What's your relationship with nature?

It’s a question I’ve posed to my Rooted and Rising podcast guests over the last elven months across season one and into season two as part of ‘Insights’ which are captured on the podcast website as an additional glimpse in each guest’s world.

‘Nature is my safe space’ – Emma Thorp

‘Dive in and breathe deep’ – Philip Atkinson

‘Evolving and deepening’ – Tracey Robinson

‘We are the same’ – Tracey Falcon

‘We are both longing for each other’ – Hamish Mackay-Lewis

‘Nature is my inspiration, my refuge, and my first love’ – Adrian Harris

‘Co-nurturing buddies’ – Karyn Prentice

‘Reciprocal. You heal me, and I heal you’ – Sarah DeWitt

‘My saviour. The place I go to, to release, cry, find calm, walk with clients, lie in, soak up sounds and remind myself how small I am in the big universe of life, and yet connected to it way beyond my intellectual knowing’ – Carmen Rendell

'Being in nature feels like being in deep conversation – connected and inspired by magic, humour and grace. It’s where I heal my hurts' – Ruth Geddes

‘Increasingly shifting from being in nature, to being with nature, and more and more in service of nature’ – Paul Rodwell

‘I have a deeply emotional connection as Nature, and have been known to describe it as my 'friend' - which sometimes gets a smirk. I have a growing fascination with birds and trees. It brings me such Joy!’ – JK McQuinn

‘It’s the only thing that can save us’ – Aly King-Smith

My own response of ‘intimate’ captured during episode one shifted to ‘we are nature’ by the beginning of season two.

What's your relationship with nature?

Over summer Solstice I spent time at Trematon Castle in Cornwall complete with motte-and-bailey fortification, 13th-centurt gatehouse and Georgian mansion at the ‘Nature as artist’ festival hosted by the power couple Frieda Gormley and Javvy M Royle founders of the B Corps House of Hackney. It was an eclectic mix of musicians, film makers, ceremony creators and writers where artists were invited to truly collaborate with nature. Frieda was deep amidst the launch of her new book ‘In the Company of Nature’ that traces the journey of the business built around the principles of regeneration.

During her talk she mentioned the campaign ‘We are nature’ led by Lawyers for Nature and House of Hackney to persuade all of the major English-language dictionaries to change their definition of nature to include ‘humans’. My ears pricked up as the description of my relationship with nature had recently morphed into the same three words, alongside my ongoing observations and despair at our human state of disconnection from nature physically, mentally, emotionally, energetically and spiritually.

The power of the dictionary in what's included and what's excluded.

Words and definitions matter.

Words and the meaning we attach to them matters. Our language shifts and changes to represent our social and cultural interests. The word ‘nature’ can be traced back to the Latin word natura which means birth, and was originally used to describe innate qualities or the disposition of something. However, over time it’s shifted to mean something ‘other’ or separate to humans. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) current definition of nature is:

‘The phenomena of the physical world collectively; especially plants, animals, and other features and products of the Earth itself, as opposed to humans and human creations’.

This linguistic separation of ourselves as humans from the natural world, rather than being a part stems from the seventeenth century and the emergence of a rationalist world view advocated by philosophers such as René Descartes who adopted a mechanical perspective where the universe was compared to a machine. This division between the human mind and physical matter meant the spiritual world within nature was also deemed primitive and abandoned in favour of reason, evidence and logic.

The meaning of the word ‘nature’ illustrates society’s current belief system towards nature. It shapes our values and describes our relationship with the natural world; which in turn frames how we think, feel and act. The prevalent western capitalist system lies deeply and unconsciously embedded within our English language, where nature or ‘natural capital’ is a resource to be measured, commodified, valued and extracted by humans. Within the outdoor and nature coaching space despite a self-proclaimed affinity for nature I’ve observed coaches regularly describe their practice ‘using’ or ‘utilising’ nature. Words run deep. Matthijs Schouten, the Dutch ecologist and philosopher offers an alternative phrase for nature in the ‘community of life’. The more-than-human and human world living together in community.

At the same time as the definition of nature changes, nature words have been slowly disappearing from our culture and society. Miles Richardson, Professor of Human Factors and Nature Connectedness at the University of Derby plotted the use of nature words in books such as blossom, river, moss and bough as an indicator for how people were connected to nature, as a reflection of what people noticed, valued and wrote about. Since 1850, there’s been a decline of around 60% which correlates with the industrial revolution and urbanisation. In response, Robert MacFarlane, a nature writer and Jackie Morris, an illustrator formed a collaboration to carefully capture words and images in ‘The Lost Words: A Spell Book’ to celebrate the creatures and plants with whom we share our world. These ‘spells’ opposed to poems are intended to be spoken out loud to call each creature or plant back into our hearts.

Those who aren’t named through words, aren’t known. It’s impossible to form a connection and care for someone or something that we don’t identify with or understand. Words bring us into relationship and help generate feelings of attachment, though which our decisions and behaviour are then made upon.

I spent the majority of my childhood in the 80s and 90s outdoors, staring up at my guardian a massive horse chestnut tree in my back garden, building dens on the Isle of Jura whilst on holiday or caring for my ever-increasing menagerie of guinea pigs and rabbits. The outdoors and nature seemed to blur, blend and intertwine. It fed my curiosity at the natural world and people which inspired me to study history, geography and biology at A level. This thread has continued as I’ve travelled outer and inner worlds physically, mentally, emotionally, energetically and spiritually with myself and guided others as an expedition leader, coach, supervisor, confidante and friend.

The shelves in my home creak under the weight of this thirst for knowledge with books on psychology, ecology, biology, sports performance, coaching, leadership, followership, spirituality and environmental science. My latest reads of ‘The Body’ by Bill Bryson and ‘The Sacred Connection’ by David Suzuki reenforce my thoughts that we are nature. Human beings are physically made of natural elements, roughly 60% water and 18% carbon, and our bodies contain a similar number of bacterial to human cells. 99% of human DNA overlaps with chimpanzees; and we’ve the same evolutionary history as everything that exists on planet Earth. Humans are nature. Nature is human.

Members of the ‘We are nature’ campaign presented evidence on the past and current usage of the word nature to the OED that subsequently resulted in the modification of the definition. The wider sense of the word now reads ‘More widely: the whole natural world, including human beings’ but the opening definition still excludes humans from nature. The campaign continues to persuade other dictionaries to revise their definitions of the word. It’s possible to find out how you can support here.

The invitation awaits to claim our language and craft a more reciprocal relationship with the greater community of life. Words shape our inner and outer worlds.

What’s your relationship with nature?

We are nature whether in the form of a human, mushroom, moss or tree stump.