Research
Re-Gnoming a De-Gnomed World
Rewilding attention, story, and place as an ecological practice
May 11, 2026
Rewilding is the deliberate return of what has been tamed, paved-over, monetized, or made legible-for-extraction, back toward wildness. Not only the conservation meaning of removing structures from acquired land, though that too, but the wider stance: rewilding attention, story, perception, place, and the more-than-human relationships that modernity has domesticated. The widdershins are not fantasy creatures. They are metaphors for attentiveness, kinship, and the overlooked ecologies of a place.
The plainer phrasing for the same move is re-gnoming a de-gnomed world. Gnomes are the small, hidden, named, speaking-stones-and-rivers layer of the world. De-gnomed is the modernized, instrumentalized version made legible for extraction. Re-gnoming is restoring the small magic.
The work travels the way a seed travels by ant. The carryable bait is the surface offering, a bestiary card or a Krampus glance, and the actual seed is the rewilding stance underneath, which germinates later, elsewhere, in soil the maker never sees. The ant does not know it is planting a forest.