Naturalism

Connecting to Nature

It might seem silly to write a guide on how to appreciate nature. Just go explore nature, right? If that works for you, great! But maybe, for you, going out into nature has felt boring, or maybe the reductive instruction to “touch grass” wasn’t enough to make you feel anchored and surrounded by life that is worth paying attention to. This is normal and probably the more common experience. If ‘connecting to nature’ wasn’t automatic for you or felt ambiguous then maybe the approach laid out below can help.

In Jenny Odell’s book How to do Nothing she draws from the philosophy of bioregionalism as a way to ground ourselves in the real world, outside of the attention economy. This approach begins by cultivating knowledge of your local bioregion: who lives there with you, what is the history of the place on which you stand, and what is only visible to those who know where to look. Each connection we build up in this knowledge graph of our bioregion is another thread that connects us to the real world.

Interestingly, my experience suggests that while it initially takes effort to notice something new, over time a change happens that is irreversible. Redwoods, oaks, and blackberry shrubs will never be “a bunch of green.” A Towhee will never simply be “a bird” to me again, even if I wanted it to be. And it follows that this place can no longer be any place.

— Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, p. 123

For me, birdwatching and mushroom hunting have become very enriching activities. It felt like it just increased the resolution of life and deepened the complexity of just being a person in the world. When your world looks saturated, deep, and complex in this way screens begin to feel more greyscale and flat. When I don’t tend to my connection to nature that is when I find it easiest to be swept up by algorithms and feeds.

The Approach

My hope with this guide is to give you one avenue in which to strengthen this specific muscle of attention so you can build these connections of understanding that will tether you to solid ground, specifically the part of earth where you currently live. My simple suggestion for how to begin is to just learn the names of the individuals in your bioregion. Learn the names of the plants, birds, bugs, and fungi.

This is the fundamental skill that will start to awaken you to the diversity of life around you. The “wall of green” will fall away and reveal a complex interwoven community made up of many different species and countless individuals.

Entry Points

There are many places to start, and maybe you find the idea of crawling on the ground and contrasting the tiny details of small green sprouts to be a strange and boring way to spend your time, but maybe you like the idea of being able to identify all your local birds or trees. Perfect, start there. Not to worry though, we will get you scrounging around soon enough. You will find that once you open this door nothing in nature feels ignorable and eventually the pull to get your hands dirty will win out.

When we try to pick out anything by itself we find that it is bound fast by a thousand invisible cords that cannot be broken, to everything in the universe.

John Muir,Journal Entry for July 27, 1869

Below we highlight some ways to start with your species/discipline of choice.

Birds

Birding is popular for a reason. You learn to identify a species and are instantly rewarded. The feedback loop rivals that of a slot machine as there is something innately pleasurable in pattern matching for humans.

This recommendation is just about learning to identify the different birds, which while very fun will lose its novelty fast so do keep notes on bird behavior as that is where the long term enjoyment really comes in. There is a whole discussion around the gamification of checklisting and I suggest paying no attention to this while you begin. Instead, just keep in mind that the birds are all up to something and it can be fun to figure it out.

[!info] Get Started Birding Look up your city on Ebird Hotspots and find a nearby location with submitted checklists and go visit. Try and see if you can find the most reported birds.

Geology

For Geology I think there are two ways to approach it. Macro and micro. Macro being the large rock formations that shape your bioregion and getting to know the geologic history a bit. Second is the micro side which I think of as identifying rock specimens.

[!info] Get Started with Geology For the macro side, check out your bioregion on https://macrostrat.org/. Do you live near a dividing line? Maybe choose a notable divide and go see the difference in person.

For the micro side, just start collecting rocks you find cool and do some research to identify. Get a field guide or a rock ID app and start just making notes about the rocks you find. If you can, I recommend investing in a cheap jewelers loupe, you will find that many boring looking rocks are covered in tiny crystals and have interesting patterns with a bit of magnification.

Fungi

Mushrooms can be hard to find depending on where you are in the world. Don’t be discouraged when you go out looking and don’t find them, especially if you live in a dry climate, you might need to get creative to find specimens. With some persistence you will develop an eye and an intuition for where to look. Developing this skill can be really rewarding.

[!info] Get Started Mushroom Hunting Start by looking up your location on iNaturalist and set the filters to mushrooms to find local hotspots. Even if you don’t see them on your own outings yet, you can start learning from others what is around and get some ideas for where to look.

I also encourage you to start uploading your own finds to iNaturalist. This is a great way to learn, confirm your identifications, and contribute to citizen science. Mycologists and mushroom enthusiasts are rare, you might be the only person in your town contributing observations providing important fungal range map data.

[!danger] Do not eat wild mushrooms. Learning to forage is extremely rewarding and a great goal to shoot for, but it takes time and is best done with some in person mentorship. Don’t rely on online identifications and instead get involved with local gathers.

Resources

There is no barrier to entry to getting closer to nature. You don’t need to buy anything or learn anything. You can just make up your own names for what you see or make a mental note like “that funny little guy with the patterned belly”. The goal is to connect to your local environment and to learn to appreciate the world around you. It can be helpful to remind yourself that there is no “name” for that bird. You may or may not find it helpful to know that those funny little birds you see are classified as Scaly-breasted Munias, but knowing that actually is irrelevant to your ability to appreciate them and to imbue them with meaning.

That being said, here are some things you might find useful:

Field Guides

These will be region specific so you may need to do some research but some general guidelines:

• Generally field guides with drawings are better for learning than photographic ones because artists can accentuate and highlight the key differentiators between species. We are classifying individuals so a photo of my local Red-tailed hawk may not look much like yours at all!
• Portability matters, don’t buy a tome. Get something you can bring with you.
• Similar to the above point, it can be helpful when you are starting to get a guide that is limited in scope. Don’t get the full Sibley’s Guide to North American Birds, get one of the East or West versions so you are not flipping through and comparing a bunch of irrelevant birds for the ID at hand.
• Don’t let the search for the perfect slow you down either. Beware consumerism. You still have the entire internet at your disposal.

Apps, Tech, and Gasp Emails

This is a place where tech can really help with ID’s. The automatic image and sound classifiers can be good, but I recommend trying to find a community of nature lovers through the more social of these apps, notably eBird and iNaturalist.

• Cheap Jewelers Loupe - this is great for rock ID, but it really makes looking at everything (leaves, mushrooms, moss) much more interesting. Highly, highly suggest keeping one on you at all times.
• Phone’s built in camera might have a plant ID setting. I know my iPhone does and it’s pretty darn good!
• eBird app (birders will populate their list here - I have met my fellow local birders through this app)
• iNaturalist (Great for fungi, moss, plants - Comments on posts lead to good discussions and learning ID’s)

I get two emails every day. There are my only newsletters, one is the daily eBird Rare Bird Report, where I am notified of any uncommon birds that have been seen in my area. The other is a list of the daily iNaturalist mushroom observations. Most days this one is pretty sparse but usually a few days after a rain there is a big pulse of all the cool mushrooms that sprouted up. Try unsubscribing to everything else and replace them with these.