Faraway Nearby
Connecting with our place, culture and ecology
Find Faraway Nearby is the ‘call’ of the BCorp outdoor gear organisation Alpkit, and very much aligned with the latest book, Local, A Search for Nearby Nature and Wildness from their ambassador, writer and long-distance cyclist Alastair Humphreys.
Much of Alastair’s book resonates with what we are doing within the regenerative nature and place connection sphere, through Fairsnape Regen/ and with Living Future Europe.
In Local, Alastair explores each 1km sq within a 20km sq area based on his home, each week. It so happened I was reading Local at the time of our Living Future Europe masterclass session on Place. I suggested that to get to know a place, its culture and ecology, taking the (slow) time just exploring a 20km sq square based on our home or project location can be a powerful option to consider.
Giants
Prompted by research reported in the Guardian that UK Redwoods are thriving in the UK whereas they are struggling in their homelands of the Pacific West Coast, our biophilia Friday walk last week explored the Stagshaw gardens in Cumbria. These sequoia trees were planted around 1860 as part of an arboretum just outside Ambleside, with the ‘Champion’ grand fir being the tallest tree in the Lake District and the tallest of its kind in the UK measuring over 58 metres. Now in the custody of the National Trust, these trees are babies, around 160 years old. Yet if they continue to thrive as they are, they will be here for another 1000 years - that 3024! Our biophilia conversation on the Champion Tree Walk led us to think about what they will experience and feel over that time.
Taking Time
Alastair’s Local book has some wonderful ideas for connecting with place that resonate so well with the small exercises built into our Biophilic Walks and Disconnect Reconnect exploration. (Disconnecting from devices to Reconnect with Place and Nature)
You should sit in nature for twenty minutes every day, they say, unless you’re too busy; then you should sit for an hour. Alastair Humpreys’s.
Alastair suggests sitting still for an hour - and just reflecting, noticing and being present, and of course with no devices. He admits to finding it hard. On our Disconnect Reconnect exercise we suggest this for just 3 minutes - yet unlike Alastair, untimed. Participants report that time either shrinks to below 1 minute or stretches way beyond the 3 minutes.
Biophilic Walks prompts for reflection on who would have sat there 10 years, 100 years 1000 years ago and what they would have experienced, looking at the same view.
One of the reportedly favourite exercises in Disconnect Reconnect is to lie on the ground (either face down or up) and reflect on life as a worm in that place, that soil and that view of the sky.
Draw instead of photograph. Whether landscape or micro detail. a quick sketch is far more powerful than adding another image to your device’s collecting of tens of thousands
These exercises often lead into our biophilia design workshops, where the experiences, feelings, reflections, sketches and meanings are explored to incorporate into designs.
Miles Richards’s work and book Reconnection suggests five steps to reconnecting with the nature of place:
Senses: Noticing and actively engaging with nature through the senses. Simply listening to birdsong, smelling wildflowers, or watching the breeze in the trees. Emotion: Engaging emotionally with nature. Simply noticing the good things in nature, experiencing the joy and calm they can bring, and sharing feelings about nature with others. Beauty: Finding beauty in the natural world. Simply taking time to appreciate the beauty in nature and engaging with it through art, music, or words. Meaning: Exploring and expressing how nature brings meaning to life. Simply exploring how nature appears in songs and stories, poems and art, or by celebrating the signs and cycles of nature. Compassion: Caring for nature. Simply thinking about what we can do for nature and taking actions that are good for nature, such as creating homes for nature, supporting conservation charities and rethinking our shopping habits
When we talk of our designs connecting with place and nature we are only just scratching the surface of culture and ecology, yet by taking the time and space, to experience, explore our feelings and reflect deeper, we can explore the palimpsest of real place.
Related Upcoming
Zoom Regenerative 26th March
Moving Beyond Sustainability, Community Engagement in Advancing Regenerative Design, with Stephanie Vierra sharing insights from her regenerative community work in Maryland, USA.
In a planning conversation with Stephanie for the ZR session, the expression often quoted on the Zoom Regens, that "community is nearly always the answer" was forefront in my mind, and just how the community work in the Kentlands supports that truism
The Kentlands is a New Urbanist neighbourhood built around a historic farmstead. New Urbanism is the concept of building a walkable, mixed-use development neighbourhood. Kentlands was one of the first neighbourhoods to be built using these principles and one of the most successful. Sustainability and environmental quality were part of the original plan for the neighbourhood. Now there are more plans to engage the community in efforts that move beyond sustainability into more regenerative practices.
Stephanie Vierra is the president and owner of Vierra Design & Education Services, LLC, which specializes in research, project management and educational programs on sustainability and whole-building design.
Zoom Regenerative April
Our ZR Earthday edition will explore Beauty with Don Ruggles
LFE Biophilia Summit June 6th
Early bird registration is now open - grab your place.
We have great keynotes lined up with Oliver Heath and Miles Richardson. We are currently calling for your insights and proposals to present - on a range of themes from architecture to fashion, construction to art and verse to psychology.
Verse … “Showcasing, inspiring, informative, and educational books around the “reconnection to nature” and “love for nature”. Including novels, essays, handbooks, guidelines, and booklets. We are inviting the story and narrative of your work, or of that which has inspired, even transformed your biophilic mindset”
Biophilia Camp and Barcamp September
Hosted by Living Future Europe once again in the Italian Sud Tyrol region in late September, a week of emersion into all things biophilia, place and nature. There will be biophilia walks and Disconnections Reconnections
Biophilia Society
Become a member of the Biophilic Society, be part of a thriving network that beilves nature will save our society and enjoy monthy inspirational biophilia and nature-connecting related sessions.