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Paper short abstract

This paper explores community nature walks within sites of nature recovery. Drawing on ongoing fieldwork, it explores "atmospheres of rewilding" through walking, storytelling, and collective noticing.

Paper long abstract

Rewilding debates and scholarship have largely focused on land use, biodiversity, and hydrological restoration. Yet the atmospheric dimensions of ecological recovery – wind, air, sound, light, and shifting weather – remain comparatively under-explored. This paper examines how such atmospheric relations become perceptible and meaningful through community walking practices and sensory methods in sites of nature recovery.

Drawing on ongoing ethnographic fieldwork at Lewes Railway Land Nature Reserve and the Knepp Wilding Project in Sussex, United Kingdom, the paper explores walking interviews and phenomenological inquiry. By foregrounding the sensory and affective qualities of environmental change, the paper contributes to emerging discussions of the cultural dimensions of rewilding. Attending to atmospheres reveals how ecological restoration is experienced not only through changes in land and water, but through shifting conditions of air, movement, and collective presence that shape how recovering landscapes are sensed and cared for.