Finding Nature

As is typical, an end of year summary post. Being a scientific type it’s stats driven, in contrast to my personal highlight, thinking about nature’s beauty – I’ll cover that, and the most popular posts at the end of the post. First up are some popular tweets, which are also worth reflecting on.

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This post is based on a seed of an idea I’d like to develop more fully, but busy doing other things, including a recent conversation about the phrase connection to nature. It is becoming more widely used, which is great, but what does it mean?

Firstly, I’m happy with the term ‘connection to nature’, some suggest ‘connection to’ infers nature and humans are separate, technically they maybe correct, but it is a straightforward and understandable term being used more and more by conservation organisations, politicians, wildlife tv presenters and researchers.

So, what is a connection to, or with, nature? The academic research into human-nature relationships offers a few perspectives. It could be an extended sense of self, an identity that includes nature – a cognitive belief about our place in the natural world. Or a relationship commitment, a belonging to a wider community. Or it’s about emotional affinity, seeing nature as a source of awe and beauty, rather than an object of observation.

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The current concern about our connection to nature has a long history. The Victorian nature writer Richard Jefferies (1848 – 1887) founded a form of naturalism that recognised an increasing divide between people and nature, and his writing also explored the relationship between mind and nature.

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Adapted from my book A Blackbird’s Year: Mind in Nature – out now.

My previous posts have a basis in research and science. However, I’m also interested in more creative routes to nature connectedness and the resulting insights into how mind and nature occupy one another. For me, writing on foot in the local landscape, describing the joy of shared nature, is also thinking about the process that is mind. The act of writing is not simply an output of thought, a substitute for speech or recording of knowledge – writing enables and shapes our thinking. Sentences carry thought and help create new thinking, so writing in nature also develops our thinking about our relationship to nature.

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A brief post to invite submissions to Nature Connections 2015, an interdisciplinary conference to examine routes to nature connectedness. This will take place at the University of Derby, Thursday, 26 March 2015. As the benefits of a connection to nature become more apparent the timing is right for a focussed event to bring together practitioners, researchers and beyond. Continue reading →