Belonging and 'The More-Than-Human World'

I can remember being a “latchkey kid” in the ’80s. In elementary school I was sometimes alone after school, or I would stay with a family friend and her kids who lived a few hundred yards away. My parents divorced when I was six, and I lived with my mom during the week. We were in a very small rural town in Connecticut called Lyme. Although we lived in a tiny cottage and had little money, nature was all around me—a big field, woods, and a beautiful river winding its way through the property.

The divorce shattered my sense of home, safety, and stability. When I started at my new school in first grade, I made some friends, but I always felt like an outsider. I wasn’t very good at sports, and there was some bullying.

My childhood wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t a tragedy either. There were bright spots. One of the biggest was that both at my mom’s and at my dad’s homes, there were woods. I always loved being in the woods. The stone walls of New England fascinated me, and when I sat in the field at sunset or played with my G.I. Joes in the dirt pile, the sound of geese overhead and the presence of the maple trees comforted me. They helped me feel safe.

It was the beauty, and the presence of the “more-than-human world” that accompanied me, even when no human person was there. I felt a presence in nature. The vast sky, the freshness of the air, the colors of the autumn trees—somewhere within that great mystery I sensed a higher power. Call it what you will. I’ve always felt it, and most tangibly, I’ve felt it outside.

Even today, when I’m in my “sit spot”—the place I go almost every day to quietly observe the world—I sometimes have what I would call an encounter. Often it’s the brave little chickadees who come closer than any other birds. When they tilt their heads and look at me, and I look back, I feel a small lift in my heart and the corners of my mouth. I’m not alone. And when they fly off, that reverberation of interspecies connection stays with me.

Over the decades, I’ve pondered the role of nature in our collective well-being and in our perennial yearning for deeper truth and meaning. This curiosity has led me to explore many different spiritual traditions and practices. In recent years it led me to write a book about human rewilding and to start the School of Mindful Outdoor Leadership at Kripalu. Helping people reconnect with nature has become both my career and my calling.

Through that work, I’ve come to realize that everyone needs nature. Nature is our natural habitat. We don’t have to give up technology, but we cannot give up our need for the living world. We can live without iPhones (technically), but we cannot live truly fulfilled lives without a relationship to the “more-than-human world” around us. The belonging we feel in nature comes from access to a larger Self—one that our indoor, screen-centered lives often cut us off from. Sunsets and stars, campfires and coyote calls. This is the language of Life. These are the wild facets of ourselves that nature gives us freely.

A sense of belonging is available to everyone outdoors. One doesn’t need access to remote wilderness. Simply sitting by an open window, feeling the air, listening to birds or to the wind in the trees can be a powerful way to reconnect. There is guidance and wisdom available in nature—we just need to make the time to tune in and receive