Understanding the value of the outdoors, as well as my love and need for it started when I was a child. My parents were give-back-to-the-land hippies. They lived without electricity, running water, air conditioning, phone, etc. for the first ten years of my life in a small, hand-built house in southern middle Tennessee. I found sanctuary in the woods while learning that medicine could come from plants. I learned how to identify and grow plants from my parents.
Finding Purpose
At 18, I sent myself on an Outward Bound course and found a vocation and a purpose. I could enjoy the wilderness and help others while working at a job I loved. While I was helping others, the wilderness was helping me. I am now an herbalist and share my love of wilderness with others through occasional hiking and backpacking trips, sharing plant knowledge, and educating on how to make plant medicine from my farm.
To understand and value something, often, people need to experience it.
To share the love of wilderness and plant knowledge, helps others to understand some ancestral knowledge. We all came from people who used plant medicine. It also gives them self-confidence in making their own plant medicine as well as understanding the value of the outdoors and wild, natural areas.
Seeing Nature As It Is
I have found that while emersion in wilderness is very therapeutic, not everyone can take twenty one days, or even a week to do so. Often an hour of being alone or walking as a group in the woods can be equally amazing. Taking a moment to watch a bird, inhale a cleansing breath of fresh air, listen to a tree, watch grass grow…. This can reset our entire day and begin to reset our lives.
And this in turn, can possibly help people see the value in nature for the sake of nature.