Land manager Kajedo Wanderer likes to spend his days in church – which for him is the woods. He has the distinction of being the only person employed by FHT to work directly on the land. ‘And I love my work,’ he adds.
Land manager Kajedo Wanderer
My professional background is as a forester in Germany. I chose that while many of my friends at the time found refuge in happy herbs and various other substances. It didn’t do it for me, not that I didn’t try. I went to a pretty dark place because nothing made sense, watching how human beings are destroying our planet. It was the time of Joni Mitchell’s song, ‘They paved paradise and put up a parking lot’, and Neil Young’s ‘look at mother nature on the run, in the 1970s…’. I wanted to spend my days in church. For me, church is being among trees, in the woods or the forest. Where the presence of the sacred is so tangible.
The trees, for me, are like antennae that reach high up into the sky and deep down into the earth. In all spiritual or religious teachings I ever received, nature was my sounding board. If I can see it reflected in nature, it must be true. So that’s where I found sanity.
What inspires me is that, on a smallish scale, we have the opportunity to demonstrate what we’d like to see all over this beautiful Earth. I care passionately about the state of the Earth, Gaia, our planet, so this is an opportunity where I can spend most of my waking hours doing what I think needs doing. The quality of love and attention we put into it, the qualities of listening to the Earth and letting the Earth inform us about what should be done – that’s inspiring.
My prime focus is looking after all the different habitats we have – grassland, heathland and woodland, and all their micro habitats. Our land is a unique habitat patchwork. If we do nothing the invasive species take over, and we have already lost a lot of the heathland and grassland. So for the last 10 years I’ve been trying to reclaim, maintain and improve them. The UK has lost 90% of its grassland in the last 90 years!
The heathland is so important. The British Lichen Society did a survey and were extremely excited! They declared us a Cinderella site – we are unique in the number of different lichen species we have on the land, with some occurring almost nowhere else. They’re nationally rare. You know, I was blown away – over 200 different species of lichens!
Hand lenses let you see nature’s detail
I get to look through new eyes when we do these surveys and I go out with a fungi expert, or lichen expert. A whole world opens up that I normally just walk past! We have these little hand lenses we hand out on the tours, so people can appreciate these tiny little creatures like the lichens, but also little mites and the sex life of aphids and that sort of thing.
I joined the FHT after being with the Findhorn Foundation for 45 years, initially as a link with Newbold House, a satellite community. There I had monthly meetings with Eileen Caddy, one of the community co-founders, to make sure we stayed in alignment with the mothership! I was a gardener the entire 45 years – even when I was asked to serve in another role, I made it a condition that I can still work in the garden part time. So I’ve worked outdoors with nature the whole time.
We realised we had to manage the land after the two disasters – a huge fire and the storm that cleared what’s now called the ‘fallen acres’ and the green burial ground. We knew we couldn’t just leave nature to itself. Jonathan Caddy did a lot of it in the beginning, and then there was also a big change for me in the Foundation, so I applied to support Jonathan, doing the practical stuff in the woods and elsewhere on the land. When we moved to becoming a charity, I was hired as land manager. I’ve now been in this role for the last 10 years.
My job description is enough for two full-time people. Gorse spreads very rapidly, which is a natural thing for the gorse to do, so a lot of time is taken up with trying to control it. It leads you to contemplate how you deal with prickly issues in your life, or how you protect the things that are more delicate.
Kajedo Wanderer
Turning a tree plantation monoculture into a biodiverse woodland requires that more light gets to the ground. So in the winter I spend quite a bit of time on the chainsaw thinning the woods, because that’s when the trees are dormant.
And then all our paths. One way of protecting nature from humans is to create clear ways for people to walk. So I keep all the paths between the park and the sea open, as well as the tracks and fire breaks.
Tree care takes a lot of space in my diary. Planting trees is quick but what about the care required over the following years to make sure they actually grow into trees? First, they’re planted into tiny 30 centimetre-high spiral tubes. The moment they stick their heads out the top, I put them into a tall tube so the deer don’t munch them. But then the stakes holding the tubes can rot, and they fall over. Many trees planted before my time grow horizontally because there was nobody there to replace the stakes! Pretty much every week I replace a few stakes or remove tubes when they’re not needed anymore, trying to clear as much plastic off the land as possible. Maybe tree care is one of my favorite jobs, you know, making sure they can make it until they are independent and don’t need me.
The human side of my role is also very important – trying to be a bridge between humans and wild nature. Part of the Trust’s purpose is education. On our tours people learn a little bit about the land they’re walking and camping on, reclaiming their indigenousness, if you like. That’s the biggest problem facing humanity right now – losing our indigenousness – climate change is just a symptom of it. The more we can educate children, teenagers, adults, about the natural environment they’re living in or passing through, the more we can help them to care for that. We are feeding hope.
I’m still a devotee of the spirit of Findhorn, which I believe is absolutely, magnificently beautiful. So being able to serve that spirit through the work I do on the land is an honour, a privilege, and it fills me with joy. And I have no intention of stopping anytime soon.
For me, work is worship. Any volunteer who works with me learns how to turn our work into a devotional practice. Everything we do, we offer for the highest and best of all creatures who share this land, with a prayer that it may be beneficial for the next few generations.
Meet the team: Kajedo Wanderer
Land manager Kajedo Wanderer likes to spend his days in church – which for him is the woods. He has the distinction of being the only person employed by FHT to work directly on the land. ‘And I love my work,’ he adds.
Land manager Kajedo Wanderer
My professional background is as a forester in Germany. I chose that while many of my friends at the time found refuge in happy herbs and various other substances. It didn’t do it for me, not that I didn’t try. I went to a pretty dark place because nothing made sense, watching how human beings are destroying our planet. It was the time of Joni Mitchell’s song, ‘They paved paradise and put up a parking lot’, and Neil Young’s ‘look at mother nature on the run, in the 1970s…’. I wanted to spend my days in church. For me, church is being among trees, in the woods or the forest. Where the presence of the sacred is so tangible.
The trees, for me, are like antennae that reach high up into the sky and deep down into the earth. In all spiritual or religious teachings I ever received, nature was my sounding board. If I can see it reflected in nature, it must be true. So that’s where I found sanity.
What inspires me is that, on a smallish scale, we have the opportunity to demonstrate what we’d like to see all over this beautiful Earth. I care passionately about the state of the Earth, Gaia, our planet, so this is an opportunity where I can spend most of my waking hours doing what I think needs doing. The quality of love and attention we put into it, the qualities of listening to the Earth and letting the Earth inform us about what should be done – that’s inspiring.
My prime focus is looking after all the different habitats we have – grassland, heathland and woodland, and all their micro habitats. Our land is a unique habitat patchwork. If we do nothing the invasive species take over, and we have already lost a lot of the heathland and grassland. So for the last 10 years I’ve been trying to reclaim, maintain and improve them. The UK has lost 90% of its grassland in the last 90 years!
The heathland is so important. The British Lichen Society did a survey and were extremely excited! They declared us a Cinderella site – we are unique in the number of different lichen species we have on the land, with some occurring almost nowhere else. They’re nationally rare. You know, I was blown away – over 200 different species of lichens!
Hand lenses let you see nature’s detail
I get to look through new eyes when we do these surveys and I go out with a fungi expert, or lichen expert. A whole world opens up that I normally just walk past! We have these little hand lenses we hand out on the tours, so people can appreciate these tiny little creatures like the lichens, but also little mites and the sex life of aphids and that sort of thing.
I joined the FHT after being with the Findhorn Foundation for 45 years, initially as a link with Newbold House, a satellite community. There I had monthly meetings with Eileen Caddy, one of the community co-founders, to make sure we stayed in alignment with the mothership! I was a gardener the entire 45 years – even when I was asked to serve in another role, I made it a condition that I can still work in the garden part time. So I’ve worked outdoors with nature the whole time.
We realised we had to manage the land after the two disasters – a huge fire and the storm that cleared what’s now called the ‘fallen acres’ and the green burial ground. We knew we couldn’t just leave nature to itself. Jonathan Caddy did a lot of it in the beginning, and then there was also a big change for me in the Foundation, so I applied to support Jonathan, doing the practical stuff in the woods and elsewhere on the land. When we moved to becoming a charity, I was hired as land manager. I’ve now been in this role for the last 10 years.
My job description is enough for two full-time people. Gorse spreads very rapidly, which is a natural thing for the gorse to do, so a lot of time is taken up with trying to control it. It leads you to contemplate how you deal with prickly issues in your life, or how you protect the things that are more delicate.
Kajedo Wanderer
Turning a tree plantation monoculture into a biodiverse woodland requires that more light gets to the ground. So in the winter I spend quite a bit of time on the chainsaw thinning the woods, because that’s when the trees are dormant.
And then all our paths. One way of protecting nature from humans is to create clear ways for people to walk. So I keep all the paths between the park and the sea open, as well as the tracks and fire breaks.
Tree care takes a lot of space in my diary. Planting trees is quick but what about the care required over the following years to make sure they actually grow into trees? First, they’re planted into tiny 30 centimetre-high spiral tubes. The moment they stick their heads out the top, I put them into a tall tube so the deer don’t munch them. But then the stakes holding the tubes can rot, and they fall over. Many trees planted before my time grow horizontally because there was nobody there to replace the stakes! Pretty much every week I replace a few stakes or remove tubes when they’re not needed anymore, trying to clear as much plastic off the land as possible. Maybe tree care is one of my favorite jobs, you know, making sure they can make it until they are independent and don’t need me.
The human side of my role is also very important – trying to be a bridge between humans and wild nature. Part of the Trust’s purpose is education. On our tours people learn a little bit about the land they’re walking and camping on, reclaiming their indigenousness, if you like. That’s the biggest problem facing humanity right now – losing our indigenousness – climate change is just a symptom of it. The more we can educate children, teenagers, adults, about the natural environment they’re living in or passing through, the more we can help them to care for that. We are feeding hope.
I’m still a devotee of the spirit of Findhorn, which I believe is absolutely, magnificently beautiful. So being able to serve that spirit through the work I do on the land is an honour, a privilege, and it fills me with joy. And I have no intention of stopping anytime soon.
For me, work is worship. Any volunteer who works with me learns how to turn our work into a devotional practice. Everything we do, we offer for the highest and best of all creatures who share this land, with a prayer that it may be beneficial for the next few generations.