Its such a great name for so many reasons that I think it fits this blog perfectly.
Wildwood is a small village in Alberta Canada just outside of the Oil City Edmonton. The village used to be on the main northern Canada Highway so the biggest feature in the town is a Motel with all sorts of amenities – bar, automatic teller machien, you can sell silver – that sort of stuff.
Thing is government rerouted the highway and now its just an offramp that you will very likely overlook (if you are not desperate for a place to sleep). That kinda killed the village which seemed to had a good life on the road. The Motel is scraping by and you don´t have any visitors to the bar on a normal night other then the odd local. When I was there there was the bar tender, one guy my age (the wood cutter) and the owner in the bar on a Saturday night. So you have all sorts of concepts about the deplorables in a village like this. Yes they are calling themself rednecks. Yes they drive pickups – yet I talked to them for a long long night and it was stunning what I got to know.
They are as poor as it gets. Yet somehow way more happy then most of the city folks way more a fluent. The bartender spend all they got on solar panels that year. Yes in oil rich alberta a redneck girl is wise enough to safe up for some solar panels so she can get energy independent (they don´t talk about it they do). They hate the city people cause they are arrogant and think their way of life is always the best. They have a lot of fun and free time. They work their ass off to survive but still have (make) way more time to spend with friends.
This and some other experiences of the year I spend in Custer, South Dakota kind of changed the way I see the “deplorables” the people living on the land. I see similar straights in Germany. I see why these people are mad and angry but how they are not at all that stupid city people make them out to be. How a dusty rotten town town can be beautiful if just for the community that always forms there (and how the young can shape a community for the future).
Also Wildwood can be read literally as a wild wood and I love all things nature and natural systems. We kind of killed all true wild woods around the planet and the last remaining need to be saved as they might hold keys to our survival. There is nothing comparable to a truly wild forest. It gives you such calm and inner strength and the feeling that its the place called home.
Wild thoughts come out of the wild woods and wild thoughts I share.
Its also a nice counter reference to a popular tv show / film which has the same WW initials and is all about fake worlds. Its the transformation of the artificial lifeform into the natural one (feels much better btw ;).
Since I am about to move out into that country side this blog will have lots of perspective from out of the city – from a deplorable but informed perspective if you want.