On third places and beavers

Reflecting on nesting vs home-building | Land access and justice | Taking solace and inspiration from wild beavers | Third places as a means of an alternative future

Mar 11, 2024

Every part of my body wants to make a nest. The calling for home as a physical place of solitude, rest and safety murmurs deep within my bones. Small bubbles of envy dance up towards the surface of my skin for those who have the means to find idyllic land and build verdant homesteads in the wilderness — whether that’s in the snow-capped, mountainous landscapes of rural America or in sun-drenched parts of Australia where rainbows glow like halos around waterfalls, and women dance with a line of beloved ducks and chickens trailing behind them.

Reflecting on how non-human animals find and make a home, beavers work hard to build a safe place in which to raise their young. In building a home — including their distinctive dams, canals and lodges — beavers shape both the landscape and ecologies around them. Their homemaking leads to enriched relationships between species.

Image by Svetozar Cenisev (source: Unsplash)

The reality of land access, justice and ownership in the UK gnaws at my insides. My own temporary resting place, this impermanent home where I physically reside, is unwillingly neglected in that psychic process. Dishes are left to pile up. The post remains unopened and boxes that should be sorted through continue to collect dust, adding to an atmosphere of stagnancy and entrapment. These days, I wish I was as industrious toward my nesting and homemaking as the beaver.

To be truthful to myself, I don’t feel that I have the energy or wherewithal to tend to my direct physical environment when I know this place is temporary. When it’s not really home. Online and on social media all I can see are lavish dinner parties and events; overflowing with people and their luxuries. It creates a constant cycle of conflicting feelings within me: aesthetic pleasure/appreciation and anger at growing financial and social inequality.

Following the UK government’s recent budget announcement, journalists at PoliticsJOE shared an astute reflection on the city of London which mirrored similar intuitions I’ve held that partly motivated my move away from the city: in stark contrast to its rich history as a bustling hub of culture, “…increasingly, it feels like London is basically just this space…[which] serves an economic purpose, it’s like a WeWork…people just come here to work and then leave…”. The places we inhabit to live and work in the UK seem to have taken on a distinctly anti-community character.

As a child, I experienced a lot of anxiety around going to sleep, and every night I would make a nest: ritualistically building a wall of pillows around me, cocooning myself in my half-igloo of pillows topped with a blanket. When life feels too challenging and the world more chaotic, remnants of that childlike fear creep back into my body. When life becomes unnavigable, having a nest — a soft landing place — becomes even more important for my wellbeing and flourishing.

At this time of my life, what seems more salient, permanent and promising to me are the “third places” I’m seeking to cultivate for the benefit of my community. Third places can be understood as ‘informal public gathering places’ (source: Ray Oldenburg, Our Vanishing “Third Places”) whereby the privatised home is the first place and the workplace or place of education is the second place. A well-known popular culture reference would be Central Perk in the hit series Friends. A more historical one would be the cafés of Vienna and Paris frequented by the intelligentsia during the Enlightenment. As Oldenburg notes (concerning post-war suburban America):

‘What suburbia cries for are the means for people to gather easily, inexpensively, regularly and pleasurably…’.

Third places facilitated the birth of new, revolutionary ideas around spirituality, reason, humanity and nature — leading to movements in art, philosophy and politics. Third places are essential for quality of life, community, social cohesion, communication and innovation (source: Jeffres et al, The Impact of Third Places on Community Quality of Life). Importantly, as Jeffres et al note, accessibility (or the perception of increased accessibility) is a key ingredient to what makes a third place a third place.

Here’s a question I’m asking myself: Can the third place heal the perceived divide between the human and more-than-human?

Image courtesy of McGill Library (source: Unsplash)

I remind myself that the outdoors is the first place for the beaver — as it was for us. It is only since the change in human behaviour and culture as a result of the agricultural and industrial revolutions that the outdoors became our third place.

Despite our vanishing third places in the UK (and elsewhere in the world), what makes me feel hopeful and excited is the community I’m building through my new venture Roots of Belonging and the third places that I’m hoping to nurture as part of that grassroots, community-based work.

At Roots of Belonging, we host interdisciplinary events and workshops for mixed, bi-cultural (or dual heritage) and multicultural people of colour to connect with nature and cultivate their belonging. We believe that being in embodied kinship with the more-than-human world is the direct path to being at home and feeling that we belong as racialised people. We are building a diverse and inclusive community that deeply understands that we belong to nature and we are nature.

Beavers are intelligent engineers able to manipulate inhospitable landscapes and transform them into safe havens for their young. They work industriously: plugging up any potential signs of holes and leaks in their dams with branches and clumps of mud. They feel most safe and at home in water, but fearlessly work at the borders of environments — between land and water. Beaver activity leads to flourishing life among insects, amphibians, birds and bats. In a 2023 Channel 4 news report, volunteers at Forestry England noted a 300% increase in bat activity since the arrival of beaver families.

I am filled with immense gratitude to the stewards at Moor Barton Wilding who are allowing my community to freely access the land they are stewarding in Dartmoor, given their commitment to making the UK outdoors more diverse, inclusive and equitable, for the benefit of all species. I’m excited for our growing community to see the land in all her seasons over the coming years: to tend, learn from, and witness the land in her fullness and subtle changes. And I’m excited for our beaver-watching together at dusk and dawn — while we share stories and talk about new ways of belonging.

At Moor Barton Wilding (where we’ll be hosting our flagship ‘belonging in nature’ retreats), it has been 15 months since five beavers (a mother and four kits) were introduced to the land. Over the winter months, the beavers have been creating habitats and felling large trees. It’s now the first spring when their ecological impact can be measured. As Moor Barton reveals:

“The year before the beavers arrived we counted three clumps of frogspawn in what is now their area, last year it was eight, this spring we are nearly up to 200 — and still counting!”

This reminds me that (much like the beavers) our behaviour — our acts of generosity, nourishment and care for each other — facilitates a soft landing place or third place for others and in turn allows for small constellations of life to grow around us.

These pockets of new life might be imperceptible to us at first, but they provide us all (non-human and human alike) with the necessary ingredients for a more capacious and enriching sense of belonging in our world built for othering.

On third places and beavers

Reflecting on nesting vs home-building | Land access and justice | Taking solace and inspiration from wild beavers | Third places as a means of an alternative future

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