Urban Fox and the Wild Woods

This story is set after the collapse of western civilisation; long after oil has run out and when people have returned to living as simple hunter gatherers in tribes.

A wise elder from one such tribe narrates this story about a fox who lived in the cities before the oil ran out. He tries to describe to the children who have never seen a city, cars or restaurants, what life was like. He does this by telling the story of Urban Fox, using the fox as an analogy of people who were disconnected from nature and the environment and had no idea how to survive in the wild.

This story is about Urban Fox's life in a city, grubbing around in bins for discarded food and dodging angry humans and their cars. One day Urban Fox finds a landscape painting of woods which sparks a memory of a story his mum and dad had told him when he was a cub. In his excitement he sets out on a journey to find the wild woods and here he learns how to live in a natural environment foraging for food rather than eating out of bins. The story introduces the concept of foraging for wild food and building natural shelters and helps to explain that animals and people share the same environment and that animals have been driven away from their natural lifestyles due to cities and towns encroaching on and swallowing the wild environment.

I wrote this story to give children some idea of what life may be like in the future when the oil has run out and when cities, cars and the consumer way of life have long gone. Urban Fox is a fun character with which children can connect. I hope that this book and the others I have written for children will appeal to parents who wish for their children to develop a conscious understanding of the environment, sustainability and permaculture.