Naming Natures Nuances
Practices for ‘Playing With Place’
I feel like the English language is lacking in nuance when it comes to nature.
The romantic poets in England in the nineteenth century had one term for it: the sublime.
To them, ‘the sublime’ was that sudden burst of spiritual transcendence-bordering-on-ecstasy that occurred when faced with nature's magnificence.
For example, the dramatic view of the mountains could send you to the 'everlasting universe of things' (as poet Percy Shelley puts it in his poem ‘Mont Blanc’ from 1816).
But what about other natural experiences?
What about the open curiosity one experiences while heading into the woods on a hike?
What about the quiet contemplation that occurs when staring out to open water?
What about the excitement/fear of being in an open area while a storm is heading towards you?
What about the serenity of gazing at the moon in the sky, as it peeks out between buildings?
I’d like more words to aptly describe these moments.
I remember when I was at the Climate Reality Leadership training in Toronto (hosted by Al Gore) back in 2015. At one point in the conference, we were encouraged to 'share our stories' with our table mates. That is, share our stories about why we had come to be at this conference.
Like me, every one there had experienced an inner shift at some point. Something inside said 'I need to do something about ‘the environment'. I need to protect it, speak about it, paint it, write about it, advocate on its behalf.’
Everyone had their own story to tell about what had caused the shift inside.
What really struck me was how many of us expressed a connection to nature:
-I grew up in nature
-I like being in nature
-I want to protect nature
I paraphrase, but it was a concept oft repeated: nature is important to me,
I always knew that I loved nature but I hadn't really said it out loud like that before. I felt shy admitting it. Even though it was important to me, I hadn’t talked about it very much.
On the other hand, I hadn’t been asked about it very much—until I landed at this climate activist conference, and one could argue that a venue like that is probably one of the few places you're going to be asked to talk about it.
The other place might be an Outdoor Educators conference, like the one I attended in 2016 as an elementary educator.
But certainly not in ‘ordinary life’.
Rarely, when you meet someone, do you think to ask them about their emotional connections to ‘nature’. It just is not a normalized part of modern conversation here in my mostly white dominant North American experience.
It does get me thinking, though.
Why haven't we prioritized this as an ongoing conversational point?
I grew up in a variety of small towns in Ontario. Nature was at my back door, sometimes literally, when we lived at the edge of our 1970’s small bungalow suburbia. I played outside all the time, riding bikes, making forts out of sticks and pine needles or snow, whether in front yards, school yards, parks or meadowlands. We lived near lakes, rivers. I spent every summer at a beach, in the water.
Even when we moved to a (mid sized) city, it was on Lake Ontario and our house was steps away from a park and a small patch of natural beach.
I spent many days of my adolescence walking that beach, staring out into the wind at the water, thinking deep thoughts about the latest high-school drama.
(That experience in itself needs its own term. What word can we create for a teenage form of nature-soothed angst?)
When I think about it, all my life, nature has been there, a consoling presence ‘in the background’.
A few years ago, I started taking what I called the 'nature pic of the day' and posting it on my social media accounts. I started snapping photos with my phone of whatever aspect of 'ordinary nature' struck my fancy.
Maybe it was the sky that day in a parking lot, a tree trunk by the road, an ant circle forming between interlocking bricks.
This photography sensibility intensified in 2019 as an injury reduced my mobility to a shorter range (a driveway and then my street), which also eventually concurred with lockdown during the pandemic. I obtained a camera with a zoom lens but my photos remained unfiltered to impart the reality of whoever or whatever I was encountering in this ‘ordinary way’.
One of my daily, necessary joys continues to be checking in on whatever is around me, like the pink thistle flowers that grow at the edge of the driveway (which then turn silver and furry and float away), searching for the snails that might sneak out after the summer rains over by the swampy bit, or tracking the reflection of cloudy sky in a pothole puddle that only emerges in a specific spot in the road when it rains.
I spent a whole year in 2021-2022 visiting the same small ‘ordinary’ roadside corner every week and doing a short video noting the subtle shifts and the creative inspirations to be found there. (Surprisingly, there’s a lot.)
I still engage regularly in this practice and my images of my watershed locale can be found regularly on my Instagram @julieeejohnsonn.
With images, I share an appreciation of the abundance of our natural world, and thus, promote that sense of abundance within myself--and perhaps, I hope, possibly, within others.
Because this feeling of ‘natural abundance’ can support a sense of wanting to see ‘Nature’ properly tended and safeguarded. This is an integral and intentional part of my personal activism: sharing the love of a place, to support wider feelings of care and stewardship.
Also, the more I kept doing this inquiry, the dominant social premise of nature as my ‘background’, as if it were my ‘stage’, became a rather silly one.
It's quite clear, as I wander a road, meeting thistle plants, wind, bees, and water ditches, that I’m in it, not on it. I’m within it, deeply entangled, connected visually, emotionally, sensationally, creatively, at every moment with wherever I am.
The moment I was born onto the Earth, I felt the sensory experience of our planetary air on my skin and inhaled it into my body.
Even right now, as I write this from ‘inside’ a room, is there separation between ‘here and there’, ‘inside and outside’?
No. The air is not ‘out there’ The air is in here, and indeed, in me. We are integrated.
If the Earth is a whale, I exist within the belly of it. The world ingests me as much as I ingest the world.
Personally, I’d love it if we brought the vibrancy of our natural interconnections to the forefront of our everyday consciousness by making our relationship with it an active aspect of daily life.
So, let’s talk about it, make up new words about it, and then talk about it some more using those new words.
Let’s more readily share our appreciations of where we are, in addition to our concerns and worries.
So, whether it be through art, images, words, poems, conversation, interior gleanings, or some other form, how might you honour your relationships with the diverse natural abundance that is here with us always on this earth? How might you ‘play with place’?
A few suggestions, if I may.
-Whenever you forget about our deep connection to here, go listen to Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot or Pink Floyd’s Eclipse lyrics (or seek out some other resonant and fabulous art form of your choosing) to remember how deeply tied the entirety of our human existence is to where we are right now.
-Consider adopting the practise of Radical Joy for Hard Times or reading and sharing their stories
-Find a spot near you, any spot, and check it on it regularly to build up the habit of noticing who and what exists here with you. It does not need to be a fancy ideal version of pristine nature! Maybe it's the parking lot where a dandelion pokes through a crack. Maybe it's the sky from the window. Maybe it is just the window (there’s lots happening at the corners of every window). Be curious. Lean in. What happens here over time?
-Consider a photographic journal or other representation of your connections to place(s).
-Consider drawing personal and emotional maps about where you are. How is memory tied to your place(s)? Where is your personal and cultural history located? Where did/do you feel devastated, comforted, sustained? Where did you meet people or have events that changed your life? What places are/were most generous? Where are the smaller more consistent spots of your life happening? You can map them out, name them, celebrate them.
-Make up new words to help share the vibrancy of our natural connections. Here’s a few I propose: Eco-bliss. Eco-empathy. Eco-epiphany? Yes? No? Will they catch on? What would you suggest?
-Take a picture of places you love and share why. Link it to your environmental concerns. And tag me on Instagram, I’d love to see them @julieeejohnsonnn
Indeed, any creations related to ‘playing with place’ that you feel like sharing, tag me on IG.