Domei · A letter from Devon
You have tried the apps.
The guided walks. The certificates.
None of it quite landed.
The wellness industry has done something quietly devastating to the encounter with the living world. It has packaged it, given it an aesthetic and a language of transformation, and sold it back to you.
The result is presence you can purchase. Connection you can perform. And a nagging sense that the actual thing is still somewhere just out of reach.
Domei is what’s left when you remove all of that. No technique. No ceremony. No hierarchy of experience to climb. Just you, a plant, and enough time to stop feeling like a visitor.
“The natural world is indifferent to your social media following or brand. What it responds to – if it responds to anything – is simply your presence. Private, unremarkable, uncommented-upon presence.”
The Domei letter arrives once a week. Essays from 35 years of quiet attention to the living world in Devon. Written for people who are tired of being sold connection and want to find their own.
I always love to receive your emails, they lift me from the humdrum and genuinely make me happy. In response, I have been unweeding our wonky patio and really noticed, properly, what a wealth of goodies are literally at my feet. Right now I’m focusing on chickweed as a poultice for eczema and bruising – which also stops my other half from unleashing his weapons of mass destruction willy nilly! Also, there’s loads of good stuff coming through the lawn, more starry moss than grass, with self heal popping up among the daisies and in a quiet shady corner, sweet woodruff. Deep joy.
— Suzy
- Essays on attention, the living world, and what gets in the way
- No spiritual hierarchy, no insider language, no approved method
- Honest – including about when nothing happens
In the last 12 months we had a series of family health issues and 2 deaths and I lost my connection to the outdoors. This morning I found bluebells coming up. I realised for the last few months I have been walking round in a daze. A huge thank you for the reality check.
— Carl T.
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About Robin Harford
Robin Harford is an ethnobotanical researcher, forager, and independent publisher based in Devon. He has spent thirty-five years in field research across Britain, Europe, South-East Asia, and India, and is the founder of Eatweeds – the UK’s leading wild food and foraging education platform.
Domei is the other side of that work. Where Eatweeds is about practical knowledge – what to find, how to prepare it, what it’s good for – Domei is about the quality of attention that makes that knowledge mean something. The practice developed slowly, out of decades of sitting with plants rather than just identifying them.
He writes, teaches in-person courses across Devon, and co-hosts a webinars on plants and herbal medicine with medical herbalist Simon Mills.
You can find the foraging work at eatweeds.co.uk.