In the past year, the Princess of Wales has been doing a lot around the theme of “getting back to nature.” She’s released several videos and authorized photos, all outside in gardens, beaches or forests. Almost all of her public statements in the past year have included something about being connected to nature. It’s her “new thing” and it’s even vaguer than her “Early Years” work. RIP Early Years, no more Business Keen Takes Business Meetings At Business Buildings! We are witnessing Kate’s evolution from “someone who says ‘Early Years’ a lot” to “someone who says ‘nature’ a lot.” As such, it’s quite clear that this will be her new “royal work.” It’s even vaguer than the Early Years, and it just involves Kate doing photo shoots outdoors. From the Telegraph’s “‘Take in the space and slow down’: Why nature will be at the heart of Kate’s return to public life.”
The message could not be clearer. The Princess has discovered the power of nature, and is determined to share it with the world. Her illness, she has said, has given her a new perspective: a “very spiritual and very intense emotional reconnection” with the outside world. It is a personal revelation that she is now putting at the heart of her return to public life.
The Princess is on a mission to revitalise human connection and believes that the great outdoors can bring people together like nothing else. Conscious that many young people are spending their time glued to smartphones and other screens, she urged them, on a visit to the Lake District without journalists last month, to stop, slow down, look up and take in the world around them.
“You’ve seen over the last 13 months, the Princess herself speak to the power that nature has played in her recovery,” says a palace source. “She herself has talked about the power that nature plays. Nature has the power to bring us all together.”
Even before her profound experiences over the past year, the Princess, as Duchess of Cambridge before that, has sung the praises of an outdoorsy life for children. But it is since her illness that she seems to have reached crystal clarity about the benefits for all.
In Windsor and Norfolk, where the Wales family have homes, the Princess walked and swam outdoors as she rebuilt her mental and physical strength during and after her cancer treatment. She has taken up foraging, fascinated by wild mushrooms and learning how to spot food she and the children can take home with them.
“I really felt like I needed to get the sun,” she told cancer patients at the Royal Marsden in January, after her own treatment.
In the Lake District last month, where she spent the day with local Scouts as the organisation’s joint president, she told of her family holidays there amid the lakes and mountains, where she had spent a “lot of time”. Dwayne Fields, the new Chief Scout, told The Telegraph that young people had spoken to the Princess about how much they enjoyed their outdoor camping adventures, and the skills, confidence and friendships it had brought them.
“The Princess and I walked and we spoke a lot about the effect that being out in nature has on your mind and your sense of self,” he said. “She said that she spent a lot of time after her treatment, outdoors – it’s a great place to feel spiritually connected to nature.” Fields added that human beings had only spent the last “300 years or so” in urban centres, having been “absolutely connected to the natural world” until then, adding: “It’s a recent thing that we have disconnected.”
The Telegraph notes how other royals have centered their love of nature to build projects to give back to the natural world, most notably Queen Elizabeth’s “The Queen’s Green Canopy,” a tree-planting initiative. I don’t really see Kate actually building a project out of this though, not when her message is adequately vague enough. She’s literally just going to tell people to “go outside and take a walk” and they’ll fall all over themselves to call her the Wilderness Queen Doing Important Nature Work.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images, Kensington Palace.
