some groups of people as groups to be afraid of, we're using the same qualities to generalize other groups in other ways.

When my own kids were little, sometimes I would send them outside when they were "being wild" because it was just so loud inside. They would run around the yard, probably concerning the neighbors with their hollering and fighting and mayhem. They'd come back inside exhausted and quieter, displaying more of the civilized behavior I was desiring. So when I called my own kids wild, what I meant was out of control.

In fact, we connotate youth of all ages with our assumptions that they are out of control, or would be if we weren’t around teaching them how to control their wild impulses. Even into young adulthood, where we characterize the wildness as irresponsibility, it is still about a perception of lack of control.

Native people today face a version of this wild stereotype as well, from modern stereotypes about substance abuse, gambling addiction and the like.

And I’m sure these are not the only examples of negative connotations and stereotypes we make between humans and wildness. 

Meanwhile, wild deer are not seen as scary nor threatening, and they are also not particularly out of control, but it seems in this instance, referring to them as wild is a reference to their being uncivilized.  

          She will poop wherever she deems it necessary.

It seems like all these ideas of wildness are being used to separate people from each other and from the natural world based on a whole list of attributes.

Here are some words associated with the word wild, in the dictionary:

• unrestrained
• uninhibited
• untamed
• unsettled
• uncultivated
• uncontrolled

After looking at this list, I am beginning to wonder the real reasons why people are always encouraged not to be wild or to stay away from people deemed to be wild.

Maybe, wild means something other than "not suitable for or accustomed to human contact."

Maybe what being wild really means is belonging to oneself.

In a world where the powers that be want all the control they can manage to get their greedy hands on, belonging to oneself is a pretty big threat. Big enough, they might start calling a person wild and stigmatizing their existence.

And if belonging to oneself is what makes a living being "wild" then maybe I can find my wild by refusing to censor myself any longer. 

This post was inspired by a monthly theme from illuminate, a writing community from the creators of The Kindred Voice. 

Read more on this month's theme, Wild, written by other illuminate members:

Meeting The Wild by Adeola Sheehy

My One Wild and Precious Life by Tracy Erler