Outdoor Activity

This activity asks participants to directly engage with the natural world through two outdoor experiences of their choice. Following these outings, participants post a short written reflection on the significance of their experience.

“Caring for myself is not a self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”  

- Audre Lorde

What you will need:

1.    a quiet outdoor place with access to nature (plants, water, trees, open sky, the sound of wind or animals, etc.)

2.    a notebook and pen

3.    about one hour

Instructions:

The goal of this exercise is to re-connect ourselves with various forms of life in our midst, and to be fully "present" as we experience our surroundings through all the body's senses: smells, sounds, temperature, light, visual forms, etc. You may use your time as you wish, but here are some options you might consider:

• Practice some of the controlled breathing techniques we learned about in class

• Closely observe your surroundings in stillness and silence. Mentally record all the signs of life you notice (through sight, sound, sensation). Touch the ground beneath you (or whatever you are sitting on) and take note of the earth's ongoing functions that you overlook in your normal daily rush.

• Practice Gratitude: See what words naturally follow a sentence that begins “For supporting me to live, I give thanks to...” (Remember that when we experience gratitude, we tend to feel more like giving back. This is a great way of mobilizing motivation to act for our world.)

After 30 minutes of silent observation, record what you observed and/or experienced.  Please write for 15 minutes. You can focus on different forms of life you noticed, physical senses you experienced, or feelings that were evoked by sitting quietly among trees or plants. The writing can take any form. Feel free to write a poem, a list of observational notes, a reflection on how this activity differs from other ways of studying nature, or whatever you wish to record.

Why are we doing this?

Studies show that time spent in nature promotes a sense of well-being and can lower our anxiety level, slow our breathing and heart-rate, and significantly elevate our mood. When we feel discouraged or depressed about environmental setbacks and other bad news, re-connecting with nature reminds us of what we love, and why it's worth fighting for.  

Research also shows that we are more motivated to protect places when we feel a personal connection to them.  A logical place to start, then, is to become more observant of the rich natural and cultural histories embedded in own local communities and ecosystems. This, in turn, can deepen understanding of the way they offer a kind of "microcosm" of global issues and networks.

Much of our education, of course, is situated indoors where we are removed from direct experience of the natural world; likewise, our daily lives and social interactions increasingly take place in virtual communities. This can create challenges for developing intimate relationships with other species and ecosystems in which they live, concern for community members with whom we do not have regular contact, and personal capacities for civic engagement.  Yet as Holly Hughes argues, "Focused and sustained observation and reflection can move us to a deeper cognitive understanding and emotional connection with nearby ecological and social communities" (Contemplative Approaches to Sustainability in Higher Education, 2017, xiv).  We might also consider Bill McKibben’s advice to graduates of Middlebury College in 2005: “Fight like hell. But be a witness, too. Go see the whales, the rainforests. There’s no guarantee we’ll save them all. Memorize this great world, the one we were born into. Tell others in the future. Their mistakes might be fewer if they know the greatness we once saw.” 

A final quote that helps frame this issue is from biologist David Haskell, who visited the same patch of old-growth Tennessee forest almost daily for one year as he wrote the book The Forest Unseen. As he wrote at the end of the year:

"Scientific models and metaphors of machines are helpful but limited. They cannot tell us what we need to know. What lies beyond the theories we impose on nature? This year I have tried to put down scientific tools and to listen: to come to nature without a hypothesis, without the scheme for data extraction, without a lesson plan to convey answers to students, without machines and probes. I have glimpsed how rich science is but simultaneously how limited in scope and in spirit. It is unfortunate that the practice of listening generally has no place in the formal training of scientists. In this absence, science needlessly fails" (2012, 238)