ABSTRACT
In his book The Wild Places, MacFarlane (2010) explores the etymology of the term ‘wildness’. ‘Rooted…in a descriptive meaning of wilful, or uncontrollable, wildness’, he says, ‘is an expression of independence from human direction’, and can be said to be ‘self-willed’. He is talking about wild spaces, or wilderness, but the description applies equally well to my own perception of the child at play. In the preceding text, I have used the term feral to describe this quality, but feral does not really provide an adequate linguistic fit, or visual representation of the player. MacFarlane also writes of wildness, ‘[It] proceeds according to its own laws and principles whose habits are of its own devising and own execution. [It] acts or moves freely without restraint; is unconfined, unrestricted’ (p. 30).
