Excerpts on Spiritual & Psychological Effects of the Outdoors

7/29/2019 Excerpts on Spiritual & Psychological Effects of the Outdoors

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Spiritual Effects of the Outdoors

Ray WoodcockNovember 22, 2004

Introduction

This paper began as a mere collection of notes. As I went along, however, I realized that the

notes themselves provided a better introduction to the topic than did any of the articles or bookchapters I had come across. So I am using my notes, converted into a rough article, to introduce

the topic.

The title itself has gone through some changes. I had initially intended to explore the topic of

therapeutic uses of the outdoors. As you can see, there have been two changes: therapeutic

became spiritual, and uses became effects. You may find it helpful, as you go through this

paper, to hear the reasons for these changes.

First, how does therapy translate into spirituality? I could retort, with tongue in cheek, that Ihave no idea, but that this does not prevent millions of people from making exactly that mentalleap. The truth is, however, that I do not mean to equate the two; I mean, rather, to be dividing

therapy into two aspects, namely, the immanent and the transcendent. Many people talk about

spirituality and healing (i.e., therapy) in the same breath; and for many, spirituality entailsdivinity or some other quality that transcends mere human experience. So in addressing

spirituality, I mean to be considering the part of the equation that looks beyond the immanent

realm beyond, that is, the person and the part of his/her situation that is, in principle,

scientifically measurable.

One could object that the study of the transcendent has no place in a modern university, but I

believe the existence of a department of religious studies would tend to contradict that. Onecould also object that the study of the transcendent is unsuited for study within a quantitatively

oriented department. But consider the converse proposition: that a ministry student, in the

seminary, should have no exposure to quantitative courses in, say, finance or science. Thatassertion would be untenable. Upon reflection, we must acknowledge that an MBA who intends

to work within the religious sector of the economy had better have a grasp of the techniques for

marketing religion which is to say, s/he had better know the lingo and, likewise, a student of

the outdoors would be poorly educated if s/he could not speak knowledgeably about outdoorphenomena, using the terminology and concepts that, as I say, literally millions of people do use.

I did not initially choose to concentrate solely upon the transcendent in this paper. I thought (or,more accurately, I took a leap of faith, and believed that, by some miracle) I would have

sufficient time within which to take at least an introductory sweep through the spectrum of

relevant subtopics. It has not turned out that way. I began with the spiritual because, initially, Ihoped to get it out of the way. I had a pile of books on that general topic, and I wanted to get a

rough grasp on them and then move on to what I believed would be the more time-consuming

and scientific investigation of the immanent. As these pages will show, there was more to thetranscendent, in the context of the outdoors, than I realized, and even a rough introduction

proved quite time-consuming.


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I would also say, however, that it is good that I gave the spiritual realm ample space. I come tothat conclusion as a graduate student in a program in social work. In that program, we learn to

think of the client within his/her environment: that is, we look at the biological, psychological,

and social influences that affect the persons situation. We examine client needs by considering

all systems in which s/he is enmeshed, ranging from the very small (e.g., the family system) allthe way up to the very large (e.g., his/her culture). In short, we really cover the waterfront.

Why do I mention that? Because if the leisure studies field seeks merely to study the immanent

phenomena of the person in his/her situation to study, that is, the purely psychosocial

experience of a persons participation in the outdoors then it might eventually become unclearhow the field of recreation (as either a profession or a field of academic research, for social work

is both) adds anything to social work, except perhaps as a subfield of social work that takes

particular interest in the outdoors. Those who would not prefer that eventuality might consider it

advantageous for leisure studies to remain open to the contemplation and understanding of howpeople may conceive of the spiritual realm as a separate source of action or influence that may

remain forever beyond the influence of any of the various systems involved in the person andhis/her private situation.

That, anyway, seems consonant with the views of some number of writers in the field of leisure

studies, who have incorporated into their writings some analysis of, or reference to, spirituality(e.g., Heintzman (2002), White and Hendee (2000)). Some such writers, seemingly oblivious of

the variety of meanings that spiritual might have, appear to equate it with one particular strain

of Christian belief (see e.g., Griffin, 2003). Unlike the latter, this paper will take a broader and

more neutral position, in concert with the dictionary definitions of spirit, which include ananimating or vital principle held to give life to physical organisms, the immaterial intelligent

or sentient part of a person, or the activating or essential principle influencing a person

(Merriam-Webster, 2004).

Finally, a note as to format. I have had time only to work up the mere beginning of a sort of

proto-literature review. Opting for substance over form, I have not spent valuable timeattempting to perfect the APA style of my citations or of the presentation generally; nor have I

uniformly imposed the language of scientese upon the text here. I have simply tried to convey a

roughly accurate impression of what I was learning from the sources I consulted, with painful

awareness that greater depth in various areas might lead to substantial changes in the wording.On the positive side, this paper may provide what Estes (2000) would approve as an introduction

to important, relevant material that exists outside the confines of leisure studies literature. In

light of the number of leisure studies writers who draw upon such external sources (in e.g.,psychology, sociology), the effort seems appropriate.

Personal Background

Objectivity in social science is a dubious concept. Rather than pretend that I am observing the

subject phenomena from a neutral distance, I believe it will be advisable to present a portion ofmy orientation toward the material presented below. Doing so may also make the reading more

interesting.


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In summer 2003, I worked as an assistant facilitator at the Alpine Climbing Tower at theUniversity of Missouri Columbia (UMC). (The Tower operations were administered by the

campus Office of Experiential Education (ExEd).)

That autumn, I entered the graduate program in Parks, Recreation & Tourism (PRT) at UMC.Conversations, experiences, and readings that arose out of my work at the Alpine Tower and in

PRT persuaded me that I might obtain important career insights at the international conference ofthe Association for Experiential Education (AEE) being held in November of that year in

Vancouver, BC.

While facilitating on the ropes course that summer, I had enjoyed climbing and other physical

activities. After leading a group through the course or in climbing activity on the tower, we

would sit down and process or debrief that is, we would discuss what the participants

had experienced, and what they might learn from it.

At the Tower, at other places, and also in literature I was beginning to read on the subject, I cameto suspect that there might be more to the topic of debriefing, and more depth in our clients, thanI was able to reach through the procedures we were using. Accordingly, when I attended the

AEE conference, I focused particularly upon those seminars and other learning opportunities that

were presented by, or related to, the work of the Therapeutic Adventure Professional Group(TAPG) of the AEE.

I noticed, in those TAPG seminars, that there were far more social workers, both attending and

presenting, than there were other forms of mental health workers (e.g., psychologists,counselors). This realization inspired the decision to apply to enter the graduate program of

social work in tandem with my graduate program in PRT at UMC.

Uses vs. Effects of the Outdoors

I mentioned, above, that this paper began as an inquiry into the therapeutic uses of theoutdoors, but has now mutated into a discussion of spiritual effects of the outdoors. This, too,

deserves a bit of explanation.

According to Luckner and Nadler (1995, p. 176), the instructional model used in many ExEdsettings typically entails a preliminary setting of goals, a sequence of several different types of

activities, and a processing or discussion phase. This, however, did not seem right. For one

thing, as noted above, I was interested in advancing my concept of group processing.Accordingly, I took a counseling psychology course in the area of group counseling methods. In

that course, I pored over Yalom (1995) word for word. As I learned about group counseling, I

became increasingly convinced that the achievement of real gains, in a group setting, tends torequire time and hard work.

As just described, this typical ExEd model did not describe the zigzag path by which I, myself,was learning from my experiences in Experiential Education. It certainly would be convenient to

assume that an instructor or professional would be engaged in an entirely different (and, of


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course, a more sophisticated) path of learning. But I was not certain how much weight that

belief could carry. It seemed to me that people might tend to learn most effectively when theirlearning is a haphazard affair in which they grab pieces of information as they need them

which may not be the time at which a traditionally linear pedagogy is willing to offer them. (See

the discussion of postmodernism, below.)

An alternate approach, which I explored in a paper for Dr. Cole in PRT in spring 2004, is to

use the phrase offered by Rusty Baillie to let the mountains speak for themselves (James,1980). The concept here is that outdoor experiences are capable of working powerful changes

upon people without human intervention that it is not necessary, and may even be

counterproductive, to allow a human leader to manipulate the experience, interrupt with theinsertion of some arbitrary amount of time for processing, or otherwise seek to control the

situation or the recipient.

At the time of writing the Cole paper just mentioned, I did not have an opportunity to explore anumber of outdoor therapies that I thought might contribute to my understanding of the situation.

Examples included horticultural therapy and therapeutic (horseback) riding. In both cases,human instructors tend to be peripheral.

When I began my work on the present assignment, then, I intended to explore those kinds of

therapies, to learn more about ways in which nature might speak to people. At some point,however, I realized that I might be repeating the mistake of the ExEd model, in attempting to put

a form of human control over an unruly but powerful natural phenomenon. In essence, I seemed

to be telling the outdoors that I would allow it to reach me, or my clients, in this one specific way

(e.g., through plants, in horticulture therapy, or through the horse, in therapeutic riding). If theoutdoors did not deliver what I wanted, when I wanted it, in the form in which I wanted it, then I

would move on and try something else. But the outdoors would remain out there somewhere,

largely unknown, while I continued to try to see it through predesigned, potentially foggy and ill-fitting spectacles.

Eventually, it dawned on me that there was an alternative: that I might begin with the outdoorsas a substratum or foundation. Instead of seeking therapeutic uses of the outdoors treating it,

once again, as an inert tool that exists primarily for human satisfaction the question was, what

are the therapeutic effects of the outdoors?

Consider, for example, the ropes course. Participating in a ropes course can teach useful things

about, say, teamwork. But it seems likely that ropes course participation can teach those things

indoors as well as out. The more important message would seem to be, not that ropes courses areeffective but, rather, that we are doing this outdoors because we like to be outdoors. In that

event, the important question remains: why? Why (as has been reported to me) do students

prefer to take the window seats in a classroom? What is it about the outdoors, in itself, that oftenseems better than human-designed alternatives? What about it beckons to (and perhaps heals)

humanity?

The question has potentially huge implications. All the therapists and social workers in the

world will not be able to keep up with the quantity of grief and confusion that exists in people


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today. Group therapy can make a dent in it; but counseling groups are notoriously ineffective for

persons from a variety of demographic categories (Yalom, 1995), and anyway, the people whoneed counseling the most are not necessarily those who seek it. But the outdoors the outdoors

is there for everyone. Hence, the question mutated: I was no longer asking about therapeutic

uses of the outdoors, but was rather focused on its therapeutic effects.

That, then, is the background that led me to want to understand the link between spirituality and

the outdoors. With that introduction, I turn to a summary of relevant texts.

Understanding the Outdoors, Spiritually and Philosophically

Innumerable persons over the eons have clung to various forms of religion, philosophy, or

spirituality for the reassurance, strength, or other healing balm they claim to have found in their

beliefs. The following paragraphs summarize a few of the principal forms of belief.

Ancient Religions

Starting with what many Americans might consider the most conservative approach to the linkbetween the outdoors and the spiritual, one might contemplate Biblical references to nature, such

as the famous account of forty years during which the Israelites wandered in the wilderness

(Numbers 14:33). Post-Eden nature, in that and some other Biblical contexts, is a harsh place,befitting the image of exclusion from the land of Canaan and, later, of monkish asceticism

(Bratton, 1993, p. 161); but, of course, Canaan itself was the future Land of Israel, flowing with

milk and honey (Exodus 3:8). Later, St. Francis of Assisi would preach to the flowers,

respecting all living creatures as equals, in a lifestyle that sometimes had him living in the city,sometimes in the country (Bratton, 1993, pp. 221, 225). Then again, four centuries after Francis,

Martin Luther led the Protestant Reformation to a point of virtually rejecting nature altogether,

for several reasons: the Reformation was a largely urban movement; monasticism, and its loveof the wilderness, and the wilderness sojourn, were part of the church evils that Luther rejected;

Protestant doctrine held that each Christian had a calling from God that being a wilderness

monk was no more holy than being a good blacksmith; that reading the Bible was moreimportant than ascetic practice; and that, contra the priests and monks, marriage and the family

(and the settled life) were valuable (Bratton, 1993, pp. 232-233). Finally, Christianity learned to

coexist with the Renaissance emphasis upon controlling nature (Bratton, 1993, p. 230). A

passage commonly cited to that end says, God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, andreplenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl

of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth (Genesis 1:28). (The

emphasis, there, has been upon the word subdue.) One seemingly valid way to summarize thenature-oriented attitudes of this Christian heritage, it seems, is that the outdoors can be friend,

enemy, or whatever you want it to be.

Judaism rests, of course, on many of the same scriptures as Christianity, with the addition of

other traditional sources of wisdom. Judaism shares the Christian view of nature as being

hierarchically organized, with humans at the top having so much value that even the eliminationof an entire species of plant or animal would probably be better than losing a single human life

(Solomon, 1994, pp. 106, 119-120). There are undeniable pleasures and physical necessities of


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working the land and getting along with nature (Solomon, 1994, p. 111). But as just indicated, in

traditional Judaism, nature remains a mere tool of the divine, with uses and effects that may bepositive, negative, or both, depending not upon the outdoors per se but upon religious

circumstance. For such reasons, some conclude that the Wests Judeo-Christian heritage is

primarily responsible for the prevalent disregard of the natural environment, although others

apportion at least part of the blame to the ancient Greeks, for their tendency to dissociate intellectfrom nature (Abram, 1996, pp. 94-95).

Foltz (2003, p. 274) contends that it is wrongheaded to seek an eco-friendly Islamic history;

rather, he says, one should adopt Tillichs (1951) correlational method to recogize that

traditions succeed precisely by applying their internal resources to ever-changing concerns. Inother words, mainstream Islam has shifted its views of nature, over the centuries, just as

Christianity has done. Foltz (2003, pp. 250-251) notes a pantheistic strain of Islamic thought

continuing for centuries but ultimately squelched by Islams radical monotheism strain (p.

253) in which it was thought that the face of God appeared in all things. Yet Foltz (p. 254)also cites a number of passages from the Quran (i.e., the Koran) condemning wastefulness,

urging compassion toward animals and respect for plants, and emphasizing conservation. Thesepassages, he seems to find, obtain scant attention in modern Islamic practice, which he criticizesfor rapid, environmentally destructive population growth, major contribution to pollution through

the petroleum industry, and the widespread pursuit of materialistic, consumption-oriented

lifestyles in numerous Muslim-majority countries (p. 257). To demonstrate that this is not theway it has to be, Foltz explores in some detail the environmental progress that Iran has made; but

the larger point is, again, that the outdoors has not been a primary focus of the mainstream

religion, and that the religions views of the outdoors have consequently shifted in practice as

needed to accommodate other priorities.

Further afield, Buddhism offers a mixed picture on the subject of the outdoors. On one hand,

Buddhist doctrine considers this world, including nature, to be devoid of meaning and purpose;but on the other hand, Right Action within Buddhism requires doing no injury to animals or

plants which, after all, are intimately interrelated with all other sentient beings (Harris, 1994, pp.

25-26). This is not, however, part of an adoring attitude toward nature; rather, the purpose ofloving and compassionate behavior is to ensure a favorable rebirth as a god (Harris, 1994, p. 26).

Notwithstanding the popularity of some Buddhist views and practices, then, it seems that this

particular religion might not be the firmest pillar upon which to base a spirituality of the

outdoors, or in which to seek a spiritual explanation of, or emphasis upon, the potentiallytherapeutic effects of the outdoors.

HinduismsAyurveda, or life science, served as a basis for a longstanding practice of herbalmedicine, including about 110 curative plants mentioned in theAtharva-veda scriptures

(Choudhury, 1994, p. 73). (The Bible mentions 120 medicinal plants (Ebadi, 2002, p. xvii); but

(for whatever it may be worth)Ayurveda outdates the Bible by several thousand years, and alsoapparently outdates Chinese herbalism which, in its most developed form, identified 10,000

herbal remedies (Ebadi, 2002, pp. 3-4). Herbal medicine has also been practiced, of course, by

others, including Native Americans (Ebadi, 2002, p. 10).) Hinduism also contains a strongpagan element, in which hymns glorify or anthropomorphize natural phenomena (speaking of

e.g., Father Heaven, of the sweetness of the wind, or of the hidden consciousness of rivers and


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mountains); thus, Hinduism emphasizes participating harmoniously in the natural system

(Choudhury, 1994, pp. 66-67). In terms unfamiliar to many westerners, some plants are alsoconsidered divine; for example, people worship the tulasi plant daily, doing so partly because of

its medicinal properties and partly as a symbol of the deity Vishnu (Choudhury, 1994, p. 72).

Indeed, tree worship has a strong and ancient history in India and not only in Hinduism (Sinha,

1979). Unlike the Jewish (and Christian) elevation of humanity, Hindu deities demonstrate theimportance of animals, our predecessors in the evolutionary chain, by taking on animal form;

also, animals deserve respect for their wisdom, which in some cases includes knowledge ofmedicinal plants (Choudhury, 1994, pp. 74-75). In short, Hinduism does appear to contain the

potential for a more highly nature-oriented form of spirituality than do several other religions.

Without purporting to survey all of the worlds religions, it seems important to mention briefly

the principal historical religions of China. First, in Taoist belief, humans are part of nature;

nature lives forever; so immortality (though apparently not in a personal sense) arises when one

attains harmony with nature (Yao, 1994, p. 150). To attain that harmony, one must change onesinner participation in chi, the essence of the cosmos, from the agitated state in which it exists in

humans, back to its quiet, natural state; one does this by learning to act with non-action and tolive by non-striving (Yao, 1994, pp. 150-151). In the pursuit of immortality, Taoists eventuallyadopted such nature-oriented practices as buying captive birds and releasing them (Yao, 1994, p.

154). By contrast, the practical philosophy of Confucianism urges that one must protect living

creatures, not only out of sympathy for them, but also in order to insure human prosperity.Finally, folk religions of China borrowed from Taoism and Confucianism (and also from

Buddhism, the third longstanding Chinese religion) to emphasize that animals had their own

language and their own knowledge of the world, and that even plants had spirits and could

become spiritual beings if they could obtain the essence of Heaven and earth (Yao, 1994, p. 155).Among other goals, the popular religion offeng shui tries to create natural patterns in human

circumstances to achieve harmony and produce health, happiness, and prosperity (Ebadi, 2002,

p. 9). (For a much more informative review of Asian perceptions of nature, see Braun andKalland (1995).)

The worship of nature pervades many cultures (Frazier, 1926). The Sun, for example, has been afocal point of worship for eons (Hawkes, 1962; Olcott, 1914). So has the Earth (McLuhan,

1994). Earth worship can take forms that appear quite agreeable to modern Americans; for

example, in a book subtitled, Pages from a farmwifes journal, Rachel Peden speaks in terms

very like some just reviewed saying, among other things,

[T]he land never really belongs to man; it is an arrogance and a costly mistake on

his part to think so. It is his only to hold in trust, to use, and to share with hisfellow citizens of earth, the wildlife and plant life by which nature keeps the

balance of life (Peden, 1974, p. 78). [See also Henderson (1990).]

This very brief look at ancient religions has, of course, entirely neglected ancient religions of the

Western Hemisphere. I have not, in fact, so much as searched for materials that might

summarize those religions; but the neglect comes purely from the shortage of time, and not fromany inkling that those religions are somehow inferior to others cited above. I did happen to find,

however, an interesting description of daily practices of the Cree Indians, namely, Berkes


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Sacred Ecology (1998), in which ties between nature and the divine appear in e.g., the ways in

which hunters showed respect to animals because both were held to share a single Creator (pp.83-84). (For additional reading on a spiritual connection to the concept of reverence for life, see

Shepard (1999, pp. 56-66).)

When ancient people ascribed intention and feeling to natural phenomena, they participated in aglobal tendency, linking cultures around the world (Andrews, 1998, p. xii). Responding

particularly to the Christian version of this tendency, William James (1985) objected to a Godwho conformed the largest things of nature to the paltriest of our private wants, preferring

instead a God of universal laws exclusively, a God who does a wholesale, not a retail business

(p. 390).

Classic Western Philosophy

With due regard for the ancient Greek roots mentioned above, one convenient starting point foran analysis of the views of nature found in academic philosophy is the Naturphilosophie of

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775-1854). Schelling apparently held that there is anunderlying unity between the knower and the known, and that science cannot dispense withholistic considerations (Esposito, 1977, p. 239). In terms somewhat reminiscent of Taoism,

Schelling postulated that the essence of matter consists in living force or power, making all of

nature one vast organism (Beiser, 1998, p. 351).

Schelling was part of a larger movement called Romanticism, which was characterized in part by

an emphasis on the subjective. This emphasis arose from the recognition that nobody, including

the scientist, sees the world directly and objectively. The romanticist emphasis on the individualwas reflected in ideas of self-realisation and nature (Jones, 2003), both of which have direct

relation to studies of outdoor experience. Romanticism influenced Ralph Waldo Emerson, the

New England Transcendentalist, of whose light touch Nietzsche is reported to have said,Emerson is one who lives instinctively on ambrosia and leaves everything indigestible on his

plate (Lewis, 2004). Emerson understood nature to be a highly spiritual phenomenon indeed,

the very symbol of spirit (Albanese, 2002, pp. 52-53). According to Sugarman (2000),Emerson (in anticipation of Rachel Peden, above) challenges the bold folly of those who claim to

own and control parts of the Earth Upon reading those words, I wondered whether the

therapeutic effect of nature is reduced when we experience the landscape as being crisscrossed

and diced up by endless legal disputes, petty financial achievements, points proved, offensescommitted, and so forth.

Romanticists made the solitude, chaos, and mystery of wilderness seem appealing (Nash, 1967,p. 44), inspiring Claude Franois Denecourt to invent the woodland hiking trail circa 1837

(Schama, 1995, pp. 546-555). Romanticism, and the desire to justify and explore freedom from

England, appear to have stimulated interest in a romantic literature and art extolling the beautiesof American frontier lands (pp. 75-83). On a different plane, one gets a sense of the distance that

humanity had to travel, between medieval devotion and modern environmentalism, from these

words of James Fisher (1819) (which, in my reading, are fairly typical of his entire volume, intheir rendering of ecological concern in religious terms):


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Among all the sins of which men are guilty, I am persuaded that that of cruelty to

brutes is none of the least; and I cannot doubt, but in the judgment of the greatday, by the Searcher of hearts, and Witness of all our actions, that sin will be

exposed. What an awful account then, will many have to give, who have here

unmercifully treated those beasts over which they had power. If God hear the

young ravens that cry unto him, and supply them with food, Psal. Cxlvii. 9. willnot he, who is a God of pity, hear the cries and groans which the cruelty of man

extorteth from the animals, and avenge their oppression? (pp. 130-131).

These writers generally predeceased the wilderness philosophers whose vision of the outdoors

most directly influenced the modern conservation movement in America. According to Borrieand Roggenbuck (2001, p. 221), the latter prominently include Henry David Thoreau, John Muir,

and Sigurd Olson. Those three, all inductees into the National Wildlife Federations

Conservation Hall of Fame (NWF, 2004), are not ordinarily considered significant figures within

the scope of classical western philosophy. Moreover, while one would not tend to base too muchon one study, it is nevertheless worth mentioning that Borrie and Roggenbuck (2001, p. 221-222)

did not find support for these writers belief in the primacy of mood and emotion in thewilderness experience. While those wilderness philosophers are doubtless worth reading, andwould be analyzed here in greater detail if time permitted, it is not presently clear that they add

fundamentally new and compelling information to that presented above. In any event, their

emphasis on emotion may be a matter for psychology rather than philosophy.

There is another point to consider, with respect to classical western philosophy. This other point

arises under the heading of postmodernism. In general terms, postmodernism is a sustained and

multivalent challenge to various founding assumptions of Western European culture (Ermarth,1998, p. 587). In apparent agreement with the subjectivity of Schelling and the Romanticists,

and contra William James, postmodernism says that the world as we know it is constructed out

of our relative systems, not out of some absolute and objective science (Ermarth, p. 589). Butthis confounds Schelling as well: postmodernism also appears to say that it is backwards to start

with some grand nature, out there somewhere, that is essentially the same for all of us; rather,

you start with the individual, and you recognize that, for practical purposes, time and space beginfrom the person and extend, not infinitely, but only for limited distances. In a postmodern

perspective, you dont try to create an all-encompassing explanation of anything; instead, you

function as a bricoleur, picking and choosing choose pieces of explanations as you need them,

and you decline to take responsibility for making any grand structure fit together (Ermarth, p.589). In potential sympathy with this, Hemingway (1993, p. 7) cites Nietzsche for the

proposition that there is no fixed and absolute meaning to terms (and, needless to say, no fixed

and absolute Spirit) that the meaning of a term (e.g., spirituality) depends entirely accordingto the historical circumstances in which the question is posed.

Karen Armstrong published a provocatively titledHistory of God, analyzing changes in theviews of the divine. The foregoing paragraphs of this paper might equally belong in a field

called the history of nature. There do exist a few materials so titled (e.g., Weiszacker, 1948).

Many more use other titles for the same thing. For example, in a book calledNature: Western

Attitudes Since Ancient Times,Coates (1998) speaks of the difference between historical

ecology and environmental history (p. 18). On a more technical level, one can find works in


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the history of science that shed light on the popular and learned views of nature at a given point

in time, such as DebussMan and Nature in the Renaissance (1978).

Twentieth-Century Religions

Possibly mindful of the sign over the entrance to Dantes Inferno (abandon all hope, ye whoenter here), some brave souls have nevertheless proceeded to propose various forms of a

modern religion of nature. One example, offered for purposes of perspective, arises, again, fromGermany, though somewhat after Schellings time. The Nazi ideology of Adolf Hitler included a

strong, religious interest in nature as a force of which man was a mere part (Pois, 1986, pp. 34-

39). In an expression of nationalistic pride arising from a 2,000-year history of German devotionto that lands forests, the Third Reich instituted what may have been the most earnest forest-

protection program in German history (Downs, 2001, p. 9). Rather than consider that bit of

history an affront (Downs, p. 9), however, one could contend that it provides an example that

we should surpass an example, that is, of the degree of environmental protection that can resultwhen one casts ones nature-oriented perspectives in fanatical religious terms. Let it not be said

that ones religion makes no difference!

Of course, Christianity and most of the other religions reviewed above differ dramatically from

the Nazi vision. In one view, modern Christian theology can celebrate the conclusion that, in

light of modern scientific developments, God was relieved of any responsibility for andinvolvement in nature (Stewart, 1983, p. 284). Through science, Stewart (1983) says, nature

has emerged as enormously complex, driven by chance as well as by determinism, and open to

novelty and change (p. 284). The process theology of Alfred North Whitehead, which he

developed in multiple works, explains that the world unfolds as one natural evolutionaryhappening; but Stewart says there remains the problem that we know ourselves as agents (i.e., as

actors who care not only about the how of nature but also about the why) (pp. 287-289).

The kernel of Stewarts view is that we understand the world (including nature) to be, not merelya process, but an action in which one can intelligibly ask about the why of it all which is to

say, we understand the world as the result of an act by an ultimate Agent, perhaps not in the

mechanical sense of postulating a divine person who pulls the strings (p. 290), but rather as atranscendent intention that ties nature and history together in a sacramental arena, as envisioned

by the work of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (Stewart, 1983, pp. 291-292).

The foregoing discussion seems to confirm Crosbys (2002) observation that major religionsgenerally treat nature, not as something having religious significance in itself, but rather as

pointing somehow to a transcendent reality beyond nature (p. 117). Crosby proposes that the

object of religious worship (such as the Christian God, or the Greek Pantheon) typically hascharacteristics of uniqueness, primacy, pervasiveness, rightness, permanence, and hiddenness (p.

118). Primacy, for instance, entails the status of the religious object as being the most important

object of interest for the religious person. Crosby suggests that nature itself can have the sixessential qualities just mentioned, and therefore can serve as an object of religious concern (p.

121). Thus, in the nature-religion Crosby proposes, primacy of nature would arise if the nature-

religious person treats nature as the ultimate object of loyalty (p. 127). To demonstrate naturesmerit as an object of religious attention in itself (rather than merely pointing to some deity),


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Crosby reminds the reader of, among other things, natures beauty and its role as the seat of all

life (pp. 159-165).

Albanese (2002) bemoans the propensity of nature religion to deconstruct or collapse (p. 54)

into political advocacy for the environment, ethical debate about such things as vegetarian food

practices, or metaphysical discourse about e.g., theology of animals. On the first point, theforegoing discussion of various religions views on nature may provide an example of

environmental orientation; Palmer and Finlay (2003) provide more of the same. On the thirdpoint, echoing Hinduism and the Chinese folk religions mentioned above, but departing from

what would normally be considered spiritual, Kiplings (1964)Jungle Book arising,

interestingly, from India (see the discussion of Hinduism, above) portrayed fictionalconversation between a feral boy and animals as peers. In similar (nonfiction) terms, more

recently, the field of animal communication has emphasized primarily telepathic

communications between animals who, in some cases, occupy a position of superiority, as

maintainers of ancient wisdom forgotten by humans (Albanese, 2002, p. 59). (We in Missouriare perhaps familiar with the local manifestation of such wisdom in the form of Jim the Wonder

Dog of Marshall, MO, who was reputed to display extraordinary intelligence and insight inrepsonse to questions posed to him (Ferguson, 2004).) Websites such as AnimalTalk.net exploreanimal communication further (Smith, 2004).

The views of Teilhard, mentioned above, provide perhaps the principal theological underpinningfor what many call the New Age spiritual movement (Sessions, 1995, p. 291). New Age

religion, in Teilhards formulation, is consummately human-oriented: the Hegelian end of

history (Fukuyama, 1992) arrives as a completion and superseding of nature, in the form of a

global, highly technological human civilization that transcends the natural world.Consciousness, to Teilhard, suffuses all matter, drives toward increasing complexity, and (in

humans) achieves the level of reflection (Sessions, 1995, pp. 292-293). The idea of man as the

perfection of nature (i.e., as the point at which the universe achieves consciousness), or perhapsas the agent that will perfect nature, also has philosophical roots in Aristotle and the Stoics, and

draws upon Hegel and some German Romanticists (p. 299). Not surprisingly, given this

background, Teilhard had little use for biological diversity, or for plants and animals in general(pp. 293-294).

Teilhards liberal Catholic, evolution-based optimism for the human race differs significantly

from the oft-cited Protestant theology of Paul Tillich. Tillich, also influenced by Schelling, ruedthe disregard of nature in favor of the written word of scripture; he too conceived of a

multidimensional unity of all life (Drummy, 2000, pp. 72, 74-75). Tillichs theology would

seem to provide one route forward for Christians who consider nature important in connectionwith the divine. Such a theology poses, for our contemplation, the paradox of human pursuit of

goodness, and other ideals, within a natural world that does not care about such ideals (Cruz,

2003, p. 221). Another possible route forward appears in the area of feminist theology, whichhas been construed as facilitating a concern with healing and relationships and, particularly, with

the relationship between human and nature treating the latter as subject rather than object,

which requires allowing the other to emerge and to engage in creative interaction with humanity(Larkin, 2001, pp. 146-147, 152). Again, such an approach to theology of nature seems to open

possibilities for spirituality connected with the outdoors.


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Another approach to nature religion arises in deep ecology, founded by Arne Naess andunderstood, by him, to combine intellectual inquiry (the ecology part of the term) and spiritual

inquiry, of never-ending depth, into the fundamental relations among features of the

environment, in what Naess has called an ecosophy (Grange, 1997, p. 173). The eight

fundamental principles of deep ecology, according to Naess (1986), include such assertions as,The well-being and flourishing of human and non-human life on Earth have value in themselves

. independent of the usefulness of the non-human world for human purposes (p. 68). Deepecology, as it has developed, incorporates elements from Buddhism, Taoism, Native American

beliefs, Christianity, Whitehead, New Age views, and others (Belshaw, 2001, p. 182). Deep

ecology is markedly oppositional, both in the sense of having a strong environmentalist (i.e.,political) emphasis and in the sense that it tends to come from areas of the globe (e.g., the

American West) in which human settlement and nature tend to be sharply delineated from one

another (Belshaw, 2001, pp. 182-184). Deep ecology poses questions of interest to

environmental philosophers; one might ask, for example, whether the destruction of the grosslypolluting human race would be a good thing (p. 253).

Finally, James Lovelock (2000) proposed a Gaia concept (using the name of the ancient GreekEarth-goddess, suggested by William Golding) in which one views the Earth as a super-organism

capable of enormous self-regulation (Garrard, 2004, pp. 102, 172). The self-regulating occurs

through the aggregate effect of actions by countless living organisms on Earth. For example, bycomplex natural processes, living things adjust the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere

in order to maintain ocean surface temperatures at a tolerable level, with the effect that the Earth

has maintained a fairly stable global surface temperature during the eons even though the Sun

has been getting hotter (pp. 172-173). The Gaia concept implies that extinction of individualspecies is not necessarily important in the grand scheme (p. 102). It would also seem to deny us

a reliable target of spiritual attention: as Garrard (2004) notes, the concept is primarily scientific

and thus remains open to falsification at any time (p. 175). Of course, that observation, true ornot, does not prevent people from treating the Earth (whether or not autopoietic, la Gaia) as an

ostensibly Gaia foundation of a sacred natural unity (see e.g., Primavesi, 2000, p. 169). Gaia

became very popular among deep ecologists, providing a powerful statement of connectionamong all living things, and providing, for some, the basis for a mystical biocentric ethic

(Roszak, 1995, p. 13).

In words that pull together several of the foregoing strains of modern thought, Metzner (1999,pp. 173-174) says:

[Some] argue that we are moving out of the modern age of rationalism andpositivism, which began in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment period, into apostmodern age of deconstructionist relativism. In contrast to this view, I

concur with those who believe it is possible to do more than just critique themodern view. A constructive ecological or systems postmodernism is possible,

in which we can recognize consistent features of the newly emerging worldview.

These features can be recognized as those that contribute to sustainability,preservation, and restoration of all life-forms and habitats on Earth, not just

those of humans or of one group of humans.


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[The mechanistic worldview of Newton, Galileo, and Descartes] is giving wayin many circles to an organismic view, which sees the universe as an evolving

process, a story in Thomas Berrys terms. Instead of seeing life as

biochemical machinery somehow derived from random molecular combinations,

the new biology defines life as a self-generating (autopoietic), genetically codedprocess adaptively coupled with the environment.

Earth, instead of an inert body of dead matter, is seen in the Gaia theory of

James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis as a kind of superorganism . Some critics

initially found fault with the Gaia theory for not offering any new mechanismand instead just changing the metaphor. This statement ignores the fact that

mechanism is itself a metaphor. ...

Quantum physics, with its uncertainty principle, has challenged the olddeterministic model of a predictable clockwork universe. Traditional concepts

of linear causality and mechanical forces acting on material objects are beingsuperseded by chaos theory, nonlinear dynamics, and dissipative structures.

Obviously, there is much to the subject of nature-oriented spirituality. This summary has

provided a highly superficial introduction to the topic. It may nevertheless be possible, from thisintroduction, to detect that ones choice of religion, and of emphasis within that religion, can

make a great difference in how one interprets the outdoorsper se and ones relationship to the

outdoors. Depending upon religious preconceptions, a given outdoor phenomenon may be

interpreted as a sign of divine displeasure with some human error; as an opportunity to meditateupon celestial majesty; as a natural result of a predesigned cosmic machinery; as containing,

within itself, the presence of a specific deity; as a manifestation of the divinity that exists

everywhere ... the list goes on. As noted above, for the outdoors, choice of religion matters!


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14

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[Optional reading provided to classmates]

Psychological Effects of the Outdoorsby Ray Woodcock

November 27, 2004

This paper follows on from the companion paper, which addressed spiritual effects of nature.

Topic Revision Redux

In the companion paper, I described how my thinking had led to some mutation in the originaltopic. The first change was from therapeutic uses of the outdoors to therapeutic effects of the

outdoors. I made that change when I realized (1) that I had originally looked on nature (i.e., the

outdoors) as being a mere tool that I expected to provide certain results if I used it in certainways, and (2) that it might be confusing to examine some of the active uses I had contemplated

originally (e.g., ropes courses), because I wouldnt know whether the benefits of the outdoorswere coming from mere human activity (which, in some cases, can be done equally well indoors).

I was interested in learning which benefits were strictly the result of natures workings. So, as Isay, I started looking at effects rather than usesof the outdoors.

The topic then changed again, as I concluded that one could look at the relationship betweenhumanity and nature in two essentially divergent ways: as entailing an element of the

transcendent (i.e., of what people commonly associate with spirituality), and as having (or, in

some views, as consisting entirely of) an immanent (i.e., worldly, non-spiritual, self-contained onthe mortal plane) aspect. Thus, I devoted the companion paper to the topic of spiritual effects of

the outdoors, and commenced the present paper as an exploration of the immanent, focusingparticularly upon psychological reactions to nature.

As I have looked at that revised formulation, I have become aware of something else I mentionedin the companion paper, namely, that in addition to being a student of leisure, I am a student of

social work. In the social work perspective, the psychological is merely one of several aspects of

a given persons situation. Current social work teaching emphasizes a holistic biopsychosocial

perspective, in which one takes into account, not only the psychological, but also the biological(including medical/psychiatric) and social (including sociological) perspectives on, or elements

of, the persons situation. Hence, it would be excessively narrow, in my view, to think that the

psychological would encompass the full scope of the immanent portion of human-natureinteractions. Probably a better solution would be to use immanent or non-spiritual or non-

transcendent instead of psychological in the title.

My reading has alerted me to yet another potentialfaux pas in the title shown above. That title

assumes that the reader will know that we are talking about effects upon humans. This instance

of human chauvinism (see below) is not one I would wish to advertise. So if I were planning torevise this paper into a more final form, I would probably rename it something like Interactions

between Humans and Immanent Aspects of Nature. I think I would have to retain the concept of


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interaction in order to remind myself, and others, that assuming a strictly one-way street could

imply an acceptance of certain limiting views of nature.

The Condition of This Paper

For the present assignment, I have not had time to explore, in any great depth, these non-spiritualaspects of the larger topic of therapeutic effects of (or interactions with) the outdoors. For the

most part, I have only gotten as far as identifying certain sources that contain provocative

materials on several topics within larger field. Hence, this paper consists largely of illustrativeexcerpts from those materials.

The first section, below, is an exception. I did get as far as fashioning some initial transitionalparagraphs from the other papers treatment of the transcendent, before I decided to splinter this

paper off into a separate document. After that first section, however, my excitement about

covering as many leads as possible means that, for the most part, I can only supply editedexcerpts from the text, in the form of a brief anthology. These excerpts may illustrate why I

considered these sources worth revisiting, if I decide to develop this paper more fully later. I dowish I had had the luxury of distributing a more polished text, but given the present impossibility

of that option, I hope it is helpful at least to provide the following notes.

I have incidentally found a few materials that probably would have been better incorporated in the

spirituality paper. I have generally attempted, here, to be satisfied with relatively brief referencesto those materials.

Transition from the Spirituality Paper: Psychology, Nature, and Ecopsychology

Philosophy and religion can affect ones interpretation of psychological phenomena. A belief incosmic interaction arises in, for example, the idea that, in ecopsychology, [T]here is a synergistic

relation between planetary and personal well being; that the needs of the one are relevant to the

other (ICE, 2004). According to Roszak (1995), Gaia provides a theoretical foundation for thissynergistic relation; Gaia is the evolutionary heritage that bonds all living things genetically and

behaviorally to the biosphere and allows life and mind [to be] as fully at home in the universe

as any of the countless systems from which they evolve (p. 14). On this basis, Roszak

speculates, there exists an ecological unconscious at the core of the psyche, capable of servingas a resource for restoring us to environmental harmony (p. 14).

The contemporary fascination with or approval of nature, found in ecopsychology and its ilk,stands in sharp contrast against the fearful, hostile, or aggressive views of nature found elsewhere.

The Judeo-Christian concept of subduing the Earth provides one example; another arises from

scholarship suggesting that, to the mind of medieval Europeans, dwelling in walled cities, thenight tended to be a time of danger rather than beauty (Verdon, 2002) as it is, of course, to

many city dwellers nowadays as well.

In general agreement with the Judeo-Christian concept, Industrial Age attitudes taught western

humanity to think in terms of overcoming nature (Schneider and Morton, 1981, p. 5). Yet in a

countervailing thread that may have continued throughout the eras just mentioned, one recalls the


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Christian counterexample of St. Francis (above); the pastoral preoccupations of a number of

ancient Roman poets (Geikie, 1912, p. 83); and the subjective, intimate scientific vision ofGoethe (Seamon, 1998). (See sources cited in the other paper for further development of this

kind of history of nature. For a more comprehensive history that encompasses much of the

Western (e.g., not Hindu) material contained in both of these papers, see Oelschlaeger (1991.)

The following sections address several other topics pertaining to the relationship between

psychology and the outdoors.

Summary of Multiple Threads

Metzner, R. (1999). Green psychology: Transforming our relationship to the Earth. Rochester,VT: Park Street Press:

Ecopsychology may be defined as the expansion and re-envisioning ofpsychology to take the ecological context of human life into account. It is nota

variation of environmental psychology, which deals mostly with the impact ofinstitutional environments on psychological states. It offers a critique of all

existing schools of psychology ... for focusing their research solely on theintrapsychic, interpersonal, and social dimensions of human life and ignoring the

ecological foundation. ...

In that regard, ecopsychology parallels similar re-envisionings taking place in

other knowledge disciplines: philosophy is being challenged by environmental

ethics and deep ecology, economics by green or ecological economics, religionand theology by the concept of creation spirituality and other ecotheological

formulations, and sociology and history by new ecological perspectives. All ofthese foundational revisions may be seen as part of an emerging ecological or

systems worldview, a worldview that can also be called ecological post-

modernism. Underlying these fundamental revisions of our systems ofknowledge is a major paradigm shift in the natural sciences, a shift from physical

to ecology and evolution as the foundational or model science. ...

Bioregionalism is one of four sociophilosophical movements that could becharacterized as radical ecology, the other three being deep ecology,

ecofeminism, and social ecology (with socialist ecology a possible fifth). ... The

focus of the deep ecology critique is what is called anthropocentrism, but it canmore accurately be described as a humanist superiority complex. The ecofeminist

diagnosis of our ecocultural malaise is that it is based on patriarchal andro-

centrism rather than anthropocentrism. The social ecology movement critiquesall social structures of hierarchy and domination, whether toward ethnic groups,

the poor, women, or nature. For socialist ecologists, the crucial diagnosis is via

the analysis of capitalist class oppression, which includes the domination andexploitation of nature.


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Bioregionalism offers a radical critique of the conventional approach toplace,

revolving around the idea of ownership of land and the attendant right to developand exploit. ... [pp. 183-184]

Nature in Space and Time, Part 1: A Sense of Place

Smith, D.R. (2003). Phenomonology. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. (E.N. Zalta, ed.).

Retrieved November 27, 2004 from

http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2003/entries/phenomenology/: Phenomenology is thestudy of phenomena: appearances of things, or things as they appear in our experience, or the

ways we experience things, thus the meanings things have in our experience. Phenomenology

studies conscious experience as experienced from the subjective or first person point of view.

Low, S.M., & Altman, I. (1992). Place attachment: A conceptual inquiry. InPlace attachment

(Low, S.M., & Altman, I., eds.). New York: Plenum, pp. 1-12:

[Phenomenologists] analyses of place attachment are rich and varied, often focuson homes and sacred places, and emphasize the unique emotional experiences and

bonds of people with places. ... Because earlier environment-behavior studieswere dominated by positivist [i.e., scientific] philosophies of research,

phenomenological approaches that emphasized unique subjective experiences ...

were not always viewed as productive research strategies. ...

A number of other factors may also have resulted in an initially limited interest in

place attachment. At a broad cultural level, the history of New World Westerncultures has been one of instability, migration, and change, with research

emphasizing how people seek out and adapt to new situations, rather thanfocusing on how they affiliate and attach themselves to their new locales. ...

[Also,] early work in environment-behavior studies was heavily influenced bypsychological approaches, with their emphasis on individual cognitive

functioning .... Over time, however, research by social psychologists, sociologists,

and others began to address personal spacing, territoriality, family and group use

of space, crowding, environmental meaning, and other topics. [p. 2]

Chawla, L. (1992). Childhood place attachments. InPlace attachment(Low, S.M., & Altman, I.,

eds.). New York: Plenum, pp. 63-86:

In the face of the rising prestige of secular science and its mechanical world view,

poets assembled a rejoinder .... A belief that childlike vision is redemptivebecause children have a special bond with nature ... became a major theme of

Romantic philosophy. Countless poems and novels have echoed the famous lines

of Wordsworth [citation omitted]:

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,

The earth, and every common sight,


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To me did seem

Apparelled in celestial light,The glory and the freshness of a dream.

. . . .

At length the Man perceives it die away,

And fade into the light of common day. ...

There is an economic and geographical side to this cultural story. The Romantics

idealized nature and childhood at the same time that rural villages were beingengulfed by industrial cities, pastoral common lands enclosed for private estates,

and children sent to labor in mines and factories. ...

This chapter will explore ... four diverse literatures: psychoanalytic theory ... ;

environmental autobiography, which has evaluated places saved through the sieve

of memory; behavior mapping, which has observed where children andadolescents congregate; and favorite place analyses, which have explored the

reasons for their preferences. [pp. 64-66]

(As a follow-up to the brief mentions of works by Peden and Henderson in the companion paperon spirituality, regarding rural womens experiences of nature, see also S.B. Ahrentzens article

in this same volume,Place attachment(Low, S.M., & Altman, I., eds.), pp. 113-138.)

Rubinstein, R.L., & Parmelee, P.A. (1992). Attachment to place and representation of the life

course by the elderly. InPlace attachment(Low, S.M., & Altman, I., eds.). New York:

Plenum, pp. 139-164:

[P]lace attachment is especially significant to older people for several reasons.First, feelings about ones experiences in or of key former places may be an

important part of remembering ones life course and thus of organizing and

accessing a lengthy life span. Attachment to key former places is one way ofkeeping the past alive and thus relates to the later-life tasks of maintaining a sense

of continuity, fostering identity, and protecting the self against deleterious change.

Second, attachment to a current place may be a way of strengthing the self. ...

[A]ttachment to a current place may be a way of retaining a positive self-image.Third, attachment to a current place may be a way of enacting or representing

independence and continued competence. [pp. 139-140]

[A] small but growing general literature implicates life stage and patterns of

interdependence as consistent influences on the nature and objective

manifestations of emotional bonds with neighborhoods. [p. 150]

McAvoy, L. (2002). American Indians, place meanings and the old/new West.Journal of Leisure

Research, 34(4), 383-396:

American Indian place meanings regarding national parks and protected areas are

often very different from those of White Americans. ... One of our roles as


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scholars in recreation, parks and tourism can be as translators to identify and

translate the various senses of place and place meanings that different people holdfor the West. [pp. 383, 394]

Stokowski, P.A. (2002). Languages of place and discourses of power: Constructing new senses

of place. Journal of Leisure Research, 34(4), 368-382:

[W]e hear more and more frequently about people being drawn to images of the

past, to times that seem slower and more peaceful, where life gives an appearanceof being richer than what is offered in this contemporary fast-paced, highly

mobile world. ... [W]riters offer the term sense of place in an effort to capture

such sentiments, and the phrase seems to resonate. Who among us has never feltnostalgia for a place and its people, especially a place once known intimately? ...

[pp. 368-369]

[An] example of the politics of place in leisure is provided in wilderness research,

a prominent area of study in outdoor recreation that has nonetheless been accusedof concealing discourses of power and privilege. The short story version of

American wilderness goes something like this. Early New England colonistsconsidered their town commons as refuge from the vast dark and foreboding wild

lands that lay beyond community borders. Over time, though, westward

expansion redefined Americas relationship with wilderness. Poets, artists,writers, and historians traveling the frontier created for those back in the States

images of wilderness designed to elevate the American spirit. This new scenic

vision of wilderness grand landscapes of parks and forests, immense rivers andcanyons, and bigger-than-life natural features like Half Dome, the Grand Canyon,

and Devils Tower was a constructed ideal, intended to symbolically inspirenational unity. By the early 1900s, that awe-inspiring vision of wilderness was

itself transformed to fit new circumstances. ... (One is reminded here of the words

of former Alaska governor, Walter Hickel, who was once quoted to say, Youcant let nature just run wild.) [pp. 376-377]

This paper has suggested that research focusing primarily on the physical qualities

of actual recreation, leisure and tourism is limiting, and researchers must look tothe role of language and discourse to develop richer understandings about the

social construction of place and its political ramifications. ... Gerson and Gerson

(1976, p. 203) have noted: inquiries into the character of images as constitutedby relations among people is overdue. ... [W]hat is visible on the ground at

any given time is only the working out of one version of reality, promoted by a set

of social actors who have succeeded in using their power and position to advancetheir own ideals. [pp. 379-380]

Ecocriticism, Nature Writing, and Bibliotherapy

Ecocriticism is a relatively new literary discipline, with an advowedly Green emphasis (i.e.,

politically oriented toward environmentalism), that takes an Earth-centered approach to literary


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studies and (in its simpler forms) addresses such questions as, How has the concept of

wilderness changed over time? (Garrard, 2004, p. 3). (One response: scary natural phenomenaof the past (e.g., the whirlpool, the abyss) have become sources of interest or pleasure in modern

times (Soper, 1995, p. 222).) As another example, an ecocritic might note that we can look at a

photo of the Earth, taken from space, and might equally well characterize it as a lovely and fragile

system or, instead, as a biological mechanism that, soundly managed, might produce unlimitedwealth (Garrard, 2004, p. 161).

The question about changes in the concept of wilderness again interjects the topic of the historyof nature. Mayhew (2004) provides more on that for the Enlightenment period in England;

Armbruster and Wallace (2001) reconstrue a number of nature-related classics; and Slovic (1992)

searches for awareness in nature classics by Thoreau et al. For guidance in the how-to of naturewriting, see Roorda (1998). Bennion and Olsen (2002) and Cassidy (2001) explore the usefulness

of writing as a tool of wilderness learning.

Ecocriticism itself evokes the tedium of recherch, one-step-removed words about words, as in

this passage (which, as you see, is not about nature, but about the act of writing about nature):

The interconnections between human beings and nature the concern of pastoral[writing] from ancient times to the present take on a heretofore unprecedented

significance at a period when the comfortably mythopoeic green world of pastoral

is best by profound threats of pollution, despoliation, and diminishment. Fromthe earth-centered context in which we now find ourselves, the study of pastoral is

thrown open to new interpretation (Love, 2003, p. 66).

Though I and others may react with a yawn to ecocriticismper se, reactions might be different

when we move to the related matter of nature writing. Writing about nature obviously takesmany forms. In poetry, for example, Schneider and Morton (1981, pp. 7-9) juxtapose Alexander

Popes Enlightenment-era, mechanistic view:

Those Rules of old discovered, not devised

Are Nature still, but Nature methodized:

Nature, like liberty, is but restrained

By the same laws which first herself ordained.

against Wordsworths Romanticism, appreciating nature as an inspiration, not (as Pope would

have it) restrained:

These beauteous forms,

Through a long absence, have not been to meAs is a landscape to a blind mans eye;

But often, in lonely rooms, and mid the din

Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,

Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;

And passing even into my purer mind,


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With tranquil restoration feelings too

Of unremembered pleasure; such, perhaps,As have no slight or trivial influence

On that best portion of a good mans life,

His little, nameless, unremembered acts

Of kindness and of love.

Turning another page, we have nature on a more casual level, greeted in light tones of greater

familiarity, in this contemporary poem by Galway Kinnell (Merrill, 1991, p. 88):

I love to go out in late September

among the fat, overripe, icy, black blackberriesto eat blackberries for breakfast,

the stalks very prickly, a penalty

they earn for knowing the black artof blackberry-making; and as I stand among them

lifting the stalks to my mouth, the ripest berriesfall almost unbidden to my tongue,

as words sometimes do, certain peculiar wordslikestrengths orsquinched,

many-lettered, one-syllabled lumps,

which I squeeze, squinch open, and splurge wellin the silent, startled, icy black language

of blackberry-eating in late September.

See also the webpage for the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment (ASLE)

at http://www.asle.umn.edu/archive/intro/sierra.html. Also, Murray, J.A. (1995). The Sierra Clubnature writing handbook: A creative guide. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books.

Finally, as a related topic in the realm of writing and nature, bibliotherapy involves the use ofreading materials in an interactive fashion between therapist and client (i.e., not just handing them

something to read) to help clients become aware that others share problems similar to theirs

(Austin, 1997, p. 61). Bibliotherapy may entail a broad spectrum of materials, and may be used

in individual or group settings (Hynes and Hynes-Berry, 1986, p. 17). I have not researched theextent to which bibliotherapy might also take advantage of the soothing effects of exposure to

nature (see e.g., horticulture therapy, below) to evoke therapeutic benefits in clients who may not

be able to experience nature (because e.g., they are institutionalized or bound to a highly urbanlife) but who may be able to draw upon written words (e.g., Powers Chicago Waters (2002)) to

generate images or stimulate memories of nature exposure.

Nature in Space and Time, Part 2: Time Styles

Highwater, J. (1981). The primal mind: Vision and reality in Indian America. New York:Harper & Row:


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Primal people are supernaturalists, and for them time is extraordinary. Among the

Australian aborigines, for example, there is both the immediate and ordinary timeof daily existence as well as an experience they call dreamtime which

includes not only the events of our sleeping state but also those things we

anticipate, envision, imagine, intuit, and conceive. The aboriginal dreamtime is

the solution to the Western question asked by the late Hannah Arendt: Where arewe when we think? [p. 89]

There are a great many preconceptions with which various societies grasp theworld and make it comprehensible, but in the West there is perhaps no single idea

as obsessive as the notion of the material reality of time. ... Recently, for example,

a group of Midwestern farmers who opposed the introduction of Daylight SavingTime in their region summarized their position by pointing out that the extra

hour of sunlight will burn the grass. [pp. 92, 95]

Cotte, J. [an assistant professor of marketing!], & Ratneshwar, S. (2001). Timestyle and leisure

decisions. Journal of Leisure Research, 33(4), 396-409 [citations mostly omitted]:

[Timestyle is] the customary manner in which one perceives and thinks abouttime. ... The economic approach ... treats time as a fixed resource and assumes

people want to maximize use of money and minimize time expenditures on all

activities. ... The sociological time budget approach is primarily empirical, and itconcentrates on collecting and analyzing time diary data (e.g., Robinson and

Godbey, 1997). ... Both the economic approach and the sociological time budget

approach have conceptual similarities in their reliance on a fixed, objective viewof time. For many other sociologists, time is a social construction, a convenience

that cultures agree on. ...

Psychological and experiential views of time all share a focus on time as

perceived by the person. The psychological literature on time has two distinctstreams of research: psychophysical research on perception of time still mainly

compare [sic] this to clock time, while phenomenologists view time as a mental

construction having only subjective meaning. [pp. 396-397]

Contrasting with classic approaches, where people choose among desirable

activities and then make time and money tradeoffs, we posit that people may first

think about How much time do I have? and What kind of time do I have?before askingWhat would I like to do? [p. 405]

Heintzman, P., & Mannell, R.C. (2003). Spiritual functions of leisure and spiritual well-being:Coping with time pressure.Leisure Sciences, 25, 207-230 [citations omitted]:

Spirituality and spiritual well-being ... have been found to be important copingresources that may mitigate the negative impact of stress on mental and physical

health. ...


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Spiritual well-being has been defined as: "A high level of faith, hope, and

commitment in relation to a well-defined worldview or belief system thatprovides a sense of meaning and purpose to existence in general, and that offers

an ethical path to personal fulfillment which includes connectedness with self,

others, and a higher power or larger reality." ... [pp. 207-208]

Stringer and McAvoy (1992) found that for some wilderness participants,

enhanced spirituality and spiritual experience was due to being in a different

setting, free from the usual constraints on energy and time. ... [R]espondents withless leisure time were less likely to experience the spiritual functions of leisure,

and in turn were more likely to experience lower levels of spiritual well-being.

This finding is consistent with suggestions in classical and contemporary writingson spirituality that time and balance in life are needed to develop spirituality ....

[But increased time] pressures ... may also trigger increased efforts to maintainspiritual well-being through the leisure time and activities that they have

available. ... Another way to create this "space" or temporary escape is to useleisure to go to places in the natural and built environment that encourage spiritual

experiences (the sense of place spiritual function of leisure). ... [T]his paradox ofthe experience of greater time pressure and yet increased use of the leisure

available for spiritual purposes has similarities with the monastic notion of

negotiosissimum otium, that reconciled and provided a basis for maintaining thevery delicate balance between work and rest. This view suggests a very busy

leisure involving matters or activities such as prayer, reading, and writing that

foster the spiritual and tend toward restfulness. ...

[W]e found that those respondents who generally were more active in cultural,outdoor, and hobby activities, and less active in mass media, social, sports, and

travel activities were more likely to experience or use their leisure for its spiritual

functions .... [pp. 224-226]

Borden, R.J. (1985). Personality and ecological concern. InEcological beliefs and behaviors:

Assessment and change. (Gray, D.B., ed.) (chapter 4). Westport, CT, 1985: Greenwood Press,

pp. 87-122 [citations mostly omitted]:

[The assumption that time is linear], of course, is inherent to the antecedent-

consequent basis of the scientific method. Nonetheless, it is only an assumption.An examination of interdisciplinary and cross-cultural ideas about time reveals a

multitude of alternatives (Frazer, 1967; Teilhard de Chardin, 1959). Even within

psychology, Jungs acausal temporal concept synchronicity provides for avery different meaning of time. ... [T]here is growing body of evidence

concerning, among other things, Asian Indians response to time pressure in

competitive situations, Hindu concepts of fate, and Chinese attitudes toward past,present, and future. Taken together, these ideas suggest that one of the problems

with which we are faced may not be stretching peoples concern for [the health of


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the planet in] future time [see ecopsychopathology, below], but fundamentally

stretching ourconcept of time itself. [pp. 105-106].

Wohlwill, J.F. (1983). The concept of nature: A psychologists view. InBehavior and

the natural environment(Altman, I., & Wohlwill, J.F., eds.) (chapter 1), 1983. New York:

Plenum [citations omitted]:

One of the values frequently mentioned as representing the basis for peoples

desire to seek out the natural in all of its forms ... is the sense of refuge from theeveryday world and from human activity .... This view receives support from

studies of the motivation for the visitation of natural recreational areas ... as well

as from the general finding that residents of urban areas are overrepresentedamong the visitors to such areas. ... If nature can afford refuge, it is surely in

considerable measure because of the opportunity it presents for individuals to

escape temporarily from the pressures and tensions of their interpersonal andsocial lives .... [p. 23]

Thich Nhat Hanh, quoted by Doherty, W.J. (2004, September-October). Lets take back

our time. UU World, 18(5), 33-35:

If we are too busy, if we are carried away every day by our projects, our

uncertainty, our craving, how can we have the time to stop and look deeply intothe situation our own situation, the situation of our beloved ones, the situation of

our family and of our community, and the situation of our nation other of the

other nations? [p. 35]

Ecopsychopathology

This is a term that has not appeared on Google until now. I coined it for the occasion. It arises

from the fact that, within ecopsychology, several writers have focused upon the psychopathologyof contemporary life when viewed from a nature-sensitive perspective.

Shepard, P. (1982). Nature and madness. InEcopsychology. (Roszak, T., Gomes, M.E., &

Kanner, A.D., eds.). San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1995, pp. 21-40:

The idea of a sick society is not new. Sigmund Freud asks, If the development

of civilization has such a far-reaching similarity to the development of the indi-vidual and if it employs the same me

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Excerpts on Spiritual & Psychological Effects of the Outdoors