What does "connecting with nature" actually mean?
I adore nothing more than a good, sweat-inducing hike. Especially ones where I feel like I’m in the middle of nowhere, and better yet one that leads me to an incredible viewpoint. It is one of the most amazing perks of this city-person living in Portland, Oregon–I can get all the city things I love (e.g., multiple coffee shops and restaurants within walking distance) yet I am a mere 20-30 minute drive from an incredible hike. To say that nature fills me up is 100% accurate. However, when asked if I feel connected to nature. Well, that’s a whole other thing. I do not feel connected to nature. Really at all.
Do I marvel at incredible sunsets on the coast? Yes, yes, I do. Do I gape in awe at the staggering vastness of the mountain peaks around me? Absolutely. And do I observe in wonder the moss hanging down from tree branches above me? Of course, I do.
What these things all have in common, though, is that they are general observations. They are noted from a distance. I rarely ever pay attention to the elements of nature nearer to me than those at least 10 feet away…unless I accidentally step on something I shouldn’t have stepped on. Nature has become a useful place for which I can restore my sanity and get a little exercise. I feel like I need nature for my mental health, but I do not understand anything about it. Nor do I ever really engage in any curiosity around it.
Getting into this Cramming for the Apocalypse journey highlighted this disconnect in me mainly because there are all these survival skills that center on knowing nature. In the most extreme sense, knowing what will kill you in nature and on the other side of the spectrum, what might actually help save you.
And it’s not entirely my fault I don’t know these things. As I do for most societal ills, I blame capitalism and the people who have so entrenched it into our society. Capitalism and the agro-industrial complex have made getting your hands on almost anything you want anytime you want so easy. When in days of yore, we had to work for such things. I do admit, it’s really nice not to have to spend my days working physically for everything I eat. However, I do feel a sense of loss around the disconnection induced between humans and nature.
As such, reconnecting with nature–like really connecting–is a central piece of this apocalypse prep journey. But what does that even mean? I’ve been wondering about that as I write the book proposal and begin to get more into this research trying to build in ways to learn how to connect with nature without really knowing what “connecting with nature” means or looks like. But over the last few weekends, I’m starting to see how that reconnection can take shape in my own life.
Mushroom Foraging and Looking Down at the Forest Floor
My first introduction to this was at a late September mushroom foraging class with Wildcraft Studio, a Portland-based company that teaches craft, textiles, Native art, studio art, and nature classes in Portland and beyond. I took a clamming class on the Oregon Coast last April as my first foray into this journey and I was ready to dive in even farther with this mushroom foraging class in the Gifford Pinchot Forest in southern Washington (~1.5 hours from Portland).
I have a simmering trepidation before any of these classes, rooted in a doubt about whether I’d be good at it or, worse, that I’ll be so bored and hate everything about it. I’ve taken enough classes out of my comfort zone to know that voice is always wrong. Yet it’s still always there nagging at me.
As our instructor, Tiffany was giving us instructions about how to find our way back to the group lest we wander too far away while looking intently at the forest floor, I was convinced that would not be me. I’ll be staying close. I likely won’t ever get to a point where there is not a person in view.
Reader: I was almost immediately proven wrong. There were not very many edible mushrooms (thanks to a ridiculously and scarily dry Fall here in the PNW), but the potential find of any mushroom, edible or not, soon became such an enthralling activity that about ten minutes into being set off on our own to look for fungi, I looked up and not a soul was in sight. I heard the distant crunching of feet walking on crispy leaves and murmurs of “here’s something” in the distance, but I had already gotten sucked into the forest floor.
A few of us left with a handful of edible mushrooms–some didn’t leave with any–but the point wasn’t the things we took home, it was that we learned something new. And to me, the point was that I got so absorbed in the forest floor, I was able to connect a bit more deeply with what was there, fungi or otherwise. I noticed more of the bushes around, I noticed the crunchy forest floor that should’ve been much wetter at that time of year, and I noticed all the little creepy crawlies that make their home on the forest floor.
My knowledge is still limited, but the inklings of true interest in the smaller things on that forest floor began to stir.
Communing in Nature as a Means to Connection
Next up on this nature-connection journey was The Wilderness Awareness School’s Wild Women’s Weekend retreat in early October. In a search for “women’s outdoor retreats,” I was delighted to find such an incredible opportunity just a few hours from where I live. I was specifically looking for female/femme/non-binary-centric experiences because having grown up around a whole lot of outdoorsy dude-types, there’s a bit of an intense-ness that those spaces can exude. While I’ll most definitely find myself in those spaces in the future, I dipped my toes in with this women’s weekend.
Before arriving, I was having out-of-my-element worries (as I do) wondering if I’d feel out of my element surrounded by extremely experienced outdoorspeople. But as I’ve been proven wrong with each of my pre-experience nerves, this was not to be the case. While there were most certainly more experienced outdoorspeople than me, I felt a sense of belonging as anyone because proving-our-outdoorsiness was definitely not the focus of the weekend. WAS was about meeting everyone where they're at, and, to my great delight, completely focused on connection to nature.
The entire pedagogy WAS is about is rooted in curiosity vs. knowledge of nature. Leah Carlson, WAS marketing and communications director told me that one of their founders, Jon Young, called it the “art of questioning.” Young and the late Ingwe (Norman Powell) founded WAS as a part of the nature connection movement.
What that looks like in practice is through a series of questions, as Carlson noted to me. “You ask questions like what did you see or notice? Questions are tools to be more observant,” she says. “Instead of giving facts, you ask what somebody notices. You learn more if you take the scenic route.”
This model is what WAS calls “coyote mentoring” (you can learn more deeply about that model in this Mentoring Nature Connections podcast interview with WAS’ Manon McPeters). I felt this deeply throughout the weekend when we dove into some “harder”/more concrete skills of fire-making and plant identification as well as “softer” skills of mindfulness and outdoor play. Regardless of what the outcomes were of each of these sessions, there were moments when we were asked to pay attention, learn from the materials we were using or experiencing, and follow a line of questioning. Not all those lines of questioning led to an answer or a conclusion, but they did lead to deeper connections.
I left that weekend with a more concrete sense of how I can go about connecting with nature. I still feel the disconnection–and might throughout this entire journey–but I appreciate having some of the tools to bring myself back to the natural element I find myself in.
So am I “one with nature” now?
These were just a few hours of immersion in nature, so what remains to be seen is how I put these into practice. Right after our mushroom foraging trip, my fellow foraging friends and I were all enthused about putting a foraging date on the calendar. And then, as things go in our busy lives, time has gotten away from us and we don’t have a foraging date yet. But the rainy season in Oregon has only just begun and those fungi are out there waiting.
I suppose for the real challenge, though, it’s less about going out to nature with a mission (e.g., find some mushrooms), rather to just going out into nature and following that WAS line of questioning and curiosity. My fast-moving brain doesn’t really work that way, so it’s going to be uncomfortable to slow down and just notice things. It’s one thing when someone is facilitating the experience. But it’s a whole other when I need to keep reminding myself to slow down and notice all the little things. I mean, even thinking about it is making me cringe with I-don't-have-time-for-this anxiety.
In all honesty, it’ll probably start with going out into nature with a mission to find some mushrooms. And, perhaps, then I can learn to slow down a bit more, let my mind ask questions, and get lost just being among the trees.
In the meantime, I will report back and let you know how the nature connecting goes! Instagram is a more immediate place for those report-backs, but I’ll be writing more here as well, of course.
A note: I’ll be diving deeper into the soft vs. hard skills reflections in a future post, because that combo of the soft-hard skills is very much what WAS is all about.