Increasing your shell-being

A researcher came to interview me recently, about my foraging experience on the sea shore. She's doing a PhD on the benefits of wild gathering  for whatever reason - food, bait, dye stuffs, medicine  etc, whether for sale or for personal use. "Assessing the well-being and heritage values of beach collecting in Wales."

I'd volunteered when she put a request out on social media to meet collectors. Some of the benefit is cultural - foraging is an continuation of an old tradition whereby folk supplemented their diets with wild food or profited by selling it in local markets. But she was also interested in the personal value of collecting: being close to nature, in harmony with tides and seasons, the health benefits of fresh air and exercise, the satisfaction of self-sufficiency and getting something-for-nothing. The interview included an assessment of my overall well-being score against the national average.

It was an interesting hour of discussion and box-ticking and at the end I showed the researcher our shell midden, the repository of years of mussel-picking, clam -gathering and limpet-prising, along with a few other mementos. She had never seen anything like it.  Perhaps the photo she took will appear in her final thesis, contrasted with prehistoric examples such as these.