Local Love

Cultivating a bond with nature, right where you are

Photo by Oliva Hibbins on Unsplash

When you were a child, did you have a special place in nature? A place where you could go to play, dream, explore, or just be alone? If you are a nature lover today, chances are you bonded with a special natural place as a child:

When I speak to groups on the benefits of time in nature for children, I ask people to think back to their favorite place to play when they were a child. Almost every hand in the room goes up when I ask if this special place was outside, in nature. This aligns with a study of adults in which 97% identified the most significant place in their childhood as being outdoors.

Dimity Williams, Nature, Our Medicine (p. 244)

Interviews with environmental activists from all parts of the world reveal “a striking thematic pattern: whether the person is from an Asian tropical rain forest, an African savanna, a Latin-American city, a European valley, or a North American farm, they tell a similar story. They have fond memories of a special childhood place” that they bonded with and can still vividly describe.

Robert S. Emmett and David E. Nye, The Environmental Humanities: A Critical Introduction (p. 24)

When I was growing up, I could wander down the steep hill behind our house to a small creek (complete with miniature waterfall, tiny minnows, and the occasional turtle), where I would read or ponder my teenage life. I always took the creek for granted, not really thinking of it as a luxury. But unfortunately these types of unstructured interactions with nature are becoming increasingly rare for children (and adults too), who may never have opportunities to fall in love with a particular natural place.

At the same time, we are all aware of the environmental degradation and destruction taking place at a rapid clip around the world. There is a great deal of hopelessness and pessimism in the news, and many of us have come associate nature topics with doom and gloom. (For example, I have always loved David Attenborough’s nature documentaries, but his latest ones have become so gloomy I can’t even watch them.) This is especially damaging for young people, who are wedged between a rock and a hard place: feeling responsible for saving the planet while simultaneously having fewer healing opportunities to be personally touched by nature.

So what’s to be done? Some thinkers suggest that in order to solve the problem of environmental destruction, we also need to solve the problem of our increasing isolation from nature. As Bill Plotkin says in Nature and the Human Soul, “People who know about their environment care about it. People who care, conserve” (loc. 3197). By helping both adults and children to cultivate a deeper connection to nature, we increase the likelihood that we will preserve it.

This is the exact opposite of the approach that I see brandished in most of the media and pop culture: inducing guilt and fear about the environment. Policy makers and pundits are always trying to make people feel bad about themselves for not reducing their carbon footprint or for not engaging in more environmental activism. However, too much guilt is counterproductive. Most people will either start to tune you out and ignore you, or if they take you seriously they will become anxious and depressed. We are seeing both of these happen today.

A better strategy is to help people build deeper connections with the environment. But how? I’ve been reading a lot about this over the past few months, and one consistent theme I’ve noticed is that love for nature always starts locally. “Nature” in the abstract is nice, but it’s so vague that people don’t feel a personal involvement with it. What people do feel connected to is the creek behind their house, or the park they stroll through every day, or the grove of trees that greets them when they turn the corner on their way to work. People feel connected to particular plants and animals. People love particular plants and animals. Most people are willing to make sacrifices or be inconvenienced for the places and creatures they know intimately and love, in a way that they never can be for vague and abstract notions of nature.

And of course, not only does the environment benefit when we humans cultivate our sensitivity to nature, but we benefit as well. As Dimity Williams puts it in Nature, Our Medicine (p. 239),

Our progressive separation from it over the past three hundred years is relatively recent in the multimillion-year timespan of our evolution. Over this long timeframe, our genes have been imprinted with an affinity for nature. In this theory, nature is not merely a resource for humans to exploit but is needed by us for our emotional, cognitive, aesthetic, and spiritual growth. We are thought to be genetically wired to love and need nature.

I’m sure you’re already aware of the many ways spending time in natural environments improves our mental and physical health. (Williams’ book is a great resource if you’d like more information about this.) But it can be good to keep in mind that caring for nature is a reciprocal exchange, in which we humans will always receive much more than we give.

With that in mind, let’s think about how we can further develop our bond with nature by cultivating a love for a particular natural place. We will then think about how to expand this love for the particular into a love for more abstract notions of environmental stewardship.

Developing a Love of Place

Far from being parochial, place-based learning uses direct experiences in local landscapes to inform larger-scale explorations. Much better to understand and intimately experience one’s local oak or fir forest before diving into books and videos about the disappearing Amazon rainforest…

Scott D. Sampson, How to Raise a Wild Child (p. 269)

A psychological identification between self and site is part of place-making, in an ongoing social process. It demands a personal investment in a particular location whose appearance, sounds, and smells become part of a daily round.

Robert S. Emmett and David E. Nye, The Environmental Humanities: A Critical Introduction (p. 24)

You probably already know how essential nature is for your wellbeing; if you’re like most people, the challenge is more logistical, figuring out how to fit more of it into your busy schedule. Here’s a list of suggestions, culled from my readings, for activities that can help you cultivate your relationship with your local patch of nature:

• Learn about the history (geological, biological, cultural) of your area

• Learn to identify the plants and animals in your area

• Learn the original meanings of local place names

• Create stories centered around local natural landmarks (this would be really fun to do with a child!)

• Make use of your local greenspace (parks, walking trails, public open spaces) to relax, picnic, exercise, stargaze, etc.

• Paint or photograph the nature closest to you

• Forage local plants to eat (where safe and permitted)

• Do a listening meditation in your local greenspace

• Bring local materials into your home for decorating, crafting, or creating

• Bring local smells in (native flowers and herbs)

• Exercise outside when possible (walking, running, yoga)

• Feed and watch birds

• Create a natural habitat in your yard for local flora and fauna (including seasonal migratory birds)

• Practice looking with fresh eyes at the plants, animals, and natural features around you

• Move your meditation or journaling session outside

• Mentally pause and be grateful for the nature in your life

• Explore the ins and outs of your neighborhood, places you never thought of going before

• Bake nature into your daily routine: identify at least one way you can interact with nature every morning and every evening

• Start a nature journal

For children, a deep connection with nature comes naturally. Really all they need from adults is the opportunity to spend unsupervised time in a natural area. As Dimity Williams puts it, “Nature play is ‘just what children do’ rather than an outcome focused program” (loc. 4360).

This is something I see all the time with my own children. While we don’t live in the wilderness, we have enough trees, shrubbery, and empty space to give them plenty of options for unstructured play. Their favorite thing to do is build forts, which they construct out of anything they can find. The fun is in the creation; when my husband made a cute little fort for them, they quickly abandoned it and built their own elsewhere. Playing outside gives them a rare chance to be in charge of their own building operations.

That’s not to say all their outside time has to be unstructured. My youngest son loves helping in the garden, watering the fruit trees and planting vegetable beds. (His school also has a garden club where they tend to a little kitchen garden and sell the produce!) There’s certainly a place for adult-led activities or structured outdoor sports. But it’s mainly during free play that children build confidence, abilities, and a long-lasting relationship with the natural world.

The space you provide your child doesn’t have to be perfectly beautiful or huge. And even if you don’t have a yard or garden for your kids to play in, there are probably opportunities nearby where they can have some free time in nature. Here are a few of the options in my local area, which might give you some ideas to look for near you:

• Deep Roots Nature School

• TimberNook

• Tinkergarten (this one is more adult-directed, with a specific curriculum)

• WonderHere (they have a variety of options, including several nature classes)

No matter what specific opportunities you can provide, the main thing is simply giving kids the gift of free time in a natural space.

Expanding a Love of Place

Once you have a well-established bond with your local area, you can practice expanding this appreciation to other natural places. This process basically mirrors the way we learn to care about other people: starting with those closest to us, then gradually expanding outward. Once you truly love your own patch of nature, you can more easily love other natural places.

This is where nature-based vacations are great. Hiking, camping, and ecotourism (traveling to nature destinations in a way that is respectful to the local culture and environment) can all help cultivate appreciation for a wider range of ecosystems. We can also perhaps learn new ways of interacting with the environment as we see the different ways locals care for their own backyards.

You might wonder whether there is a danger that, by learning to love their local patch of nature, people might favor their own place over other natural places. But where love for nature is involved, this doesn't seem to be case. Certainly, we do see this happening when economics and money are involved, such as one group wanting to divert a river to irrigate their own land while causing a draught downstream. But these actions are never motivated by a true love of nature; they are motivated by selfishness and a desire to keep finite resources to oneself. If the people responsible for these decisions had a true love of nature, they would not want to deprive others of their own natural treasures.

Both research and everyday experience suggest that when people fall in love with their own local nature, they naturally expand this love to nature on a grander scale.

Concluding Thoughts

There are no simple solutions to our current environmental challenges, but it seems obvious that the approach being used today isn’t working very well. I think carrots always work better than sticks. Instead of berating people for not making sacrifices on behalf of the environment, why don’t we help them intensify their bond with the nature already around them? By finding ways to do this ourselves—and then encouraging the people around us to do so—maybe we can change the tenor of the environmental conversation from one of strident hostility to one of care and respect. Humans are hardwired to need and love nature. But sometimes we need a few reminders to cultivate that love.