Power and (In)Justice

Because ethnography is powerful in illustrating how people act, respond to and think in social situations and uncovering underlying power dynamics (Cordner, 2024), one prominent strand of research within environmental ethnography critically examines how environmental issues are entangled with power relations – both among people and between people and nature. Within this strand, three fields of study are particularly important to review: environmental justice, Indigenous studies, and ecofeminism. Each offers distinct yet intersecting perspectives on how environmental tensions are experienced by communities marginalised by historical, cultural, and structural power systems, particularly those differentiated by socio-economic status, race, cultural background, and gender.

The first set of studies falls within the field of environmental justice, where ethnographic studies have covered several topics. Some researchers have considered how environmental vulnerability is experienced by communities confronted with toxic environments (Gutierrez et al., 2021). For example, Checker’s (2005) ethnographic monograph Polluted Promises tells the story of an African-American community in Hyde Park, Georgia, that is surrounded by polluting industrial facilities. Suffering from debilitating health issues, the community members turn to activism to fight not only against industrial contamination but also against environmental racism. By examining the daily experiences of the Hyde Park community, Checker highlights that environmental injustice is still prevailing in the post-civil rights era, pointing out that “environmental burdens are unevenly distributed around the globe, and people of colour and poor people are on the front lines of poisonous exposures” (p.186). Auyero and Swistun (2009) demonstrate individual testimonies of environmental suffering based on their collaborative ethnographic fieldwork in Flammable, an Argentine shantytown surrounded by a large petrochemical compound, a river highly polluted by industrial toxic waste, an unsupervised waste incinerator and an unmonitored landfill. The authors argue that people’s experiences of environmental vulnerability induced by toxic surroundings can only be understood within the broader material and symbolic context, such as the community’s historic relationship with the landscape and the discourses of outside agents that shape people’s perceptions of their lives and environment. Luna’s (2018) study examines the environmental inequality faced by Burkinabe farmers in cotton production based on participant observation and semi-structured interviews conducted in Burkina Faso. The researcher finds that a key reason that Burkinabe cotton farmers widely adopt new agricultural technologies, which significantly increased their exposure to pesticides, is that these technologies offer them “a higher status, modern, technical, whiter identity” (p.231, emphasis in original). Her study demonstrates how racist cultural ideologies can influence marginalised people themselves to act in ways that reinforce environmental inequalities.

Still linked to environmental justice, other researchers have explored unusual events, for example, disasters (Cordner, 2024). Ethnographer Kim Fortun (2001), for instance, traces the advocacy for the victims of the 1984 explosion of the Union Carbide chemical plant in Bhopal, India. By analysing the victims’ narratives, Fortun sheds light on the nexus between the unequal power relations in globalisation, the global distribution of technological and environmental risk and environmental legislation. Petryna’s (2013) ethnography of Chornobyl’s aftermath tackles “the vexed political-economic, scientific, legal, and social circumstances” (p.215) that came after the disaster. Through writing an ethnographic account of lawmakers, radiation scientists, health professionals, and sufferers, Petryna demonstrates “different points along the continuum of knowledge production, power, moral sensibility, and self-disclosure” (ibid.) that followed the nuclear contamination. These studies of people’s lived experiences of damaging relationships with their environments reveal the economic, social, racial and political aspects of the relationships between different groups and the natural environment. In these cases, the detrimental relationship between communities and nature is not “mutual”, because those who bear the negative consequences of nature that has been severely harmed are not the ones who have inflicted the harm. In these tragedies, nature plays the role of a “magnifying glass” that amplifies social injustices.

A second field that has been concerned with environmental justice comes from Indigenous studies. These scholars have also adopted environmental ethnography as a helpful tool to critically examine how Indigenous environmental knowledge, practices and relationships with nature complement or contrast with Western systems, as well as how the former has been appropriated and downplayed by the latter. Drawing upon his fieldwork in western Mali, Duvall (2021) finds that Indigenous environmental knowledge represents a holistic understanding of biophysical reality rather than particular geographic or biological features. He further argues that “there is no objective or universal form of environmental knowledge, and therefore, the importance and subjectivity of environmental knowledge together create remarkable possibilities for new concepts to enter into environmental knowledge systems” (p.35). Kondo’s (2021) ethnography focusing on Alaskan Athabascans’ practices in using natural resources and conservation points out the challenges and significance of traditional salmon-human interactions in the Upper Kuskokwim region. Kondo reveals the tension between the government's control of natural resources and the Indigenous community’s subsistence ways of life, as well as the tension between local river maintenance practices and marine biologists’ perspectives. The researcher also synthesises the Athabascan belief in the special spirits of predatory animals and conservation ecology, arguing that effective management of salmon in Alaska should not exclude Alaskan Indigenous knowledge and practices. Thekaekara (2021) sheds light on the Kattunayakan and Bettakurumba peoples’ relationships with, and strategies for living alongside, Asian elephants based on his ethnographic fieldwork in Southern India. By illuminating Indigenous people’s perceptions and interactions with elephants, Thekaekara describes the core elements of their worldview that shape their coexistence with the animal. The author criticised the exclusion of Indigenous worldviews from policymaking and the homogeneous assumptions of people’s relationships with landscapes and species, calling for the inclusion of Native perspectives to inform policy meaningfully. Often adopting a decolonial perspective, Indigenous environmental researchers have analysed Indigenous practices, knowledge and perceptions of interacting with the natural environment using ethnographic methods, and have provided insights into the diversity of, and the tensions between, different perceptions of nature and relationships with it. The insights from Indigenous studies have brought alternative discourses to the table, other than extractivist views of nature. The decolonial approach to understanding human-nature connections has challenged extractivism, which is deeply rooted in colonialism and refers to the intensive natural resource appropriation intended for raw material exports (Chagnon et al., 2022; Gudynas, 2018). The debates in this field are essential to Indigenous study, but may also inform studies on human-nature connections in non-Indigenous contexts by offering a multi- perspective framework that integrates diverse ways of interacting with nature and perceiving nature.

A third field of study that examines the human-nature connection as a real-life issue is ecofeminism. Ecofeminism addresses the cultural and symbolic associations often made between women and nature (Miles, 2024). As Plumwood (1993) points out, “women’s inclusion in the sphere of nature has been a major tool in their oppression” and “feminine ‘closeness to nature’ has hardly been a compliment” (p.19). An example of a common form of denial of women and nature is backgrounding. Plumwood (1993) explains that the backgrounding of nature refers to “the denial of dependence on biospheric processes, and a view of humans as apart, outside of nature, which is treated as a limitless provider without needs of its own” (p.22); similarly, women are traditionally framed as “the environment” against which male “achievement” takes place, yet they are not recognised for their own achievements. As such, ecofeminism is relevant for analysing how gender-dependent human- nature relations are shaped by intersecting systems of oppression (Patarin-Jossec, 2024). Although ethnographic studies in ecofeminism are relatively rare due to the field’s theoretical orientation, a few researchers have adopted ecofeminism as an analytical lens in their ethnographic environmental studies. In her research on offshore fishing labour in Vietnam, Alonso (2022) examines how masculinities and labour relations mutually shape each other in offshore fishing based on ethnographic data collected from fishers, boat owners, captains, and their partners. Her findings show that labour relations in the offshore fishery are maintained mainly through an emphasis on men’s abilities to do heavy physical work and behavioural expectations associated with masculine norms. Therefore, the author argues for considering masculinity dynamics when addressing illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing. Similarly, Fabinyi’s (2007) study in the Calamian Islands, Philippines, also found that young Calamian men are motivated to participate in the illegal fishery because it is considered a way to demonstrate masculinity and gain status. These cases resonate with ecofeminists’ argument that “we cannot begin to respond adequately to the core forces that continue to energise the domination and degradation of the natural world without first dismantling male-dominated patterns of reasoning, privilege, exclusion, and hierarchy” (French, 2008, Ecofeminism). Ecofeminism contributes to the debate on human-nature relationships by exposing and challenging the ideologies that reinforce the domination of nature, which is an important ideological support for sexism (ibid.).

Critical environmental ethnographies from the fields of environmental injustice, Indigenous/decolonial studies and ecofeminism present a shared core discourse. They view the relationship between humans and nature as deeply entangled with social power relationships. Exploitive and detrimental relationships between people and nature are the product of unequal social, gender and racial relationships, and therefore, can only be understood in depth by delving into the questions that are rooted in societies, such as: how power is exercised to manipulate people’s experiences and perceptions of their natural environment; who bears the consequences of environmental degradation for what reasons; how knowledge and meanings about nature are produced, and who is entitled to justify them; and how practices of interacting with nature are ascribed social meanings and reproduce unequal relationships – both among people and between people and nature. Answering these questions partly explains the prevalent alienation from nature. Yet, exclusively focusing on the discourses of power and injustice in environmental issues is just one aspect of the scholarship on environmental issues.

Meanings and Patterns

Environmental ethnographies have not only covered “activist” topics and broad questions of social (in)justice. A number of researchers have also considered other dimensions, particularly in relation to the meanings and patterns of engaging with nature in routine activities (Cordner, 2024). Several fields have produced knowledge from this perspective: environmental education, leisure studies, and environmental volunteerism.

The field of environmental education has long explored how children experience nature in their daily lives. Jørgensen’s (2016) study, for example, is based on observations, informal conversations and photos collected from Norwegian kindergarten children. This study of early childhood experiences in nature concludes that children demonstrate a “sense of wonder” in their daily direct and multisensory experiences in nature. These experiences engage children emotionally in encounters with animals in natural habitats and foster their ecological knowledge and environmental consciousness. Apart from nonformal learning about nature, researchers have also explored how environmental pedagogies unfold in school settings. Tal and colleagues (2023) examine the pedagogical practices and epistemology in Forest Education by analysing ethnographic data gathered in a leading Israeli Forest Education organisation. They identified four key pedagogical practices, namely outdoor play, primitive skills and crafts, sensing, and dwelling. These practices, as argued by the authors, “reflect an epistemology in which knowledge and learning are situated in the immediate embodied context and sensory experiences, and are intended to facilitate a meaningful connection with nature” (p.1502). Ruck and Mannion’s (2021) study provides an understanding of how young people enact their relationships with the natural world in school grounds conservation activities. Through participant observation, the researchers found that while the planned curriculum is underpinned by a stewardship perspective and a utilitarian view of other species, moments during its implementation revealed young people’s enactment of collective thinking with the more-than- human world. This way of thinking is described as “more than a purely rational, cognitive process” (p.1505), in which one sees oneself as part of a collective with other species, expressed through excitement, fascination and empathy. Patel and Ehrenzeller’s (2023) case studies in Indian and German schools show that the experience of immersion in nature shapes children’s relationship with nature. Drawing upon observation, semi-structured interviews with teachers and school leaders and informal interactions with students, their cross-cultural ethnographic study finds that across both Indian and German contexts, nature is perceived as a peace educator: “teaching key concepts and skills, promoting ecological ways of living and being, enabling conditions for wellbeing and inner-peace, and a reciprocal children-nature relationship of care” (p.294). Based on these findings, the authors argue for an ontological and epistemological shift where educators should prioritise nature for its intrinsic value in being with nature rather than instrumentalising it for future academic gain. These findings from environmental education studies are deeply grounded in everyday life and therefore inspire approaches to transmit environmental practices and mindsets to adults. In addition, since the cornerstone of education consists of values, insights from environmental education contribute to understanding how environmental values can be integrated into everyday life.

Besides education, connecting with nature can also be achieved through leisure and recreation activities. Rantala and Puhakka (2020) take camping as an entry point to discuss how interaction with nature during outdoor recreation enhances young people’s well-being. Archambault’s (2016) multispecies ethnographic study in Inhambane, Mozambique, focuses on human-plant relations formed in gardening. Her analysis of the encounters between gardeners and plants, characterised by “the love of plants”, shows that in Inhambane, gardening is “constructed as evidence of a particular aesthetic sensibility” derived from the city’s colonial past, “imagined as a response to the commodification of intimacy”, and “experienced as a profoundly affective and genuine pursuit” (p.264). Baker and Fick (2022) address the paradox between recreational land users’ appreciation of natural landscapes and the negative ecological impacts of their activities and values on the landscape. Their ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with rock climbers and other local stakeholders in the Indian Creek area of Bears Ears National Monument in Southeast Utah show that “recreational users value the landscape as a site for experiencing, expressing, and building wilderness values, authenticity, and a corresponding set of identities, practices, and ‘ethics’” (p.357). However, the economic drivers underlying these values have led to government prioritisation of commercialised outdoor recreation, resulting in ecological impacts that undermine the ethical foundations of these values. Findings from these studies demonstrate how people perceive a range of benefits and principles regarding interacting with nature, and how they navigate through different, sometimes even conflicting discourses about the values of nature in relatively relaxing, approachable contexts.

Another everyday setting where people interact with nature is voluntary participation in environmental stewardship or conservation projects. While extensive research has examined the motivations, profiles, benefits, and challenges of environmental volunteers, relatively few studies have ethnographically explored how people engage with nature within this context. A few studies in this domain include Adams and colleagues’ (2023) ongoing ethnographic exploration of volunteer shepherding – also referred to as “urban shepherding” or “lookering”, in which volunteers spend time outdoors observing and reporting on the welfare of livestock. This project finds that the volunteers experience and understand lookerking primarily in terms of a positive connection to the landscape in general and the animals in particular. While the “walkalong” interviews indicate that the volunteers perceive a sense of guardianship towards the herds, the researchers recognise an imbalance between how much participants talk about the meaningfulness they derive from lookering and how little they mention the animals’ fate of being slaughtered as agricultural commodities. As such, the researchers observed “the lively complexity of a variety of human-animal relations” (p.169) in volunteer shepherding. Another ethnographic exploration of the human-animal relationship in volunteering is Lloro-Bidart’s (2017) analysis of a volunteer’s experience at the Aquarium of the Pacific. As part of the author’s doctoral research based on multispecies and institutional ethnography, this case study analyses how people develop care for animals through performing embodied and emotional labour, and how their relationship with animals is embedded within the political context. Insights from the studies that examine human-nature relationships in the context of pro- environmental actions are valuable because they illuminate the dynamics between environmental beliefs and actions by showing how beliefs are translated into actions, and how actions, in turn, shape perceptions of relationships with nature.

Environmental ethnographic studies looking at everyday interactions with nature are primarily concentrated in the areas of environmental education, recreation and pro-environmental behaviour research. The primary aim of these studies is not to expose the power dynamics that shape people’s experiences with and perceptions of nature. Instead, they seek to reveal the patterns within these experiences and perceptions, and to elicit how people construct meanings of nature and their relationship to it. Findings and arguments from these ethnographies suggest that examining the everyday, non-confrontational and positive interactions with nature also deepens our understanding of people’s relationship with nature and yield arguments and reflections on how to foster reciprocal human-nature relationships, thus contributing to the human-nature connection debate, asking why and how people should connect with nature.

In this section, I reviewed studies on human-nature connections through the lens of sociological environmental ethnography, identifying two major strands of inquiry: one that examines power and (in)justice within environmental tensions, and another that reveals meanings and patterns of environmental engagement. In the following section, I turn to another field that has also contributed empirical insights into human-nature connections: applied linguistics.

Ecolinguistics: Revealing the Stories That We Live By (Stibbe, 2015)

Ecolinguistics. Ecolinguistics is an emerging subfield of language and communication studies (Chen, 2016). Scholars commonly acknowledge that the term ecolinguistics was proposed by Einar Haugen in the 1970s (see Chen, 2016; Fill, 2018). In The Ecology of Language, Haugen (1972/2001) used the ecosystem as a metaphor to describe (1) how languages worldwide are interconnected, and (2) how languages interact with their contexts of use. Haugen’s original elaboration of ecolinguistics takes a metaphorical approach to conceptualising ecology and its relationship with languages. Instead of addressing the actual environmental and ecological issues, Haugenian ecolinguistics focuses on linguistic topics such as language diversity, minority languages, and endangered languages, investigating “language loss and language maintenance in the age of globalisation” (Fill, 2018, p.1). This metaphorical rather than literal use of the prefix eco has sparked some debate about whether the Haugenian framework is actually more a part of sociolinguistics than an independent field. Nonetheless, ecolinguistics began to consolidate as a discipline and expand its focus to the interplays between language and environmental matters, particularly following Halliday’s (1990/2001) keynote speech titled New Ways of Meaning at the 1990 World Congress of Applied Linguistics (Chen, 2016; do Couto, 2014). Halliday elaborated these interplays by criticising the “linguistic anthropocentrism” from two aspects: on the one hand, everyday language use tends to only emphasise the instrument value of nature and non-human species, reflecting a utilitarian anthropocentrism; on the other hand, discourses propagating non-sustainable actions accelerate the deterioration of environmental issues (Chen, 2016; Stanlaw, 2020). Halliday’s talk marks the establishment of the two complementary strands of ecolinguistics, for which Fill (2018, p.2) suggests the terms (1) the ecology of language(s), which is concerned with the question of can language diversity be sustained on this earth? and (2) ecological linguistics, which centres around the question of how language construes people’s view of nature and the environment. In this section, I focus on reviewing the ecological linguistics strand, relevant in the context of exploring the value of the people-nature connection through discourse analysis, which is central in my work.

Ecological linguistics (hereafter ecolinguistics) primarily examines how language and discourses reflect and shape relationships between people and nature, and their potential to escalate or mediate environmental issues. Stibbe (2015) defines this strand of ecolinguistics as “[The analysis of] language to reveal the stories we live by, judges those stories according to an ecosophy, resists stories which oppose the ecosophy, and contributes to the search for new stories to live by” (p.183).

Ecosophy, also called deep ecology, represents the belief that humans must change their relationship with nature from valuing nature solely for its usefulness to recognising its intrinsic value (Madsen, 2024). Adopting ecosophy as its principal normative framework (Chen, 2016), ecolinguistics aims to critique environmentally destructive discourses and promote beneficial ones, often advocating for language reform to encourage ecocentric language. In The Routledge Handbook of Ecolinguistics (Fill and Penz, 2018), studies in the strand of ecological linguistics are categorised into three perspectives, highlighting its focus on linguistic phenomena and discourse: (1) the role of language in creating, aggravating and solving environmental problems, (2) how environmental topics appear in texts and the media and (3) how language and discourse transport ecological and unecological ideas.

Ecolinguistics has examined the role of language in environmental degradation mainly by analysing texts about environmental problems. Studies have exposed dominant discourses that promote unsustainable behaviours such as greenwashing that misrepresent individuals or organisations as environmentally responsible, consumerist discourses that encourage overconsumption, and economic discourses that emphasise economic growth as the primary goal of society (Stibbe, 2018). Specifically, there is a tradition of examining the business discourses on corporations’ environmental representation (Alexander, 2018) through critical discourse analysis and corpus linguistic techniques. For example, Rutherford (2006) systematically analyses and compares the business-environment discourses of two books written for the 1992 Rio Earth Summit and the 2002 Johannesburg Earth Summit, respectively. Rutherford’s findings reveal that while the business discourse on the environment kept attempting to conceal a traditionally antagonistic view of environmental issues, the growing intensity of public commitment and concern among international business resulted in a progressive increase in environmental symbols, imagery, rhetoric and concepts within business discourse; however, the global environmental summits have had only limited influence on corporations in reformulating their business environmental discourses, as they tend to speak at a more generic, anticipatory level rather than expressing concrete commitments. Another study conducted by Ihlen (2009) applies content analysis to examine the role of climate change and its rhetorical presence in the non-financial reports of the world’s 30 largest corporations. Ihlen identified four central topics highlighted by language patterns: (1) the gravity of the climate change issue; (2) the corporation’s alignment with scientific and political authorities in curbing emissions; (3) the corporation’s actions taken to reduce its emissions; and (4) the business opportunities posed by the climate challenge. Based on these findings, the author points out that the corporations’ rhetoric “exposes a type of economic instrumentality that seems ill-suited to the systemic criticisms and changes that are needed” (p.258), because climate change is framed as an opportunity to establish positive business representations rather than as a harmful ecological problem. A further example is Alexander’s (2018) corpus-based investigation of the Coca-Cola and WWF partnership on water conservation in 2008, which reveals how the cooperation linguistically masks their damage to the environment.

While acknowledging the necessity and significance of analysing environmental discourses through a critical lens, Stibbe (2018) argues that merely identifying negative discourses is insufficient to address environmental issues; we must also search for new positive discourses to guide societies towards a transition to environmentally friendly actions. Therefore, he advocates for adopting Martin’s (2004) Positive Discourse Analysis framework to examine the ways in which language reflects and shapes people’s relationships with the natural world that “inspire, encourage and hearten us” (Stibbe, 2018, p.165). Examples of such positive alternatives include nature writing, the New Economics discourse that linguistically attributes negative associations to economic growth, and representations of nature as both knowledge and aesthetics in Indigenous literature and oral traditions (ibid.), demonstrating the role of language not only in creating and exacerbating environmental problems but also in mitigating them.

Another question that concerns ecolinguists is how environmental topics are represented in texts and the media. Stöckl and Molnar (2018) focus on eco-advertisements and propose dividing this public discourse domain into three sub-genres: green commercial advertising, green-washed commercial advertising and green nonprofit/social advertising. The authors point out that green commercial advertisements tend to utilise a range of pragmatic techniques to emphasise the brands’ engagement with the consumers and argue that the product or service would relieve them of their environmental responsibilities; green-washed commercials are characterised by the pragmatic strategy of making far-fetched connections between the product and nature through either elusive or exaggerated claims; and social advertisements often foreground the ‘Green Nightmare’, calling “public attention to the “Dystopia” – the destruction of nature, the environment and our entire habitat” (Hansen, 2018, p.139). As such, the different eco-advertisements employ various pragmatic strategies to achieve their communicative purposes and simultaneously construct different images of the relationships between individuals, products and nature. Besides eco-advertisements, the media coverage of natural disasters is another topic that draws research attention in ecolinguistics (Döring 2018). In addition to media representation of environment-related topics, researchers also examined the political discourses on environmental matters (Kuha, 2018). According to Kuha (2018), there are three major perspectives through which the presence of environmental issues in the language of politics is examined: framing, labelling, and constructing social actors. Environmental matters are often framed as security threats, forming the discourse of environmental security that presupposes environmental issues as urgent (Fischhendler & Katz, 2013) and gives rise to concepts that are open to manipulation and different interpretations, such as energy security (Fischhendler & Nathan, 2014). Regarding labelling, Kuha (2013, as cited in Kuha, 2018) discusses how labels categorising people based on their stances towards environmental issues shape public perception of the matter. She argues that labels such as “climate denier” and “climate believer” in mainstream climate discourse are actually problematic because such expressions “represent climate change science as if it were religion, superstition or a conspiracy” (p.253). With respect to the construction of social actors, Krzyżanowski (2015) analyses European Union policy discourses on climate change from an identity construction perspective. The results show that EU policy constructs the EU’s identity as a global leader with a distinctive role in shaping the global policy framework on climate change through extensive use of the “othering” strategies, namely by juxtaposing positive “us” and negative “them”.

In addition to analysing how environmental topics are represented in the media and texts, and how language implies environmental problems, ecolinguists have further examined how language and discourse convey ideas about the relationship between humans, animals and nature. An example is how the discursive representation of animals justifies and encourages the exploitation of animals, which Cook and Sealey (2018) argue to be an essential topic in ecolinguistics. They stress that merely addressing the changing relationships between human animals that are represented in discourse should be “complemented by the investigation of the stated beliefs and purposes of those who produce language about animals; the perceptions and reactions of those who receive it; and the social, economic, ideological and historical contexts of that production and reception” (p.311). In this vein, Stibbe (2012) examined how discourses used in animal product industries have a direct impact on animal welfare. By analysing a corpus consisting of (1) articles from industry-specific magazines in the meat sector, (2) articles written by the meat industry for external audiences, and (3) professional articles by interested parties such as veterinarians specializing in food animals or lawyers defending product manufacturers, Stibbe finds that the animal product industry uses the discourse of science to justify the oppression of the animals. For example, “the discourse of evolutionary biology is often invoked to equate the intensive farming and slaughter of animals with the behaviour of predators in the wild, representing it as ‘natural’” (p.25–26). Moreover, in these texts, animals are frequently represented as resources rather than lives, as indicated by the language use such as damage instead of injury in the expression “bird damage” in the Poultry magazine. Stibbe thus concludes that the discourses of animal product industries imply the ideological assumption that animal oppression is “inevitable, natural, and benign” (p.33). He calls for alternative discourses from the animal rights movement that challenge such oppression, as opposing discourses nurture social change (Fairclough, 1993). Along the same lines, Trampe (2018) examines a variety of strategies and perspectives regarding the use of euphemisms for killing and using animals. He identifies two typical language strategies of euphemisation: those that euphemise taboos surrounding the killing and suffering of animals and those that downplay the importance of animals beyond their productive value and utility to human beings. Through examining the euphemisation strategies relating to animals, namely: (1) utilisation of linguistic practice that impose human requirements and standards onto the categories of animals and their behaviours (e.g. laboratory animals), (2) linguistic reification of animals using profit- motivated and technically engineered attributes (e.g. ornamental fish) and (3) the use of euphemistic terms to avoid directly addressing the killing of animals (e.g. male chicks are sorted out in the hatchery), Trampe critically analyses “how language allows humans to appropriate nature in an anthropocentric fashion” (p.328).

Altogether, the ecological linguistics strand of ecolinguistics has furnished us with insights into the role of language in fuelling or alleviating environmental problems, the representation of environmental topics in texts and the media, and the environmental ideologies embedded in language and discourses. Researchers have explored these topics mainly by examining textual data through close analysis of lexicogrammar and corpus. Often adopting a critical discourse analysis perspective, researchers have been working toward linking the language use to specific “genres, topics, purposes and practices” (Cook & Sealey, 2018, p.320), to reveal the discourses – i.e. the stories we live by (Stibbe, 2015) – that shape people’s perception of nature, their relationships with it, and how its treatment is justified. As such, ecological linguistics is strongly oriented toward discourse and shows the relevance of adopting such an approach for this work.

Environmental Linguistics: Positioning Language as a Channel for Environmental Knowledge (Harrison, 2023)

While ecolinguistics has established a paradigm for studying the role of language and discourses in shaping environmental issues and ideologies, Harrison (2023) notes that its “largely metaphorical and narrative program” does not emphasise language as the “preeminent conceptual framework and channel for environmental knowledge” (p.113). Deeply influenced by his training in linguistic anthropology and fieldwork in the Republic of Tuva, Harrison stresses, therefore, a third linguistic approach to ecological questions: environmental linguistics.

Harrison argues that “[e]nvironmental knowledge may be found at every level of language, from single phonemes used in sound mimesis to oral epic tales that extend to more than 10,000 lines” (p.114). This ubiquitous presence leads him to develop environmental linguistics as a field that lies at the intersection of linguistics and natural sciences, examining the linguistic structures and verbal practices that people use to conceptualise, encode, and transmit knowledge about nature. In addition to foregrounding environmental knowledge, another prominent feature of environmental linguistics, compared to ecolinguistics, is the emphasis on Indigenous and decolonial perspectives. Building on his findings on the interconnectedness between the Tuvans’ language and environment, Harrison elaborates on the environmental linguistics framework by expanding the data set with examples from other languages, with a highlight on Indigenous science and the concept of traditional ecological knowledge. Shedding light on six domains of knowledge about nature embedded in Indigenous languages – namely landscapes, lifeforms, time, sound, memory, and survival – “environmental linguistics helps decolonise the sciences” (p.127) by giving these often marginalised or appropriated voices visibility. Harrison (ibid.) argues that:

Indigenous concepts of sustainability […] must be included in any equitable discourse about conservation. But these voices cannot be fully appreciated without the linguistic expertise that can help interpret them for a wider audience. Linguistic methods are thus an essential element of conservation science.

Before the term environmental linguistics began gaining traction with Harrison’s paper published in 2023, the field of Indigenous environmental knowledge was already well- established, as seen in works such as The Routledge Handbook of Indigenous Environmental Knowledge (Thornton & Bhagwat, 2021). I have already provided examples of ethnographic studies on Indigenous environmental knowledge, practices and relationships with nature. Notably, the environmental linguistics framework offers a unique focus on the role of language in documenting, understanding and transmitting Indigenous knowledge about nature. A few empirical studies on this niche include Grenoble and colleagues’ (2019) research on the linguistic encoding of land in Kalaallisut, a Unangan-Yupik Inuit language spoken on the west coast of Greenland. The authors found that in Kalaallisut, the landscape terms are structured around the distinction between land and water, reflecting the people’s ontology of landscape and seascape, as well as their way of life that adapts to dynamic changes of the coastline, as vividly depicted by the authors as “liv[ing] in constant dialogue with the sea and the land” (p.35). They also revealed the essential role of navigational functionality in Kalaallisut lexicons and speakers’ perceptions of landscape, as accurate navigation is critical for survival in Greenland. Demonstrating how the grammatical and lexical system of Indigenous language is shaped by “the physical topography of the land and the cultural practices of engagement with the land”, the authors call for an understanding of the “complex interplay between language, culture and environment” (p.2). Similar insights are also provided by Si’s (2011, 2016) fieldwork with Solega speakers in southern India. Based on everyday language data collected with the Solega community, his monograph (2016) discusses what and why the species or landscapes are named, the dialectal variation, as well as the natural cycles and Solega knowledge of natural resources that are encoded in the Solega language. His works showcase linguists’ potential to contribute to conservation efforts by documenting and analysing how endangered languages preserve traditional ecological knowledge and reflect complex ecological relationships among various local organisms. A further empirical study that illustrates the argument that “[l]anguage diversity is […] the key to safeguarding biodiversity and a balanced human relationship with nature” (Harrison, 2023, p.113) is Harrison’s linguistic anthropology research on Tuvan’s nature-centric worldview. Harrison elaborates his ethnographic data from six perspectives: (1) interdependency between land and language, (2) folk taxonomies in botany and zoology, (3) cultural understanding of time, (4) nature sound mimesis in the semiotic system, (5) individual and generational memories embedded in the landscape and (6) strategies of survival and sustainable stewardship encoded in the language. Combining his own findings with a review of studies that he includes within the environmental linguistics framework, he argues for a conceptualisation of language and environment as a unified and reciprocally constructed network of relations.

This section reviews applied linguistic studies that investigate how nature is incorporated into people’s semiotic practices, and how language plays a pivotal role in shaping their ways of knowing and relating to nature. Insights from these studies demonstrate that linguistic analysis can serve as a powerful lens for exploring human-nature connections. By taking language as an entry point to approach the human-nature assemblage, researchers have sought to uncover diverse relationalities and contribute to the decolonisation of science and language. Next, I will synthesise my reflections from the reviewed studies in the domains of environmental ethnography and applied linguistics to demonstrate how this interdisciplinary engagement enables me to carve out a niche for a dimension that remains underexplored: everyday environmental values held by ordinary individuals.

Serious leisure

Previous studies have provided evidence that many people appreciate experiential connections with nature for recreational interests (e.g. Baker & Fick, 2022; Kellert et al., 2017). Engaging in activities in nature is widely recognised as a popular form of leisure, a “relatively self- determined activity-experience that falls into one’s economically free-time roles, […] that is psychologically pleasant in anticipation and recollection […]” (Kaplan, 1975, as cited in Blackshaw, 2010, p.3). While the term leisure is often associated with relief, relaxation, and carefreeness, sociologists have noted a form of leisure that enables people to “express their abilities, fulfil their potential, and identify themselves as unique human” (Stebbins, 1982, p.251). Such leisure activities often require participants to devote relatively considerable time and effort. To conceptualise this more physically and/or mentally engaging form of leisure, Stebbins (1982) proposed the term serious leisure. According to Stebbins, serious leisure refers to a long-term endeavour performed by amateurs, hobbyists and volunteers with specific knowledge, skills or training, and characterised by perseverance, careers, personal effort, durable benefits, unique ethos, and enthusiastic self-identification. Stebbins argued that these six constructs of serious leisure are hardly identifiable in unserious, casual pastimes. He elaborated on the six dimensions:

The concept of serious leisure has not yet been used to examine human-nature connections, despite its potential to deepen our understanding of nature’s relational value from a recreational perspective. Many nature-related activities that require physical effort, continuity, knowledge and skills fall into serious leisure, such as hiking, environmental volunteering, and birdwatching. Although nature-related serious leisure is more challenging to access compared to casual activities in nature, such as having a picnic, its “seriousness” enables participants to transform experiential connections with nature into deeper connections at a cognitive and philosophical level. Moreover. The six qualities of serious leisure overlap with multiple relational values of nature, such as identity, recreation, community, knowledge and environmental principles. As such, a serious leisure lens is not only useful for identifying the relational values emerging in such activities but also has the potential to reveal the dynamic interplay among different connections and values. Therefore, it can be used as an effective lens in relational value research to understand why there are people who are willing to invest a significant effort to connect with nature, how these “serious” connections with nature unfold, and what values can be derived from such connections.

Agency of Nature

In philosophy, agency denotes the exercise or manifestation of the capacity to act (Schlosser, 2019). This concept is most frequently applied as a quality of human beings. The notion of human agency, “the ability of people to act intentionally to shape their worlds”, underpins the field of history (Nash, 2005, p.67). In the early 21st century, environmental historians have proposed the idea that nature possesses agency too. However, this notion is challenged by the arguments emphasising the unique connection between human action and ideas. It is argued that although human action is not the only force that alters the world, “the agency of human beings is distinguished by our ability to convert ideas into purposeful actions” (ibid.). Nash reminds us of the classic bee/architect metaphor:

[W]hile a bee can build a hive, the bee cannot envision the hive prior to its building. The bee just builds, whereas the human is presumed to think and then build. The bee is not an agent, while the architect clearly is. (p.67)

Nash argues against this view, drawing on insights from environmental history studies. Taking Mart Stewart’s (1996/2002) work on the mutually transforming relationship between the natural environment and human culture on the Georgia coastal plain between 1680 and 1920 as an example, Nash aligns herself with Stewart that nature also has agency because natural environments shape human intentions and actions and therefore should be regarded as an active participant in human-nature interactions rather than a background, a vacuum:

No overarching plan ever existed for tidewater rice cultivation on the southeastern coast; in fact, no one is quite sure how the system originated in America (although west African slaves probably brought many of the techniques). But certainly for those who found themselves in this location, both slaves and planters, the characteristics of the Georgia landscape suggested certain alternatives. To put it simply, tidewater rice cultivation could be imagined on the Georgia coast but not in the Colorado desert. Actual methods, moreover, hardly comprised a unified system; they were idiosyncratic and often ad hoc. Many actions undoubtedly emerged spontaneously in the fields, and only later were they passed on as “ideas” or “expertise”. (p.68)

The field of environmental education has also been reflecting on the concept of agency. Examinations of nature-based learning programs and early childhood curricula on sustainability (Ross, 2020; Weldemariam et al., 2017) uncover that “[t]he certainty that intentional human agency alone can change the world (for the better) is firmly entrenched within the humanist and activist framings of education for sustainability and/or environmental education” (Taylor, 2017, p.1451–1452). However, merely considering nature as a substrate for people to act upon fails to address nature’s role in shaping people’s ways of acting, seeing, living and thinking. To understand the reciprocity of human-nature relationships, it is necessary to extend our understanding of agency beyond humans, to include nature as well. This aligns with an alternative philosophical conception of agency, that “genuine agency can be exhibited by beings that are not capable of intentional action, and it has been argued that agency can and should be explained without reference to causally efficacious mental states and events” (Schlosser, 2019, para.1).

Reconsidering our relationships with nature from a perspective of agency prompts us to reflect on the influence, self-functioning and resilience of nature, as well as our positions in the face of nature. Such reflections help capture the complexity of the relationships between people and nature and may shape moral principles for conceiving and interacting with nature. Therefore, bringing the notion of nature’s agency into the relational value dialogues contributes to the understanding of how diverse relationships with nature are formed and construed from a non- anthropocentric perspective.

Nature-inclusive Eudaimonia

The Greek philosophy concept Eudaimonia, also spelt eudaemonia, refers to “the condition of human flourishing or of living well” (Duignan, n.d., para. 1). The notion goes beyond “happiness” as it does not represent “a state of mind or a feeling of pleasure or contentment” (ibid.) but consists of “states and/or pursuits associated with using and developing the best in oneself, in accordance with one’s true self and one’s deeper principles” (Huta, 2013, p.201). As such, pointing to self-realisation and the quality of a morally good life, eudaimonia is intrinsically linked with value in the sense of moral guidelines and life goals. In the context of environmental studies, there have been voices calling for attention to eudaimonia as a relational value (Knippenberg et al., 2018; van den Born et al., 2018) because “humans are born relata.That is why the ideas of relational values and eudaimonia (the good, meaningful, worthwhile life) are intimately bound; good relations are key constituents of the good life” (Knippenberg et al., 2018, p.43, emphasis in original). In response to this call, Knippenberg and colleagues introduced the notion of nature-inclusive eudaimonia, meaning “a flourishing life in which nature is an integral part” (p.43). While this notion can be helpful to delve into the philosophical aspect of human-nature connection because it integrates nature into the process of realising self-worth and meaningful life, very few studies have yet employed it as a conceptual lens to explore how the eudaimonic value of nature is expressed in real life. One of the few such studies is Russo Lopes and Bastos Lima’s (2023) qualitative research on the sustainable land-use initiatives in the states of Acre and Mato Grosso, Brazil, identifying values that have motivated decisions for conservation in deforestation frontiers and how these values are articulated. Their results reveal that eudaimonic values, including increased meaningfulness, personal growth through learning and knowledge sharing, as well as a sense of contributing to the world, are key factors in these initiatives.

The concept of nature-inclusive eudaimonia does not frame nature as an external background for human living, but a component of meaningful self. Therefore, understanding how it unfolds in everyday, accessible interactions with nature offers strong arguments for why we should (re)connect with nature.

This section presents the key conceptual framework for this research: relational values, and proposes several niche concepts to add to the discussion. Synthesising the above theoretical and empirical insights, I will present the problem statement and research questions in the next section.

Why Luxembourg, LetzEarth and Aktioun fir d’Ëmwelt?

In this ethnographic research, I have chosen the reflexive narrative style (Gobo & Molle, 2017) to engage with the data and present my findings. This means that I neither seek to conceal my researcher’s interpretative work by presenting myself as invisible in the field and attempting to provide a “snapshot” of the field as the realist narrative ethnography writers do; nor do I align with the processual narrative writers by foregrounding my experience of “comprehension of the other” (Rabinow, 1977, ix), namely my own cognitive process of “coming to know the field” in the ethnographic text (Gobo & Molle, 2017). Instead, I value a balance between reality and my own perceptions of the field in presenting the research process and findings, for which I must “[e]xplicitly stat[e] the circumstances of the knowledge production process” (ibid., section 15.4.5). Therefore, before I delve into the data collection methods, I will first introduce the multi-layered research setting, namely Luxembourg, the environmental NGO LetzEarth and its participatory conservation project series Aktioun fir d’Ëmwelt¹[LB] Actions for the Environment. (pseudonym).

Luxembourg as the Broad Context

Luxembourg is often associated with a range of unique attributes: it is the world’s only Grand Duchy, one of the four institutional seats of the European Union, a trilingual state, home to a high immigrant population and a host to a rapidly developing financial sector. These traits make Luxembourg an appealing context for researchers in the fields of politics, multilingualism, migration and finance. However, readers may question how Luxembourg can serve as a meaningful research context for studies in the field of environmental humanities. In fact, Luxembourg’s environmental history makes it a microcosm that reflects the dynamics between people and nature. From the early 20th century to the present, Luxembourg’s economic pillar has shifted from agriculture to the steel industry, and eventually to the financial sector. This transformation has inevitably been accompanied by changes in how people exploit, conserve and coexist with nature. In the following paragraphs, I will explain why Luxembourg is a meaningful setting for researching human-nature relationships within the context of contemporary socio-economic development, using two examples of its distinctive natural and cultural landscapes: the Minette region and traditional high-stem orchards.

The discovery and exploitation of iron ore in the country’s southern region, known as “Minette”²Diminutive of the French word “mine” (meaning “mine”), referring to the relatively low iron content of the ore found in this region., has profoundly impacted not only the country’s population distribution and industrial development, but also its landscapes. As Crowther (2020) described:

Over a very short space of time at the end of the 19th century, the Minette ore field grew at a prodigious rate. Villages became towns, and great swathes of land disappeared under massive industrial plants, which spewed out fire, smoke and fumes. And wherever the ore-bearing strata lay close to the surface, the land was opened up to enable opencast mining to ravage the countryside. (section “Industrialisation”)

While this chapter of history echoes the well-known narrative that human extraction of natural resources has led to environmental degradation, it may be surprising for many to learn that several former opencast mining sites have transformed into nature reserves today. Following the cessation of mining in the mid-1970s, these sites began to host flora and fauna that would not have established themselves in the region without these anthropogenic changes, transforming into “biodiversity hotspots” (Crowther, 2020; Arendt et al., 2020). In 2020, the former opencast mining areas such as the Ellergronn (Esch-sur-Alzette) and Giele Botter (Differdange/Pétange) were designated as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve (Visit Luxembourg, n.d.). As such, the Minette region offers an example of Luxembourg’s potential as a meaningful research context for examining the transformation of human-nature relationships from exploitive extraction to coexistence, which is embedded in socio-economic development.

In addition to industrialisation, urbanisation is another key theme that is closely linked to human-nature dynamics. It is widely believed that urbanisation results in people’s lifestyle changes and often restrains their nature experiences (Hartig et al., 2014). As a historically agrarian country, Luxembourg has undoubtedly undergone rural urbanisation, “a process by which rural areas become urbanized” (Ofori-Amoah, 2017, Abstract), on the way to its current status as a key player in the global financial sector. One trace left by Luxembourg’s rural urbanisation is the significant decline in the number of its high-stem orchards (Luxembourgish Bongerten) (Crowther, 2020; Lorgé & Melchior, 2015/2020), which have been a prominent characteristic of Luxembourg’s natural landscape. All Luxembourg’s villages were once encircled by the traditional orchards and depended on the “green belt of fruit trees” for fresh fruits and winter preserves (Lorgé & Melchior, 2015/2020, p.175). However, rural urbanisation has rendered these orchards its first victims (ibid.). As my research participant Birgit noted in an interview:

[…] in orchards there are fruit trees and people used to live on them. They used to pickle and preserve apples and pears and everything to get through the winter. And today, you go to Cactus³a Luxembourgish supermarket company. to buy everything. You go to Cactus, in December you go to Cactus to buy strawberries, things like that. All the trees were overgrown, they were no longer taken care of, they broke, died and so on. Around 1900, there were over 1 million fruit trees in Luxembourg. For the tiny Luxembourg, 1 million is crazy. And now, more or less 30 years ago, another inventory was made. There were only 500,000 trees left. (original in German)

The example of the rise and fall of Luxembourg’s traditional orchards showcases the impacts of social development on natural landscapes and everyday human-nature connections. At the same time, the current revival and maintenance efforts for Bongerten at the government and local community levels reflect a transformation in people’s relationship with and perception of nature. This shift moves from a material connection rooted in livelihood to a recognition of Bongerten’s ecological significance as semi-natural ecosystems and cultural value. According to the communication campaign for Luxembourg’s Natura 2000⁴a community network of nature protection areas created under European Union’s 1992 Council Directive on the conservation of natural habitats and of wild fauna and flora. sites by the Ministry for the Environment, Climate and Sustainable Development, local administrations and communities have been actively engaged in the restoration and maintenance of traditional high-stem orchards (Chronicle.lu, 2022). As evidenced by my analysis of ethnographic data collected from such orchards, ordinary citizens in Luxembourg value Bongerten as meaningful sites to build experiential, cognitive and philosophical connections with nature.

The aforementioned cases of the Minette region and Bongerten illustrate how transformations of human-nature relationships and everyday interactions with nature are deeply embedded in Luxembourg’s development, history, and culture, particularly within the context of industrialisation and urbanisation. Therefore, Luxembourg represents a meaningful research context for examining human-nature relationships.

The specific place in Luxembourg I selected for exploring human-nature connections is the environmental NGO LetzEarth (pseudonym). In the following section, I will elaborate on why LetzEarth represents a rich and meaningful research site for this inquiry.

LetzEarth as the Research Setting

To conduct the ethnographic fieldwork, I selected one of Luxembourg’s most prominent environmental NGOs, LetzEarth, as the research site. With a history spanning more than 100 years, LetzEarth’s developmental trajectory illustrates the evolution of social perceptions of nature and human-nature relationships, which is reflected in the changes to the NGO’s mission and name. Before introducing further details about LetzEarth that are relevant to contextualise this research, it is necessary to include a note on how these relevant details will be presented with careful considerations of research ethics. Luxembourg is a small country with a limited number of large environmental organisations, among which LetzEarth is one of the most active. Its history, mission, activities and operational mechanisms are widely known among residents, which creates an inescapable challenge when describing its characteristics. As a publicly available document, this work is subject to readers’ assumptions about the site under research, its components, and even specific members (Badder, 2021). While the changes in LetzEarth’s name and mission are meaningful for providing a contextualised understanding of its significance as a research setting for studying human-nature connections, discussing its historical names and missions would highly likely lead to the identification of the organisation, rendering the use of a pseudonym ineffective. To address this dilemma, I adopted a compromise approach: I do not reference the NGO’s historical names in the text but present the changes in its mission and core activities. This decision was guided by the intention to minimise the risk of external identification of the research setting and participants, while preserving as much relevant contextual detail as possible. Achieving this balance requires careful ethical consideration and actions. I emphasised to both the gatekeeper and participants that, despite my efforts to safeguard their anonymity, it may still be possible for readers to identify them due to the specific context and niche focus of this research. All stakeholders confirmed their understanding and provided consent in both verbal and written forms. Following data analysis and formulation of the key arguments of this research, I re-evaluated the potential risks and negative consequences that my findings might pose to the NGO and the participants. As the findings primarily highlight how volunteers at LetzEarth construct and perceive reciprocal relationships with nature, I assessed the negative impact on the organisation and participants to be relatively low. Therefore, I consider it ethically appropriate to discuss the development of LetzEarth’s mission while omitting exact time points as part of the justification for selecting the research setting and for contextualising this ethnographic study.

At the time of LetzEarth’s founding more than a hundred years ago, the founders of its predecessor envisioned the mission of the forerunning association as the general protection of animals and natural habitats. However, just eight months after the association was established, the board decided to significantly narrow its focus to the protection of the “useful” birds in Luxembourg. While the exact reasons behind the focus on birds are difficult to determine due to limited documentation, the emphasis on “useful” is particularly noteworthy. It suggests a prevailing anthropocentric view of nature at the time: that its primary value was seen as serving human interests, and only species deemed to have instrumental value were considered worthy of protection. Over the following three decades, the predecessor of LetzEarth focused on the conservation of “useful birds” as its core mission. In the 1930s, the association was recognised as a non-profit organisation.

It was not until the 1950s that this mission expanded to include the protection and study of all bird species. The organisation’s main activities included, therefore, installation and maintenance of nest boxes, winter bird feeding, and birdwatching and monitoring for both leisure and research purposes. To this day, maintaining nest boxes and monitoring migratory birds remain major activities of LetzEarth’s various local sections. The expansion of its mission from protecting “useful” birds to general bird conservation and ornithological research reflected a move away from an anthropocentric approach to conservation.

The 1980s marked a critical period for the development of environmentalism. High-profile grassroots and community-based offshoots of the environmental movements began to emerge, and by the end of the decade, environmentalism had become both a global and national political force (Haq & Paul, 2011; Elliott, 2025). This era also witnessed a series of environmental crises, including the 1986 Chornobyl nuclear disaster, which intensified opposition to nuclear energy across Europe (Haq & Paul, 2011). Environmental issues gained unprecedented attention among the wider public. Against such a backdrop, the predecessor of LetzEarth experienced rapid growth, with its membership increasing nearly fivefold during the 1980s. Meanwhile, a narrow focus on ornithology was no longer sufficient to respond to the growing calls for action on environmental crises. In response, the board of LetzEarth’s forerunning organisation declared:

It is not enough anymore to protect a single species through legislation without preserving the ecological environment at the same time. Successful and meaningful nature conservation in the long term requires preserving (and if possible, creating) the basic living conditions for animals and plants. Thus, our scope of activities and missions has expanded. (original in German)

Accordingly, the organisation’s mission evolved to encompass broader conservation approaches beyond bird protection. This included, but was not limited to, biotope networking, species diversity preservation, agricultural sustainability, land consolidation and landscape conservation. This significant expansion marked a departure from a decontextualised, human- preference-driven perception of nature and signalled a shift toward advocating an ecological perspective that emphasises interdependence and human responsibility for environmental stewardship.

The organisation LetzEarth took on its current form and public presence in the early 2010s. Following the merger with two other environmental NGOs, the forerunning organisation evolved into today’s LetzEarth, which now covers a broader range of conservation activities. These include bird monitoring, environmental awareness-raising, political advocacy, advice services, nature education, and scientific research. The functioning of the organisation largely depends on the volunteers who participate in the activities organised by its local sections across the country. One section of LetzEarth that stands out from the region-based local sections is the “Language” section. This section was created in the early 2010s to engage nature enthusiasts whose primary language is not one of Luxembourg’s official languages – Luxembourgish, French or German. Given Luxembourg’s multilingual context and the steady demographic input from immigration, which has further enriched its linguistic diversity (Sharma, 2018), individuals from diverse migratory and linguistic backgrounds may face additional challenges in participating in local, community-based environmental activities. The establishment of the Language section represents LetzEarth’s endeavour in promoting connection between people and nature in an era of globalisation and debordering.

LetzEarth’s developmental trajectory, along with its current environmental mission and activities, make it an ideal site to research human-nature connections. As the overview above illustrates, its mission and practices closely interact with how nature and relationships with nature are conceptualised, as well as how engagement with nature is preferred and experienced. Therefore, LetzEarth offers a valuable lens through which to explore environmental values and practices, ranging from anthropocentric to relational approaches to conservation. With its current reliance on volunteer-driven environmental activities that emphasise community and inclusivity, it provides a rich empirical setting for studying how human-nature connections unfold in everyday contexts and are shaped by issues such as access to nature and nature activities, environmental concerns and relationality toward nature.

Aktioun fir d’Ëmwelt as the Ethnographic Field

Among the various events and activities organised by LetzEarth, I selected the participatory conservation project series Aktioun fir d’Ëmwelt as the site for my ethnographic fieldwork. Aktioun fir d’Ëmwelt originated in the 1980s from the spontaneous grassroots efforts of members of LetzEarth’s predecessor organisation to preserve the diversity of natural landscapes and habitats. Today, LetzEarth’s local sections organise these activities annually from October to March across the country, with the aim of maintaining natural habitats to support the reproduction of flora and fauna in the upcoming spring. The activities involve hands-on conservation work and are open to the general public without any prerequisites. Projects take place in natural environments such as wetland reserves, meadow orchards, city parks, and urban or suburban forests. Volunteers participating in Aktioun fir d’Ëmwelt engage in a variety of tasks, including clearing undergrowth, monitoring birds, setting up and cleaning nest boxes, pruning and planting trees and harvesting ripe fruit.

This choice of Aktioun fir d’Ëmwelt as the ethnographic field was guided by the research focus. This study aims to explore how ordinary people connect with nature and perceive their relationships with it through everyday engagement. For this purpose, the hands-on and participatory nature of Aktioun fir d’Ëmwelt activities offers valuable access to people’s direct, routine practices and interactions with nature. These activities are open to the general public and require no prerequisites, specialised knowledge or equipment. The volunteers are ordinary citizens, most of whom have not received formal training in wilderness skills or academic education in biology or environmental studies. As such, Aktioun fir d’Ëmwelt provides an accessible and grounded empirical setting for capturing how laypeople construct and perceive their connections with nature. It therefore serves as an ideal field site for this ethnographic research into everyday human-nature relationships.

After justifying the selection of the research setting and outlining its relevant characteristics, I now turn to elaborating on the process of collecting ethnographic data.

Entering the Field

The first step in conducting fieldwork is to achieve access to the research site and participants. Like most ethnographers, my access to the field depended on gaining formal and informal permission from the gatekeepers (Agar, 1980, as cited in Simmons, 2007, p.12), the individuals who grant and smooth the researcher’s access to the participants (O’Reilly, 2009). Gaining access to LetzEarth and its volunteers was relatively straightforward for me. The volunteer coordinator at LetzEarth, Emma, had worked on a previous project with my supervisor. Emma quickly became an ideal gatekeeper: as the staff at the NGO, she had an insider’s insight into how the organization works with the volunteers to achieve its environmental goals; as the volunteer coordinator, she had a close connection with the volunteers and is trusted by them; as a former collaborator in a qualitative research project, Emma was open to ethnographic research methods, aware of the challenges that a researcher may encounter in the field and willing to help; and the good cooperation and mutual trust between her and my supervisor nurtured the rapport between Emma and me. Given these reasons, it was quite straightforward for me to approach Emma and gain access to the organisation from her.

After initial email exchanges and informal meetings at my university and her workplace, on 7th June 2022, Emma gave me an oral agreement to conduct fieldwork at LetzEarth. Upon receiving the approval of data collection from the Ethics Review Panel of the University of Luxembourg on 12th October 2022, I wrote Emma an email asking her to inform her colleagues and the volunteers about my research. Soon after receiving my email, Emma briefed the director of LetzEarth on my research. The director permitted me to present my research proposal in the plenary session on 28th February 2023. In addition, Emma sent the overview of my research to all staff at LetzEarth via email.

Emma’s support largely facilitated my access to the organisation as a researcher. I clearly noticed the acceptance of me through the friendly greetings I received from Emma’s colleagues at the LetzEarth events, such as “How’s your PhD going?”. As the gatekeeper, Emma was instrumental in facilitating my access to the research site. She also played a significant role in establishing contact between the volunteers and me. She informed me of which local sections have been active in recent years and would therefore likely be willing to participate in my research, and offered that I could cc her on emails sent to the committees of the local sections. Besides, she put me in touch with several veteran volunteers who have been active at LetzEarth for decades. Most of the volunteers I approached with Emma’s help consented to participate in my research almost without further question.

Fetterman (2010) underscores the vital role of gatekeepers in ethnographic research: “An introduction by a member is the ethnographer’s best ticket into the community. […] The trust the group places in the intermediary will approximate the trust it extends to the ethnographer at the beginning of the study” (p.36). Interpersonal trust, centred on Emma, was instrumental in facilitating my entry into the field. Her prior research collaboration with my supervisor enabled a swift development of rapport between us. Furthermore, Emma’s act of introducing me to the organisation prompted both her colleagues and the volunteers to extend their trust in her, as volunteer coordinator, to me. My experience of entering the field corroborates many fieldworkers’ expositions on the value of the relationship with gatekeepers to researchers’ access to the study site and participants (e.g. Broskevičová et al., 2024; McAreavey & Das, 2013; Roller & Lavrakas, 2015).

While gatekeepers play a crucial role in researchers’ entry into the field, researchers also rely on their personal skills and ethnographic sensibility to gain insight into the people and reality in the field before inevitably influencing the field with data collection techniques such as conducting audio or video recordings. Mannay and Morgan (2015) remind us of the importance of the “waiting field” as “an opportunity to explore the times where real lives carry on before they make room for the intrusion of the data production techniques” (p.178), and that “in times of waiting we often learn new things about our participants and ourselves” (p.172). At the beginning of my fieldwork, I took advantage of two waiting fields: one is Aktioun fir d’Ëmwelt, which was later chosen as my main fieldwork site; and the other is Discussions publiques⁵[FR] Public Discussions. (pseudonym), the monthly casual get-together on environmental topics open to the public. For the period October 2022 to February 2023, I attended ten events from these two series. During this six-month “waiting fieldwork”, I did not participate in the activities as a doctoral researcher collecting data, but rather as an ordinary event participant while awaiting approval from the Ethics Review Panel of the University of Luxembourg to begin data collection. During this period, I informed people in personal conversations that I was a PhD student intending to collect research data in such activities, but had not started yet. I also mentioned that, if they were interested in participating in my research, I would contact them at the appropriate time.

The “waiting field” benefited my research in two ways: first, I had the opportunity to learn what was really going on in the field. I learnt what to expect from these activities, the interests of people on the ground and the appropriate ways to dress and behave. For example, in my fieldnotes, I recorded the following gap between my assumption and the reality of a session of Aktioun fir d’Ëmwelt:

The second advantage of the waiting field is that it enabled me to establish rapport with the people in the field. I was able to approach volunteers who appeared engaged and receptive to my research and had the opportunity to introduce myself, my research, and the data collection methods I intended to use. When I later invited them to participate in the interviews and asked if I could videotape their activities, almost everyone I knew from the “waiting field” readily agreed to my request. In addition, there is a “snowball effect” in the process of participant recruitment. Several initial participants offered to introduce me to their colleagues at LetzEarth who might also be interested in my research. Many subsequent participants also facilitated similar connections. Their kind support was indeed invaluable to me as a foreign researcher with a limited network. All in all, the 6 months spent on the “wait field” were well worth it.

In the Field

Once in the field, my fieldwork has two salient features. One is that the research sites are located in outdoor natural settings, and the other is that the fieldwork took place in scattered locations.

Let us consider the “outdoor” dimension first. Given my interest in exploring people’s connection with nature, my fieldwork mainly took place in the outdoor conservation activities in the city park, orchard, wetland and forest. Compared to the ethnographic studies conducted in social system settings such as classrooms, workplaces, healthcare and families, research in the natural environment requires additional ethnographic attention to the non-human elements such as grass, trees, puddles of water and mud, etc. I had to ask myself: What type of landscapes are formed by these natural elements together with the environments in which they are situated? What kind of feelings and emotions can these landscapes evoke? Wild? Comforting? Tough?

Reading back through my first fieldnotes and watching back the very first videos I recorded, I realised it took me quite a while to gain the insights mentioned above. I had placed a strong emphasis on people when conducting observations and recordings. I was focusing almost entirely on what the participants were saying and doing, thus ignoring the environment and non-human elements. As the fieldwork progressed, nature came to the forefront of my research. I realised that it was as essential to learn about nature as it is to learn about people, to understand how people connect to their natural environment. Therefore, in the following fieldwork period, I also paid attention to documenting the landscape. For example, during my fieldwork at the wetland reserve Reed Marsh in February 2024, I photographed different landscapes in the wetland (Figures 1 and 2).

Some authors like Kiik (2018) question the lack of attention to nature – plants, animals, and non-human worlds –in most ethnographies of conservation practice and argue for wilding the ethnography of conservation. He suggests three paths toward more writing of nature’s value and agency into research: first, a deeper engagement with the global ecological crises and the environmentalist valuing of nature; second, more applications of multi-species ethnography; and third, a greater inclusion of natural-scientific research results. While for this project, I generally agree with Kiik’s idea that a wilder ethnography of conservation that values the agency of nature can help us refrain from ontological over-flattening, namely diminishing the heterogeneity of the roles that human and non-human actors play in conservation issues and that it is important to include nature in ethnographic research in nature conservation settings, I nevertheless did not conduct a multispecies ethnography because of my focus on the expenences of humans in my field; whereas the multispecies ethnography method foregrounds creatures that traditionally appear on the margins of anthropology (Kirksey & Helmreich, 2010) and is marked by its attentiveness to nonhuman agency (Ogden et al., 2013).

The second notable feature of my fieldwork is that it took place in a field that was not unified, but across a variety of scattered settings. This was due to the specificity of the organisational mechanisms of the volunteer groups of LetzEarth. As mentioned before, the volunta1y conservation project Aktioun fir d'Emwelt is organised independently by 21 local sections across Luxembourg. Due to the seasonal timeliness of the maintenance of natural landscapes, the local sections are mainly active from October to March. The frequency of the work depends on various factors such as the need for maintenance of the local landscape, weather conditions and the availability of volunteers. For example, Michael from the local section City informed me of the cancellation of a session of Aktioun fir d'Emwelt due to sapling sho1tages and delayed apple ripening (Figure 3); and a planned activity to maintain the local wetland landscape by the section Nord had to be cancelled because of flooding (Figure 4⁶Translation of the Luxembourgish text in Figure 4: Unfortunately, we can’t organise the alternative activity at [place] either, because the wetland that we want to work on is flooded…).

Therefore, if I had focused on one local section for fieldwork, I would likely have risked a lack of data. Another factor that led me to the decision to conduct fieldwork at multiple sites was the consideration of the diversity of the natural landscapes in various regions of Luxembourg and the resulting diversity in the work of different local sections. For example, Luxembourg City and its surroundings are characterised by a high degree of urbanisation; therefore, the local group City is active mainly in the maintenance of bird nesting boxes in city parks and forest parks, as well as in the work within the orchards. As for the local section, Reed Marsh, active in the eastern part of Luxembourg, its volunteers are dedicated to preserving the biodiversity in the local wetland habitats through bird monitoring and organising excursions to raise public awareness on the conservation of wetlands. Therefore, conducting fieldwork at different local sections of LetzEarth allowed me to explore diverse human-nature connections within various settings and landscapes.

As described in the previous section, I employed two strategies to approach local groups with a relatively high frequency of activities: seeking help from the gatekeeper and establishing personal connections in the waiting field. The gatekeeper forwarded me the email addresses of the active local groups that she thought might be interested in my research. Eventually, the committee of the section Nord responded positively to my invitation to participate in research. From October 2022 to March 2023, I volunteered with the local sections City and Reed Marsh, participating in conservation work and getting to know the contact persons of both sections. Later, Michael from City and Tom from Reed Marsh agreed to my request to conduct research at their local sections and introduced me to their colleagues. Hence, my fieldwork at LetzEarth took place at its three local sections: Nord, City and Reed Marsh.

At first, it seemed that my fieldwork in scattered sites could be labelled as multi-sited ethnography. However, after consulting the literature on multi-sited ethnography, I decided not to use the term to refer to my ethnographic fieldwork, but stick to the phrase “fieldwork in scattered settings”. This decision was made based on consideration of the scope and purpose of my research. Multi-sited ethnography emerged against the backdrop of globalisation and the resulting increasing mobilities and complex interconnections. As a result, “[m]ulti-sited ethnographic research is therefore mobile. The approach pursues links, relationships and connections, follows unpredictable trajectories, and traces cultural formations in its pursuit of explanations beyond borders” (O’Reilly, 2009, Mobile and Multi-Sited Ethnography).

As such, ethnography moves from its traditional single-site location to “multiple sites of observation and participation that cross-cut dichotomies such as the ‘local’ and the ‘global’, the ‘lifeworld’ and the ‘system’” (Marcus, 1995, p.95). Namely, compared to the conventional single-sited ethnographic research, multi-sited ethnography tends to “broaden ethnography beyond the local” (O’Reilly, 2009, p.146) and to trace the flow of people, objects, discourse, stories, life and conflicts (see Marcus, 1995) in geographically dispersed settings, often crossing national and cultural boundaries

In contrast, the scope of my ethno-case study is a “local” community, namely the volunteers of LetzEarth. Although my fieldwork took place in scattered places in the different regions of Luxembourg, the contexts remained essentially the same: the organisation of LetzEarth. In that sense, the fieldwork did not strictly constitute a multi-site ethnographic study, as I understand “multi-site” to mean not only “different locations”, but also alluding to diverse organisational or cultural contexts.

Despite my decision not to use the term, my fieldwork in scattered sites shares some challenges faced by multi-site ethnographers. First and foremost was the logistical complexity concerning travelling. In my case, the sites of my fieldwork varied from week to week, not only because the activities of the three local sections were interspersed in the programme of Aktioun fir d’Ëmwelt, but also because the venues for activities of the same local section could also vary according to the location of the natural landscapes to be maintained. As a researcher in a foreign country without a driver’s licence, I found it particularly challenging to locate the right place, which is often situated in non-residential areas surrounded by nature and not directly accessible by public transport. I recorded my frustration in the notes taken on 15^th of October 2022:

Second, compared to the fieldwork in a single location, conducting fieldwork in multiple sites requires the researcher to learn about and adapt to the new settings quickly. Therefore, apart from finding the place, another challenge I encountered during fieldwork in the forests, wetlands and orchards was having to quickly learn the appropriate ways to dress and work in different settings. While hiking shoes were perfect for navigating the rugged orchard meadows, rubber boots were indispensable for work in the wetland. Although gathering apples and cleaning bird nesting boxes were not physically demanding, tasks like trimming blackthorns and clearing knee-high weeds required a certain level of physical strength and skill. Upon entering the field in October 2022, I had to learn about various conservation projects and practical skills from different local sections. However, the knowledge I gained over one week may not be applicable in the following week.

Fortunately, these challenges were gradually resolved as my fieldwork progressed. During the second round of fieldwork for Aktioun fir d’Ëmwelt 2023, I was able to locate the natural landscapes where local sections carried out conservation work without getting lost. Besides, as my relationship with the participants deepened in the fieldwork, some participants kindly offered to give me a lift to the site, which significantly reduced the pressure of travelling. As for the clothing and techniques needed for the field, I had learnt how to use tools such as pitchforks during the previous year’s fieldwork, and how to dress correctly to protect myself from dew and mud.

Similar to the main criticism faced by multi-sited ethnography, a concern that may be raised about my fieldwork in scattered settings is the perceived insufficient depth of engagement with each context. How can you learn each setting in depth if you have to engage in a new setting every week? My answer to this question is that, indeed, compared to a single-sited field study of the same duration as my fieldwork, the depth of immersion in my research contexts must not be as deep as in the former. However, as argued before, conducting fieldwork in diverse settings enables me to capture the diversity and multiple facets of the issue I study. In addition, to compensate for the limited engagement time in each setting, I conducted two rounds of fieldwork at Aktioun fir d’Ëmwelt in autumn-winter 2022/23 and 2023/24. With the expectations and experiences gained from the first year, I was able to engage in more depth in the fieldwork through more proficient participation in activities and a better ability to identify the focal points for my observation and video recording.

My third response to this potential critique of the scatteredness of my fieldwork is grounded in the object of my inquiry. This research does not aim to describe the characteristics of the NGO LetzEarth, nor to uncover the peculiarities of the people involved as a specific group or community. Instead, the focus is on the relationship between participants and nature. Therefore, instead of solely pursuing a longitudinal engagement with a particular group or setting, I aimed to explore and trace the unfolding of various relationships. In this sense, my approach aligns with the methodological framework of relational ethnography proposed by Desmond (2014). Specifically, my data collection does not centre on places (such as a specific NGO, its local sections or a certain natural environment) or processed people (such as LetzEarth volunteers as a community), but the field as a set of people-nature connections that mutually shape individuals’ actions in nature, and the processes of these relationships. Thus, collecting data in scattered settings supported my research aim by enabling me to capture and reveal the diversity and nuances of human-nature relationships, rather than undermining my meaningful immersion in the field.

Having elaborated on the approaches that I employed to conduct the ethnographic fieldwork for this research, I now delve into the specific methods that I used to collect data. As I intended to analyse participants’ perspectives on their connections to nature, I need methods that could precisely capture their words and actions. Taking fieldnotes became insufficient to achieve this goal, as I was not able to accurately write down in real-time what the participants were saying and doing in the field. Fieldnotes are also never an “objective” record of the field and will always reflect, to varying degrees, the researcher’s sentiments and interpretations of the field. Therefore, in order to document participants’ words and actions authentically and in real time, I conducted video recordings during the second round of fieldwork in 2023/24.

There was a noticeable shift in my primary data collection method from taking fieldnotes in the first round of fieldwork to videotaping in the second round. In 2022/23, I did not bring any recording devices to the field. As Parker-Jenkins (2018) warns, the use of cameras or video recorders can be problematic, especially concerning the potential intrusiveness for some communities if the research involves sensitive issues. Although, according to the feedback of the participants, my research was not perceived to touch on sensitive topics or invade personal privacy, I remained cautious about videotaping, considering the intrusiveness of video recorders. I decided to ask permission for video recording after building rapport with the participants. Having become acquainted with some volunteers in the first round of fieldwork, I reached out to them again before the Aktioun fir d’Ëmwelt 2023/24 started to explain the necessity of video recording for my research and ask if they could help me negotiate the informed consent from their colleagues. I received straightforward consent from Maria, Tom and Michael from the local sections Nord, Reed Marsh and City, respectively.

The influence of videography on the participants has long been a key issue of discussion among ethnographers. While some researchers are concerned about the imperial gaze of the camera and the performative behaviour of participants before the camera, and even had to terminate the project due to these considerations (Gregory, 2020), others have concluded that “the presence of the camera had negligible impact on the course of the conversation” (Iino, 1998, p.11). Having viewed my video data, I believe both sides have valid arguments. The extent of the camera’s impact on the field is ultimately dependent on the nature of the research and how sensitive the topic is. In my fieldwork, I noticed that the specific condition of the field also influences participants’ awareness of the camera: the number of people present, the type of conservation work and the location of the camera. For example, during my fieldwork on 30^th September 2023 in a regional orchard managed by the local section City, Jenny, Jules and I were present. That day’s work was relatively easy, including collecting ripe apples, planting fruit seedlings and cleaning nest boxes. While doing this not-too-physically-demanding work, Jenny, Jules and I talked to each other quite often. The filming on that day felt as if I were shooting a science documentary: when Jenny and Jules spoke to me, they would often switch from Luxembourgish to English or German, and explain the varieties of fruit trees and animals that inhabit the nest boxes with instructive language and gestures such as “Schau der Name! (Look at the name!)” and pointing to the labels of the seedling. They often talk straight to the camera, as Figure 5 shows.

Apparently, Jenny and Jules were fully aware of the camera. Nevertheless, the presence of the camera did not seem to bother them, as their work methods and processes did not show much difference from last year, when I did not bring a camcorder. And I did not worry about the “performative behaviour”. In my previous field experience, which did not include video recording, I have noticed that sharing knowledge about nature was an important behavioural pattern in Aktioun fir d’Ëmwelt. For example, my fieldnote on 15^th October 2022 records how people exchanged knowledge about mushrooms and addressed me in English:

Therefore, I believe that even if I were not holding a camera, Jenny and Jules would have explained the information to me in English just as well.

In contrast to Jenny and Jules, Neo did not seem to notice the camera too much, although I explicitly asked him if I could start filming and received an affirmative answer from him. Neo’s task was to trim the branches of two big trees so that he could have enough space to securely place the nest boxes for owls (see Figures 6 and 7).

From his panting captured by the collar microphone, I recognised that Neo’s work was not relaxing. Being high up on the ladder, he had to stay focused. Besides, I was videotaping him beneath the tree from the direction where his back was turned. Therefore, the presence of the camera seemed relatively inconspicuous for Neo. Unlike Jenny and Jules, Neo barely spoke to me and only had some brief conversations with his colleague about passing tools and confirming the position of the nest boxes.

Besides the impact of videotaping on the field, another question that I always had to consider is: who am I going to film? More specifically, should I focus on one person or follow the actions of several people? Who should wear the only collar microphone, or should this microphone be worn at all? I had to constantly negotiate these questions according to the specific situation in each fieldwork.

One challenge of conducting fieldwork in Aktioun fir d’Ëmwelt was that I was not able to anticipate who would be present except for the research participants with whom I had negotiated in advance, because participation in this conservation project series was open to both pre-registered and unregistered individuals (although technically, pre-registration is required). In order to strike a balance between ensuring that all attendees’ right to be informed about my recording and not deterring people by terms such as “research” and “videography”, I left it up to the contact persons of the local sections to decide whether or not to inform potential volunteers of my research in advance. The contact persons of Nord, City and Reed Marsh all thought it would be fine if I asked for consent on the spot. Hence, at the beginning of each event, I explicitly announced the goal of my research and my intention to conduct a video recording. I made it clear that if anyone did not consent to be videotaped at any point, I would immediately refrain from recording the person. On one occasion, a group of high school students led by their teacher took part in the conservation activity organised by the section Nord. I explained my project to the teacher, making it clear that I would not film the juveniles.

Another challenge was to determine the focus of videotaping. Because people were dispersed while working in the natural landscapes, it was impossible to capture the entire group or the discourses of everyone. In some cases, there were even several different activities going on in parallel. For example, during the sessions of Reed Marsh in February 2024, there were two groups of volunteers who were responsible for pruning thorns and ringing birds, respectively. Therefore, I often had to make a choice. Most of the time, I shadowed the participants who were already engaged in my research before the videotaping took place, either through the pilot fieldwork or interviews. Sometimes, I asked these participants for their suggestions: what do they think I should record? Maria from Nord, who is in her 70s, told me that I should film “the younger guy”. I soon realised that only the young man of about thirty could lift the pole high enough to hang a nest box on the tree branch. To conclude, I consider two factors when making decisions: one is the rapport with the participants, and the other is the potential effectiveness of the data to answer the research questions.

The last issue I want to address concerns the audio and video recording, which was key to constructing the data through which I could analyse how participants articulated their connection to nature during fieldwork. In order to collect usable data, I used a collar microphone. The collar microphone is a device that enables the camcorder to capture the participant’s talking clearly, minimising the effects of background noise. Moreover, the microphone can capture detailed sounds that can potentially contextualise data analysis. As mentioned before, I was able to notice Neo’s hard work through his panting recorded by the collar mic. However, I also discovered the limitations of the collar microphone. Since my camcorder has only one microphone jack, only one participant could wear the collar microphone. This could significantly reduce the flexibility of videotaping, on the one hand, due to the limitation of the connecting cable; on the other hand, while the microphone ensures the clarity of the wearer’s speech, it reduces the ability of the camcorder to record other people’s speech, especially from a distance. Reviewing the recordings from the first videotaped fieldwork, I found that the words of the interlocutors of the person wearing the microphone were very poorly recorded. In the next phase of fieldwork that took place in a quiet forest, I took the plunge and did not use a microphone. To my delight, the conversations and discussions were recorded clearly. After this experiment, I always decided whether or not to use a microphone depending on the situation. If there was much background noise in the field, such as the noise of the wind, saws or planes (the local section Reed Marsh is located near Luxembourg Findel airport), I would ask one participant to wear the collar microphone. If the work took place in relatively quiet forests or small orchards, I would not use the microphone.

Leaving the Field

My fieldwork drew to a close at the end of February 2024. Since October 2022, I have participated in 22 events organised by LetzEarth, including the participatory conservation project series Aktioun fir d’Ëmwelt, the monthly casual get-together Discussions publiques, information sessions for volunteers and Nature Film Night. I also had 12 interviews with 10 individuals who either work or volunteer at LetzEarth and its local sections. In this process, I received kind support from the research participants, and I have noticed a change in myself from being confused and timid, to enjoying the conservation work while conducting fieldwork. As such, wrapping up the data collection and leaving the field were not as easy as I had anticipated.

Compared to getting in the field, namely accessing a research population or site, the issue of getting out, or leaving the field, has received less attention (Iversen, 2009). Yet, as Smith and Atkinson (2017) poetically write: “Being personally contoured by a physical culture under study can enchant a researcher as new physical experiences occur, meaningful social bonds are forged, affective curiosities are explored, and one’s analytic imagination is unleashed” (p.636).

Because the researchers’ experiences in the field are not only instrumental for their studies, but also have a profound influence on the researchers themselves and can potentially impact the field, we should reflect on the meaning of leaving the field. I believe that leaving the field marks the end of data collection, but does not necessarily mean the end of the researcher’s physical presence in the field; it is certainly not the end of the researcher’s relationships with the gatekeepers and research participants, nor the conclusion of the mutual influence between the field and the researcher.

In one of my last fieldwork in February 2024, the volunteers of Reed Marsh invited me to join them for lunch after a whole morning of trimming blackthorns in a barren orchard. During the lunch, they discussed the plans for next year’s Aktioun fir d’Ëmwelt and agreed that it would be necessary to continue reclaiming this overgrown orchard next year. Having set the plan, Laura and Neo turned to me with smiles:

• “Are you in next year?”
• “Oh yes, I’ll be there, I’ll be in Luxembourg until at least the end of next year.”
• “Perfect!”

Given the time constraint of the doctoral study, it would be unlikely for me to continue collecting data in Aktioun fir d’Ëmwelt 2024/25. But I was glad that Laura and Neo asked me, and my answer to their question was not a random empty promise. My relationship with the volunteers of Reed Marsh did not end with the conclusion of my fieldwork, but changed from researcher-researched to co-members of the local section as I received the membership card in February 2024. I hoped that my “staying” despite “leaving the field” could convey a message to these people who shared with me their stories, knowledge and enthusiasm, that their dedication was not only worthy of being researched in academia, but also deserved to be passed on to more individuals in the broader public.

Every research project will come to an end at some point, but the connections and relationships that we as researchers have forged in the field, which is at the heart of ethnographic research, often last beyond the framework of the project and continue to influence our research agenda or even personal development. I often think of the people from LetzEarth when I move an earthworm from the asphalt road to grassland, when I sort garbage and when I hike in the woods. This also echoes part of my research analysis and arguments that multifaceted connections to nature can be prompted and enhanced through social and emotional bonds.

I conclude this section by citing Smith and Atkinson (2017) again:

We encourage all ethnographers then to exit as gently, thoughtfully, and analytically as one enters the field. Through a more thoughtful and empathic research process, and by engaging more reflexive forms of leaving, researchers can heighten their analytic connection to the study and enhance the intellectual rigour of qualitative research. (p.648)

Being a Young Person within an “Old” Organisation

Although sharing similarities in age and gender between researcher and participants is often thought to foster a more intimate tone (Lønsmann, 2016), I found that the generational age gap between my participants and me actually benefited our rapport. Among the twelve informants, nine are between 50 and 80 years old at the time of the study. In the early stage of my fieldwork, the volunteer coordinator Emma told me that one challenge faced by many local groups of LetzEarth was the ageing of the active members and the lack of youthful power, which she referred to as an “age gap”:

[…] but the thing is, that their members are ageing. Or are at a certain age, and the thing is it, then there’s not new people coming in and saying “Oh hey let’s go and let’s continue doing this”, then it kinda dies out.

As the fieldwork progressed, I found that the majority of the volunteers who regularly participated in Aktioun fir d’Ëmwelt at the local sections City and Nord were around 50 to 70 years old. There were relatively few volunteers in their twenties or thirties. Senior volunteers like Maria (71) and Birgit (60) are aware of the lack of younger volunteers:

Maria: […] Insgesamt haben wir keine Negativ. Sagen außer, eben junge Leute müsste man noch mehr haben.

Birgit: Das ist klar, das ist klar.

Maria: Schon jetzt, jetzt haben wir zwei, drei junge.

Birgit: Ja, zwei Jahre.

Maria: Hoffentlich bleiben die.

Birgit: Ja, aber so, ja, wie alt sind die? In den 20, im Anfang 30. Für uns ist das schon jung. [laughing] Noch jung. Aber man müsste wirklich 17-jährige, so jung müsste man bekommen, aber die haben kein Interesse dafür.

(Maria: […]Generally we don’t have anything negative. Except that we still have to have more young people.

Birgit: That’s true, that’s true.

Maria: Now we have two, three guys.

Birgit: Yeah, [for] two years.

Maria: Hopefully they’ll stay.

Birgit: Yeah, how old are they? In their twenties or early thirties. For us that’s already young. [laughing] Still young. But you really would need 17-year-olds, that young you would have to recruit, but they have no interest in it.)

As some types of maintenance work can be quite physically challenging, such as digging ponds, pruning thorns, and climbing tall trees to place nest boxes, the lack of younger helping hands could be a serious issue for local sections that wish to continue their conservation projects. The senior volunteers, such as Michael (70) and Bob (73) were pleased that a young woman in her twenties, like me, expressed her interest in their work and started to participate in the activities regularly. After my first participation in Aktioun fir d’Ëmwelt at City, where I assisted at their stand at Forest Ministry’s Open Day, Michael sent me a message (Figure 8):

During the interview, Bob jokingly mentioned that he might consider recruiting me:

[…] So we need new people in the [Language Section]. So maybe I need to recruit people like you, Yimin. [laughing]

As such, the age gap did not alienate the participants and me. In contrast, the generational difference brought me closer to these senior volunteers. The general lack of involvement from the younger generation in their activities made my presence in the field a positive thing for the participants. Interestingly, LetzEarth made a photo that Jules (63) and I planting seedlings together as the banner for Aktioun fir d’Ëmwelt (Figure 9), which could be interpreted as a call for intergenerational transmission of and cooperation in conservation actions.

During the initial data analysis, I realised another reason that the senior volunteers welcomed me as a young researcher. When asked about the motivations of their environmental engagement, the participants frequently mentioned phrases like “the next generation” and “children”, which implies that their dedication to conservation is closely linked to a concern for the future generation. As Carmi and Arnon (2014) argue, environmental attitudes and behaviour have a future orientation, assuming responsibility for the future outcomes of present actions. For the senior volunteers, I represented the next generation whom they were preserving nature for. Thus, they were open to my presence in the field and to sharing their insights with me.

Student, Researcher or Volunteer? A Difficult Endeavour

The way in which I introduced myself to the participants was also a matter of self-positioning in the field. Should I present myself as a “doctoral researcher” or a “PhD student”? Having weighed the different perceptions that the two phrases would bring to the table, I chose to introduce myself as a “PhD student” instead of “doctoral researcher”, unless I had to write down my institutional affiliation and job title on the formal documents, such as the information sheet and consent forms. By positioning myself as a student rather than a researcher, I hoped to negotiate the power dynamic between the participants and me. Overemphasising my identity as a “researcher” in front of the volunteers from all walks of life would likely create an unnecessary distance between us. A researcher-researched relationship implies an asymmetric power dynamic where the informants could feel dehumanised as data under examination or being judged. This could lead to the reluctance to share their genuine opinions, experiences or complaints.

In contrast, as a “student”, I learn from people. I learnt the information about the organisation from the volunteer coordinator, and how to build connections to nature from the volunteers. Besides, compared to people with extensive knowledge and skills about nature who are adept at pruning trees and capable of distinguishing bird species from their songs, I am a pupil of natural knowledge. As my data analysis showed, the conservation projects were often discursively constructed as a setting for learning environmental knowledge and attitudes. Therefore, positioning myself as a student in the field not only helped me negotiate the researcher-participant power relationship, but also enabled me to integrate better into the field where learning is an important form of interaction.

Alongside negotiating the researcher/student identity, I also had to maintain a balance between my roles as a researcher and a volunteer. As discussed before, an ethnographic researcher cannot remain an external observer and is always part of the field. Yet, how do practitioners of participant observation position themselves in the field? Delamont (2004) asserts that the term “participant” observation does not usually mean real participation of the researcher, namely doing what research participants do, but rather watching the things being done and interacting with the informants while they do it. However, I found it hard to follow Delamont’s advice in my fieldwork. Given the participatory nature of Aktioun fir d’Ëmwelt and its emphasis on involving people in hands-on conservation work, being a passive participant like a bystander (Spradley, 1980) who watches without actively doing would appear quite awkward. As some tasks were physically demanding for the senior volunteers, my passive observation without active contribution would not help build rapport with them. In addition, as I initially entered the field as a volunteer rather than a researcher (see section Entering the Field), completely switching my position from a participant-volunteer to an observer-researcher would disturb my ongoing relationship negotiation with the participants. Therefore, I tried to participate in Aktioun fir d’Ëmwelt as a “volunteering researcher”. While explicitly explaining to the informants that my primary goal in participating in Aktioun fir d’Ëmwelt is to collect research data, I also actively engaged in physical work with the volunteers and learnt knowledge and skills from them. As it was not possible to take fieldnotes while engaged in the hands-on work, I had to memorise the interactions in the field that I deemed worth documenting. Later, I would take notes or audio-record myself on the way back from the fieldwork. In my later fieldwork assisted by a video camera, interestingly, I was able to engage in more passive participation by only filming the participants without conducting the conservation work, asit was obvious to others that my hands were already occupied. Nevertheless, I still had to negotiate between moderate participation and active participation (Spradley, 1980) by deciding when I should stop videotaping and lend a hand to other volunteers. For example, during the process of clearing weeds on a wetland at the section Nord with Maria, I started with only filming Maria’s work. Later, as I noticed that the task was quite exhausting, I put away the camera and grabbed a pitchfork to gather the weeds with her.

Negotiating multifaceted identities as both a volunteer and researcher was challenging, particularly when multitasking between collecting ethnographic data and engaging in physical work. However, this endeavour benefited my fieldwork in several ways. First, through working with the volunteers, I developed a closer relationship with them. The similar experiences and feelings from Aktioun fir d’Ëmwelt often served as a good conversation starter. Second, my engagement in the field not only as a researcher but also as a volunteer helped me negotiate continuous access to the field. The senior volunteers from the Nord section agreed to my request for video recording during our first meeting, because they saw the photos of me working with other local sections and recognised me as “the girl on the poster”. Thirdly, through these hands-on efforts, I gained first-hand experience of what it's like to engage in environmental work. Reflecting on my own experiences, I also gained insights into the informants’ perspectives.

Negotiating the diverse, dynamic positions and identities at different levels, and navigating through their combinations and collisions, are the endeavours that all ethnographic researchers must undertake. Whether as a young volunteer who could help out, a university student who learnt about the human-nature connection or a researcher who conducted ethnographic fieldwork, I was constantly positioning myself and being positioned by the participants. As researchers can actively use positioning to negotiate access to the field and the relationship with informants, we must attend to the issue of honesty and manipulation (Lønsmann, 2016). As Lønsmann questions, would consciously positioning myself in one way or another be a way to manipulate the informants? My answer would be, as long as we ensure the transparency of “who we are and who we are not” (Lønsmann, 2016, p.34), the active positioning is ethical. While introducing myself as a “PhD student”, I never denied that I was also a researcher, and I explained to several curious participants how I would treat the information I gathered in analysis. While engaging in the activities as a young volunteer, I made it clear to the senior volunteers that I could not promise any long-term engagement as I did not even know if I would stay in Luxembourg after my doctoral study.

In this section, I elaborated on the data collection methods for this study: participant observation and ethnographic interviews. Additionally, I reflected on the negotiation of language in multilingual research sites and the positioning of the researcher in fieldwork, both of which profoundly influence the data collection process and the data collected. In the next section, I will present the data constructed from the ethnographic fieldwork.

Initial Coding

Initial coding, also referred to as open coding, is the phase in which the researcher stays close to and open to the data by scrutinising and assigning codes to pieces of data, word by word, line by line, paragraph by paragraph, or incident by incident, or using a combination of these strategies (Thornberg & Charmaz, 2014; Urquhart, 2023). One of the key principles of initial coding, as indicated by its alternative name, is to remain open to data (Bryant, 2017; Charmaz, 2006). This requires the researcher to avoid examining the data through the lens of pre-existing knowledge or ideas, and to be prepared to be surprised or challenged by data (Bryant, 2017).

To foster flexible ways of seeing, researchers pose general and open-ended analytical questions to explore and define what is happening in the data (Thornberg & Charmaz, 2014). Grounded theorists have suggested a range of questions for initial coding from various perspectives. The following non-exhaustive list presents some example questions I encountered and categorised from the literature:

• Questions focusing on the plot of data: What is this data a study of? What is actually happening in the data? (Glaser, 1978, p.57) What does the data suggest? Pronounce? From whose point of view? (Charmaz, 2006, p.47)
• Questions focusing on the process under study: What process(es) is at issue here? How can I define it? How does this process develop? When, why, and how does the process change? What are the consequences of the process? (Charmaz, 2006, p.51)
• Questions focusing on participants’ perspectives: What is the participant’s main concern? (Glaser, 1998, p.140) How does the research participant(s) act while involved in this process? What does the research participant(s) profess to think and feel while involved in this process? What might his or her observed behavior indicate? (Charmaz, 2006, p.51).

Since this study’s research aims to explore participants’ perceptions of their connections with nature, I guided the initial coding process by asking myself four participant-focused questions: What are they doing here? What do they observe? How do they think? How do they feel? These questions helped me to remain close to participants’ perspectives without imposing pre-existing notions onto the data.

To facilitate the coding process, I used the qualitative data analysis software MAXQDA. I used a colour-coding system: green for codes regarding opinions, yellow for observations, red for emotions, and blue for actions (see Figure 17). In Figures 18, 19, 20, 21, I show how I conducted the initial coding using these four open-ended questions, drawing on excerpts from the interview transcript with Bob as an example. The open coding generated an initial coding system, as shown in the Figure 22.

As the generated coding system showcases, the open coding process led to sorting and clustering of initial codes. As a result, the researcher was able to identify the most prominent and frequent initial codes that warranted further analysis (Thornberg & Charmaz, 2014). With these insights in mind, the researcher moves to the next phase: focused coding.

Focused Coding

In focused coding, also known as selective coding, the initial codes are organised into conceptual categories that capture the underlying patterns (Glaser, 1998; Thornberg & Charmaz, 2014; Urquhart, 2023). The goal of this step is to “synthesise and explain later segments of data” (Charmaz, 2006, p.57). This is the phase where I operationalised the key concepts identified in the first round of data analysis (see section 4.3.4 Finding Operating Concepts). In particular, the concept of relational values informed this process. At first glance, this may appear to be a violation of GTM’s tenet that researchers should approach data with an open mind and avoid imposing extant concepts. However, grounded theorists have addressed the misconception of “the researcher as a blank slate” (Urquhart & Fernández, 2013; Urquhart, 2023) and the belief that “engaging with the literature and existing theory spoils grounded theory” (Timonen et al., 2018). These myths stem from a superficial understanding of the role of literature in research (Urquhart & Fernández, 2013). The interaction between literature review and data analysis is not unidirectional. While prior engagement with literature can inform data analysis, the examination of empirical data also guides the researcher in identifying which literature may be useful to anchor the study and interpret the data. Therefore, whether an analysis using GTM is “contaminated” by pre-existing concepts does not depend on whether such concepts are involved, but rather on when and how the concept came into play. As Urquhart (2023) clarifies: “it is more accurate to say that grounded theory research does not start with a theory to prove or disprove” (p.32, emphasis in original), “but to consider what the data says first” (p.230). As illustrated in the section Finding Operating Concepts, the key analytical notions for this research were not defined prior to, but during data analysis. In other words, the lens of relational values emerged from data, rather than dictating my reading of data. Thus, it serves as a valid lens for focus coding.

Focused coding in this research, namely the categorisation of the initial codes, was therefore informed by the notion of relational values. Before examining the initial codes, I drew on the typology of relational values developed by Raymond and colleagues (2023) to orient my understanding of the concept toward using it as an analytical lens. According to Raymond et al., there are four key layers of relational values:

1. Worldviews are the “lenses” through which individuals and groups perceive, interpret, inhabit and modify the world. […] Overall, worldviews can be clustered into three orientations regarding people-nature relationships. Anthropocentric worldviews prioritise humans […]; Bio/ecocentric worldviews place importance on living beings (i.e. biocentric) or nature as a whole (i.e. eco centric) as having inherent worth in themselves […]; pluricentric worldviews, an emerging concept, focus on reciprocal, intertwined and embedded relationships between humans and other beings, and nature’s elements and processes (i.e. with no centre).
2. Broad values are life goals and guiding principles, including what constitutes desirable people-nature relationships.
3. Specific values are judgements regarding the importance of something in “specific” contexts, including biodiversity, ecosystems, people–nature relationships or human wellbeing. These are sometimes called “assigned” or “contextual” values.
4. Value indicators are quantitative measures (e.g. hectares, money and indices) or qualitative descriptors (e.g. expressions, arguments and stories) of specific values. (p.3–4)

In focused coding, I adapted this typology into a set of guiding questions that helped me identify “value” within initial codes: How do the initial codes reflect participants’ beliefs, principles and preferences regarding connecting with nature? How do they convey the importance of connecting with nature to participants? What benefits do participants perceive from this connection? While scanning the initial codes through these questions, I selected the most illustrative ones, identified the underlying relationships among them, and then merged and categorised them into focused codes. An example of this process is how I categorised the initial codes “writing and translating texts about nature knowledge and history”, “doing consulting work”, “teaching knowledge about nature” and “raising awareness about environmental issues” under the focused code “giving nature a voice”. These initial codes appeared frequently across different parts of the data and were therefore selected for further analysis. By revisiting the data segments associated with these codes, I identified a common thread: Through these actions, participants advocate for a deeper understanding of nature’s complexity, resilience and agency and challenge a common notion of nature as a passive subordinate of humans. Drawing inspiration from a phrase encountered in the field, “give nature a voice”, I grouped these initial codes under the focused code giving nature a voice. It reflects participants’ recognition and respect for nature’s active role in shaping the interactions between people and nature, and their belief that this attitude forms the basis of a reciprocal human-nature relationship that should be communicated and shared. Thus, giving nature a voice expresses their value regarding building meaningful relationships with nature.

Naming the focused codes was also a rigorous process. Charmaz (2006) reminds us that focused codes should be “more directed, selective and conceptual” (p.57). To reach this, I drew on both data and literature to search for precise and meaningful conceptual phrases for focused codes. As illustrated by the above example, some focused codes were derived directly from the data and the field, such as grasping nature with hand and mind and giving nature a voice. These codes remain closely tied to the ethnographic data while vividly synthesising the shared implications of relevant initial codes at a conceptual level. Other focused codes, such as nature as guide and human as a collaborator with nature, were informed by existing concepts, such as de Groot’s (1992) notions of “Man the Steward of nature” and “Partnership with Nature”. While inspired by these established ideas, these focused codes are intended to capture implications from my data that diverge from the original concepts in nuanced ways (see chapter Findings and Discussion). Additionally, some focused codes were directly borrowed from developed conceptual frameworks, such as nature as “serious leisure” (Stebbins, 1982). These codes emerged through an iterative process of examining relevant data segments, identifying connections among the initial codes and engaging with literature from multiple disciplines. Focused codes drawn from established literature benefit from conceptually developed notions, allowing the findings from my fieldwork to be addressed in an interdisciplinary manner. The following list demonstrates the generated focused codes:

• Grasping nature with hand and mind
• Experiencing nature as serious leisure
• Relational learning about nature
• Giving nature a voice
• Emotion sparks connection with nature
• Positive emotions as a way to connect with nature
• Positive emotions as a gain from connecting with nature
• Nature as a guide in learning about nature
• Nature as a participant of environmental engagement
• Collaborating with nature

Following the focused coding phase, the analysis progressed into theoretical coding.

Theoretical Coding

According to Urquhart (2023), “[t]heoretical coding is the stage where codes are related to each other” (p.79). In this phase, researchers move beyond an empirical description of data toward a higher level of conceptualisation and theorisation. The goal of theoretical coding is to “specify possible relationships between categories you have developed in your focused coding” in order to “tell an analytic story that has coherence” (Charmaz, 2006, p.63). Thornberg and Charmaz (2014) clarify the fundamental distinction between theoretical codes and initial or focused codes:

Initial and focused coding generate data-driven and empirical codes and categories by building on constant comparisons of data, data and codes, and codes and codes. In contrast, theoretical codes consist of ideas and perspectives that researchers import to the research process as analytic tools and lenses from outside, from a range of theories. Theoretical codes refer to underlying logics that could be found in pre-existing theories. (p.159)

As such, theoretical coding is the stage where external, extant theories and concepts play a vital role in GTM. Thornberg and Charmaz (2012) encourage researchers to explore and engage with a wide range of established theories across academic disciplines and professional domains to figure out theoretical codes. In this research, the conceptual frameworks identified during the first round of analysis played a crucial role in theoretical coding: the multi-dimensional human-nature connection (HNC) framework (Ives et al., 2017) and the human-nature relational model (Muradian & Pascual, 2018). The HNC framework offers a way to approach people’s connections with nature from multiple perspectives spanning inner to outer worlds. When I re-examined the focused codes and associated pieces of data with the HNC framework in mind, a metaphor emerged: it seemed that three vital organs played essential roles in fostering participants’ connections with nature: hand, brain, and heart. This led to the conceptualisation of grasping nature with hand and mind and experiencing nature as serious leisure as embodied experiences with nature, relational learning about nature and giving nature a voice as intellectual engagement with nature, and the three emotion-related focused codes as emotional resonance with nature. These three theoretical codes illuminate how participants value different pathways for connecting with nature, enabling me to tell the first part of the “analytic story” by answering the first research question: which perspectives do participants consider important for initiating and deepening connection with nature? Meanwhile, two elements from human-nature relational model proved useful in conceptualising the shared implications of the focused codes nature as a guide in learning about nature, nature as a participant of environmental engagement and collaborating with nature, namely “nature entity with agency” and “how nature is positioned vis-à-vis humans” (Muradian & Pascual, 2018, p.10). The data segments associated with these codes suggest that participants reject the notion of a dichotomy between human and nature or the idea that nature is only “natural” without human presence. Instead, they value reciprocal interactions with nature and do not perceive such interactions as disturbances to nature. These data also reflect participants’ recognition of and care for nature as an active agent in their interactions with it. From these reflections, I developed the theoretical codes of human-included naturalness and recognition of nature’s agency. These two theoretical codes ultimately enabled me to articulate how participants view their relationships with nature.

This section outlines my trajectory in applying GTM-informed coding techniques to analyse my data, constituting what Hadley (2019) describes as a “[r]eflexively interpretive analysis, starting with empirical description and moving progressively towards higher levels of theorisation” (p. 266). Before presenting the organisation of my findings yielded from this rigorous analytical process, I will first explain how I applied GTM in specific ways that align with the nature of my object of inquiry and ethnographic data.

Attending to Language and Discourse

As thought finds its expression, reality and form in language (Vygotsky, 1934/1986), examining participants’ language use offers a tangible entry point to explore their beliefs, values, and perspectives. Therefore, placing analytical focus on language directly supports the aim of this study. This approach can be effectively integrated into GTM. In fact, language plays a crucial role in how and what grounded theory codes are constructed and analysed, as Charmaz (2006) expounds:

[…] language confers form and meaning on observed realities. Specific use of language reflects views and values. […] we attribute meanings to specific terms and hold perspectives. Our codes arise from the languages, meanings, and perspectives through which we learn about the empirical world, including those of our participants as well as our own. Coding impels us to make our participants’ language problematic to render an analysis of it. Coding should inspire us to examine hidden assumptions in our own use of language as well as that of our participants. (p.47)

Therefore, close attention to participants’ language use facilitated me to construct the grounded theory codes and articulate how the theoretical codes reflect participants’ perspectives on their connections and relationships with nature. To examine language use within data, I incorporated discourse analysis techniques in this grounded theory analysis. Specifically, I looked for environmental discourse, defined by Mühlhäusler and Peace (2006) as “the linguistic devices articulating arguments about the relationship between humans and their environment” (p.458). This entailed “trac[ing] a particular linguistic regularity” in participants’ verbal expressions during interviews and fieldwork to identify the “ideas, concepts and categories” through which they attributed meanings to their experiences with nature (Hajer & Versteeg, 2005, p.175).

An example of this analytical act is the development of the focused code grasping nature with hand and mind. This code was directly inspired by a participant, Eric, who offered a compelling interpretation of the semantic link between the German verbs greifen and begreifen. Both can be translated as “to grasp” in English, yet greifen means “gripping” while begreifen means “to comprehend”. Using this etymological insight as a metaphor, Eric argued that learning about nature begins with hands-on engagement. The examination of this piece of data, originally in German, inspired me to consider how a similar view can be embedded in and expressed through the English word grasp through its dual meaning. With this linguistic inspiration in mind, I revisited the data segments associated with the tentative code grasping nature, paying particular attention to linguistic regularities in participants’ speech. I then observed a frequent use of transitive verb phrases that take nature as their object, along with participants’ consistent expressions of approval for such actions. These language uses often occurred in narratives that articulate a causal link between physical contact with nature and a deepened understanding of it. Thereby, I confirmed that the focused code grasping nature with hand and mind effectively captures participants’ perspective that practical interactions with nature foster a meaningful inner connection with it.

Deliberate attention to language use enhances this grounded theory analysis by offering sources for tentative codes, establishing logical links between raw data and conceptual codes, and facilitating an analytical presentation of the findings to address research questions. This suggests that GTM can benefit from the incorporation of discourse analysis techniques.

Retaining Ethnographic Vividness

There appears to be a subtle tension between a GTM way and an ethnographic way of making sense of the data. While a grounded theory approach emphasises conceptual development and theorisation, an ethnographic approach is oriented toward producing detailed and meaningful (“thick”) descriptions of lived experiences and settings (Oktay, 2012). When applying GTM as an analytical tool in this ethnographic case study, this nuanced divergence became my practical dilemma, particularly during constructing and presenting the results. Should I prioritise a higher level of theorisation encouraged by GTM, or foreground the empirical description valued by ethnography?

After careful, iterative reading of data and codes, I chose to strive for a balance between the two aspects – preserving an ethnographic vividness within this grounded theory analysis. This decision was guided by the overarching research goal: to explore how participants value their connections with nature from their own points of view, grounded in real-life experiences. An emic perspective in reading the data, both for the researcher and readers, is therefore essential for this study. A mere pursuit of conceptualisation and theorisation at the expense of the richness and originality of the ethnographic data would risk undermining this goal. Thus, in presenting the analysis results generated through GTM, I aimed to preserve ethnographic vividness – in other words, to foreground participants’ voices – by presenting and analysing the ethnographic moments (Prost, 2003) captured from fieldwork, and participants’ original narratives and expressions from interviews, rather than limiting the analysis to summaries or abstracted codes.

Social anthropologist Prost (2003) defines ethnographic moments as

the moment in which the anthropologist rises to meet a revealed problematic encapsulated in a particular instance of fieldwork, may be paralleled to the experience of religious epiphany, whereby embodied and intellectual understanding of phenomena and situation come to merge, producing a totalising understanding of the field and the “afield”. (p.1)

In other words, an ethnographic moment constitutes an incident during fieldwork that strikes the researcher with its vividness and distinctiveness in revealing the complexity of the situation, process, phenomenon or issue under study. Therefore, incorporating ethnographic moments into GTM not only contributes to “grounding” the findings in field data, but also effectively conveys the tensions, interconnections and complexity embedded in the object of inquiry. In the Finding and Discussion chapter, I present ethnographic moments from my fieldwork by combining thick description, screenshots from video recording, transcripts of participants’ speech in the video clips and excerpts from fieldnotes. In doing so, I demonstrate how the analytical codes and their conceptual insights emerged from participants’ lived realities, thereby carrying practical richness.

In treating narratives from ethnographic interviews, I align with Flyvbjerg (2006), who asserts that “[g]ood narratives typically approach the complexities and contradictions of real life” (p.237). Flyvbjerg further argues that such narratives often cannot, and should not, be summarised, as doing so would strip them of their embedded richness. This perspective also applies to excerpts in which participants articulate their opinions and emotions. Not only do the original expressions matter, but even the length of the speech conveys the participants’ stance and intensity of beliefs and emotions. For instance, during the interview with Daniel, I initially assumed he was relatively introverted and not particularly communicative. I had to remind him to speak louder so the recorder could clearly capture his voice, and I prompted him several times to elaborate on the details of his relevant experiences and views. However, when our conversation turned to Luxembourg’s new conservation law, which bans the private capture of wild animals, including butterflies, regardless of intent, Daniel had much to say. His response resulted in approximately 1100 words of speech (in German) in the related transcript excerpts. This indicated to me his strong opposition to the delegitimisation of direct contact with nature. Therefore, I chose to present the original transcript excerpts rather than a summary, allowing Daniel’s voice, rather than solely my interpretation, to convey his view and experiences to the reader. Based on similar considerations, I retained the long narratives in which participants recounted their experiences in data analysis, in order to preserve the richness and expressiveness embedded in their speech.

By presenting ethnographic moments and participants’ original speech in data analysis, I aimed to preserve ethnographic vividness in this GTM-informed ethno-case study. This approach grounds the grounded theory codes within the perspectives of participants, demonstrates how conceptual insights emerged from the texture of field data, and creates an open and transparent “scope for readers” (Flyvbjerg, 2006, p.238) to engage with and evaluate my analysis, or even to develop their own interpretations of my data. Therefore, integrating ethnographic vividness does not undermine but rather enriches the implications of grounded theory research.

So far, I have elaborated on the actions, decisions and reflections that I engaged with during the second round of data analysis using a Grounded Theory Method. This rigorous procedure eventually gave rise to the “narrative framework” in which I report my findings (Urquhart, 2023, p.5) in the Findings and Discussion chapter, which follows the current chapter outlining my data analysis trajectory. In the next chapter, I will present a story of a group of ordinary citizens who have developed meaningful connections with nature through everyday environmental engagement from embodied, intellectual and emotional perspectives, and who have cultivated intriguing understandings of nature and human-nature relationships through these connections. Through eliciting their preferences, beliefs and views regarding engagement with nature, this narrative reveals how they value their relationship with nature as constructed in everyday, mundane interactions with it.

“Grasping Nature in Mind Comes from Grasping Nature with Hand”

I begin the detailed analysis with the focused code that emerged directly from my conversation with Eric. Born during the Second World War in a Luxembourgish working-class family, Eric’s early years were marked by modest material conditions but not boredom – his childhood was immersed in the exploration of nature. Due to the challenging post-war economic circumstances and the underprivileged family background, Eric could not afford to pursue higher education in environmental science as he wished. However, he has achieved a fulfilling nature career: he started as a primary school nature teacher and later was recruited as a mentor of nature pedagogy by the Luxembourg Ministry of Education. In addition, Eric is the former president of LetzEarth, its current honorary president, the co-founder of the conservation foundation GreenLove and one of Luxembourg’s leading ornithologists. There is no doubt that Eric has always been in close connection with nature throughout his life. During the interview, Eric recounted the beginning of his journey in nature:

Da habe ich Glück gehabt meine Eltern, die kamen alle beide von dem vom Bauern her und meine Großaltern die hatte noch einen Bauernbetrieb. Und für mich war es sehr wichtig, in den Ferien war ich dann dauernd bei ihnen auf dem Hof. Und meine Großmutter, die war so eine, sagen wir mal, so eine Küche, eine, eine Kräuterfrau. Sie hatten einen großen Garten. Und ich habe dann allmögliche Dinge gefragt, wie heißt das, und so. und was machst du damit? Und dann haben wir zusammengekocht. Und das war fantastisch. Ich habe da so viel, sagen wir mal, erlebt, konkret. Das heißt, mit, das wichtig ist, ehrlich. Wenn man, man sagt ja, ich habe es begriffen. Man vergisst immer, Begreifen, das kommt von Grei::fen. Das heißt, wenn man etwas begriffen hat, musste man es vorher irgendwie auch gegriffen haben, angepackt haben. Und das war so wichtig, wir haben dann im Garten zusammengearbeitet. Ich habe dann gefragt, oh welcher Käfer ist das denn jetzt wieder?

(I was lucky, because my parents both came from farmer’s family and my grandparents still had a farm. And it was very important for me, I was always on the farm with them during the holidays. And my grandmother, she was, let’s say, a “herb lady”. They had a big garden. And I would ask them all sorts of things, what is it called and so on, and what do you do with it? And then we cooked together. And that was fantastic. I’ve experienced so much there, let’s say, concretely. That is, the important thing is, when, honestly, when people say, “I’ve grasped something, understood.”, they always forget, grasping something in mind comes from grasping something with hand. This means if you’ve understood something, before that you have to somehow grip it with hands, have hands-on experiences. And that was so important, we then worked together in the garden. I then asked, oh which beetle is that again?)

This passage is part of Eric’s answer to a question that was posed by himself during the interview: “[…] in order to really understand my, let’s say, my engagement with LetzEarth, I must expand a bit. That is quite important, how do you get into nature conservation as, as we often say, a citizen?”⁸ […] um meinen, sagen wir mal, meinen Engagement bei LetzEarth richtig zu verstehen, muss ich ein bisschen schon ausholen. Das ist ja wichtig, wie kommt man zum Naturschutz, als, gewöhnlicher sagen wir mal, Bürger?. Answering his own rhetorical question, Eric emphasises the importance of concretely doing, interacting and experiencing in his first contact with nature. Although the word “nature” is not mentioned in this excerpt, its presence is evident in the tangible and experienceable spaces of the farm and garden, where Eric and his family explored and worked with species such as herbs and beetles. His interpretation of the German verbs begreifen and greifen is particularly noteworthy. Both words can be translated as “to grasp” in English, but with different semantic meanings. Begreifen refers to “​to understand something completely” and greifen means “to take a strong hold of something”. To preserve Eric’s nuanced linguistic interpretation as much as possible, I translate his argument as “grasping something in mind comes from grasping something with hand”⁹ Man vergisst immer, Begreifen, das kommt von Greifen.. It goes beyond a morphological explanation that begreifen is derived from the root word greifen, but highlights Eric’s strong belief that practical experiences in nature form the crucial basis for cognitive understanding of it.

While Eric is the only participant who explicitly articulated this intriguing perception of “grasping”, the data suggests that the idea of “grasping nature with hand” is also valued by other participants. For Christophe, holding a bird in hand is “magical”. In 2005, Christophe moved from France to Luxembourg for work reasons. As a newcomer to the Grand Duchy, Christophe “wanted to visit the country with the approach of nature” and became a member of LetzEarth. He learnt about the wetland reserve and the Reed Marsh team through LetzEarth’s magazine Rose. During his first visit to Reed Marsh, Christophe found “the activity very interesting. People were also very cool and very friendly”, and afterwards joined the bird ringing team. He recalled his contact with Luxembourg’s nature:

The passion to do something connected with nature came progressively, I would say. And I love animals more. Okay, already there are also plants or trees. But the thing with birds is very special. Yes, when you have a bird in your hand, it's magical.

This excerpt suggests that Christophe views connection with nature as a developing process, and for him, the practical interaction with concrete species – in his case, birds – is a significant catalyst for this process. His description of the feelings of having a bird in hand is “special” and “magical”, which are not tactile sensations but rather inner experiences of meaningfulness and wonder. This interestingly echoes Eric’s view that “grasping something in mind comes from grasping something with hand”, suggesting that physical contact with tangible species nurtures internal responses towards nature. These internal responses, in Christophe’s words, can “progressively” develop into the “passion” of engagement with nature.

Michael also values physical contact with nature, as he believes practical experiences promote emotional and cognitive connection. Before his retirement, Michael worked as a primary school nature teacher and a mentor in nature pedagogy at the nature activity centre, Green Charlet, which was affiliated with LetzEarth. At Green Charlet, children are offered outdoor workshops and activities to learn about nature and how to interact with it. Throughout his career, Michael dedicated himself to guiding children to experience and explore nature. Outside of his professional work, he has been a long-term volunteer at LetzEarth’s local section, City. During the interview, Michael used the imagery of hands and brain to vividly explain his perspective that physical practices play a unique and important role in forming an awareness of nature:

Also, alles, ich glaube alles, was man mit den Händen macht, das geht gleich ins Gehirn rein. Da ist die Verbindung von der Hand, von den Sensoren in der Hand, da geht die Verbindung bis ins Gehirn. Wenn du das gemacht hast, dann weißt du das. Aber anders so theoretisch ist das nicht derselbe, den vielleicht verschieden, die sind anders geschickt, die Gehirne, die können das auch aufnehmen, aber, aber viele brauchen halt, die meisten, glaube ich, brauchen den Kontakt, damit es klappt, ne? [...] Er muss damit richtig arbeiten und richtig anfassen.

(So everything, I think everything you do with your hands goes straight into the brain. There’s the connection from the hand, from the sensors in the hand, the connection goes right into the brain. If you do it, then you know it. But theoretical things are not the same, it’s perhaps different, it’s sent in a different way [into]the brain. The brain can also pick it up, but many people need, I think most need the contact to make it work, right? [...] You must really work with it and touch it.)

Besides emphasising the impact of physical interaction on the cognitive connection with nature, Michael argued that such interactions also arouse emotional responses:

Auch die Gehirnzelle wären erst dann bestimmt stimuliert. Dadurch Kinder dann mit Sachen in die Hand nehmen, selber probieren. Man muss sich mal schmutzig machen, dass man sieht, was Erde ist. Guckst du, habe auch ein schönes Beispiel, im Kopf, dann, ein kleines Mädchen hat dann auch dann, einen Wurm. ‚Hei kuck mol, Michael, ein Wurm!‘ Guck, ein Wurm, ne? Die dann, ‚Eeeh----, Wurm.‘ ‚ist ein schéine Wuerm? Guck, wie den jetzt bewege do. Wie die bewege auf der Hand. ‘ ‚Wo kannst du den anfassen?‘ sagt ein anderes Mädchen. Der macht ja nichts, der Wurm. Da, so kleine Sachen, den zahlt. Da kannst du so viel le::sen und so, das kannst du lesen, du kannst Bilder gucken, ist nicht derselben. Du musst spüren, wie der Wurm sich auf deine Hand bewegt. Oder ein Käfer, der krabbelt da, ne? Spürst du, wie der so, so ganz, so richtig kitzelt, ne? So kitzelt. Ja, die kleinen Füßen, die so, ganz, ganz, ganz... fein! Da werden deine ganz kleine Nerven, da werden, der berührt. Die Berührung geht dann ins Gehirn. Das geht bis in deinen ganzen Körper. dass du das fühlst, das kannst du nicht so lernen als Bücher. Das ist richtiger Kontakt mit, mit den Tieren.

(The brain cells would definitely be stimulated then. Through [practices] children hold things in hands, try out by themselves. You have to get your hands dirty to see what earth is. Look, I also have a nice example in mind: a little girl with a worm. “Hey look, Michael, a worm!” Look, a worm, right? Then, “Eeeh----, worm.” “Is a beautiful worm? Look, how it moves there. How it moves on your hand?” “Where can you touch it?” said another girl. It doesn’t harm, the worm. So, little things like that, it counts. You can read a lot, you can read, you can look at pictures, it’s not the same. You must feel how the worm moves on your hand. Or a beetle, it crawls there, right? You can feel how it really tickles, right? It tickles like that. Yes, the little feet that are so, so, so... fine! Your very small nerves are touched. The touch then goes to your brain. It goes all the way into your body. You can’t learn that from books. It’s real contact with the animals.)

The anecdote of the two little girls and the worm illustrates how emotional reactions towards species that are often negatively perceived can be changed through physical interaction. With Michael’s encouragement to hold the worm, the two little girls navigated their feelings from disgust to curiosity, supporting Michael’s opinion that physical contact with concrete species forms a closer inner connection with nature. It is also noteworthy that while Michael believes that the worm and beetles should be held in hands for interaction, he does not perceive them as something under human control and devoid of agency. Holding the worm and beetles is not aimed at demonstrating humans’ power to control over these small animals or the desire to dominate them, but to experience their vitality directly: the worm is “beautiful”, and the beetle “tickles” with their tiny feet. This transition from tactile to emotional sensations, according to Michael’s vivid metaphor of brain and nerves, can only be achieved through physical interaction with nature. He gave another example of “embracing trees” to illustrate this viewpoint:

Auch den Baum fühlen, haben wir auch gemacht, immer den Baum fühlen, auch mit verbundenen Augen, wie gesagt, die Augen binden. Nur gesagt, müssen den Baum umarmen. Das ist unser Freund, so, die Baumen. I embrace the tree, and I...I try to be in contact with him. Es ist so viel, als die Rinde von dem Baum spüren, dass die anders siehst als die von anderen Aart. Wenn du das Eiche fühlst, du hast eine Birke oder du hast eine Buchen, die Buchen hat den Stamm glatt, die Eiche hat ganz graue Rinde. Kannst du gut unterscheiden durch das Fühlen nur. Ich kann es auch im Buch studieren, ja, das so, so und so und dann, die ist es so und so. Wenn du die nie gespürt hast, dann vergisst du das wieder sowieso ganz schnell. And dann spürt hast die raue Rinde von der Eiche, "das ist eine Eiche", da kennst du gleich, ne?

(We also felt the tree, we also did that, always to feel the tree, with blindfolds covering eyes. Just as said, must hug the tree. That’s our friend, the trees. I embrace the tree, and I... I try to be in contact with him. It’s so much, like feeling the bark of the tree, the barks of different tree species are different. If you feel the oak, you have a birch or you have a beech, the beech has a smooth trunk, the oak has very grey bark. You can only tell the difference by feeling it. I can also study it in the book, yes, it’s so, so and so and then it’s so and so. If you’ve never felt it, you’ll forget it very quickly anyway. And then you feel the rough bark of the oak tree, “that's an oak tree”, you know right away, don’t you?)

The gesture of embracing and hugging carries emotional significance. Like Michael mentioned, embracing creates a sense of friendship between people and trees. At the same time, physical contact contributes to nuanced learning about trees. While bark textures can be described in textbooks as verbal knowledge, descriptive language alone cannot create the embodied learning experiences that Michael believes are an efficient way of understanding nature.

While Eric, Christophe and Michael shared encouraging experiences of how hands-on interactions with nature have promoted the cognitive and emotional human-nature connection, Birgit, the president of LetzEarth local section Nord, expressed her concern about what Pyle (1993) terms as extinction of experience:

Die [Kinder] haben keine Zeit mehr, um dann auch noch da irgendwas über Schmerterlinge zu lernen oder über den Fuchs zu erfahren, oder irgendwie so etwas. Das fehlt sehr. Okay, die Kinder lernen auch ein bisschen über die Natur in der Schule, aber nicht so das Praktische. Das fehlt einfach, und wirklich mal ein Regenwurm anzufassen, mit den bloßen Händen in der Erde zu wühlen und zu gucken, was es dafür Lebewesen gibt in der Erde und so.

(The [children] don’t have the time anymore to learn something about butterflies or experience things about foxes, or anything like that. That’s missing very much. Okay, the children also learn a bit about nature at school, but not such practical things. That’s just missing, actually touching an earthworm, digging in the soil with their bare hands and seeing what kind of creatures there are in the soil and so on.)

Birgit’s critical view that the “practical things” are missing in today’s environmental education implies that she considers hands-on contact to be essential in learning about nature. It impressed me how strongly her examples of the physical contact with nature resonates with her fellow volunteers. The fundamental role of “hand” in initiating contact with nature is highlighted once again, emphasising that an inner connection with nature starts with actions such as grasping, holding, touching, and digging.

While expressing the perspective that hands-on contact with animals, plants and non-living forms such as soil is fundamental for developing meaningful connections with nature, participants described their lived experiences of “grasping” nature. They picked up everyday plants and animals in the surroundings and interact with them with curiosity, care and joy. For example, Michael and his students collected frog eggs and built mini paludariums to observe the life cycle:

Michael: Formerly I was a teacher, a normal teacher in primary school. But I always was interested in nature activity, so I went with my little students, I went outside always when I was a normal teacher already. We had, we collected frog eggs to see the evolution in class, and afterwards we put them back in the pond. So the children could see the evolution of life because with frogs you can see a little bit of evolution. Life came from water and it goes on the land. A bit compacted history of evolution.

Yimin: I never thought frogs in that way, but now...

Michael: Yes, but it’s really stunning to see that. You go to the pond with the kids and they collect the eggs and you take them in a little aquarium and then you must make also a land place where the little frogs can go. But you have to put them very quick outside again because they don’t get the food they need when they are in an aquarium. You can feed the little frogs afterwards. We had also, I had to make contact with, I always was impressed how much is necessary for children to be in contact with animals.

What strikes me most in Michael’s experience is how profound knowledge about nature can be visualised through small, entertaining interactions with familiar animals. The macroscopic concept of evolutionary history becomes tangible through creating a paludarium and observing the life cycle of frogs. This fun interaction with frogs serves as an intuitive and embodied approach to learning about the species’ living habits and the history of organisms transitioning from aquatic to terrestrial life. Moreover, hands-on activities transform such knowledge from purely cerebral understanding into an experience that evokes a sense of wonder and emotional connection with nature. As Michael puts it, “It’s stunning to see that”.

Birgit also recalled her interactions with frogs and their amphibian relatives, but within a different context. Each year from mid-February to mid-April, the mild nighttime temperatures along with the humid climate in Luxembourg create ideal conditions for toads, frogs and other amphibians to migrate from their winter terrestrial habitats to spawning waters. Yet their migratory paths are cut off by motorways and highways, with speeding vehicles further increasing the danger of these animals being killed during the crossing. As such, LetzEarth has launched the annual “rescuing toad in migration” action in cooperation with the Luxembourg Nature and Forestry Administration (ANF)¹⁰ Administration de la nature et des forêts. to help the amphibians reach their spawning waters safely. During the migration period, ANF staff set up fences at the borders of the concerned terrestrial habitats to prevent the animals from crossing the motorways by themselves. The LetzEarth volunteers then collect the migrating amphibians in buckets and take them across the motorways. The toad rescuing action is one of the first activities that Birgit participated in when she started volunteering at LetzEarth. This engagement has left a deep impression on her:

Und damals haben sie Kröten und Frösche über die Straßen gesetzt, damit sie nicht überfahren werden. Und das war in der Zeit, wo ich dazu kam. Da kann ich mich noch so gut daran erinnern, ja. Wie geht das? Werden die wirklich überfahren und so? Ja, die werden wirklich überfahren. Auch wenn man sie in die Mitte nimmt von den Rädern und sterben sie durch den Luftdruck und so weiter. Das sind alles Sachen, die man dann gelernt hat und später dann auch weiter gemacht. Als richtig Erwachsener, dann habe ich dann selbst zwischen Bettendorf und Monsdorf Kröten und Frösche und Molche über die Straße gesezt. Und ja, so hat das sich aufgebaut und immer wieder was in der Natur getan.

(And back then they took toads and frogs across the road so they wouldn’t get run over. And that was at the time when I joined. I can still remember it so well, yeah. How does that work? Do they really get run over or things like that? Yes, they really do get run over. Even if they are in the middle of the wheels they die from the air pressure and so on. These are all things that you learnt and then continued to do later. As a real adult, I then help toads and frogs and newts across the road between Bettendorf and Monsdorf by myself. And yes, that’s how it built up, always do things in nature.)

In this excerpt, Birgit did not describe the practical interactions she had with toads in this action. Nevertheless, her recollection of this practical experience reveals its profound influence on her awareness of the often-overlooked, nuanced ways in which everyday human activities impact nature. Through the hands-on rescuing actions, Birgit realised that the motorways and vehicles that people take for granted seriously pose mortal danger to these small animals. She learnt about the subtle vulnerability of nature caused by human activities, a phenomenon that is highly unlikely to be found in any biology textbook. Even if a frog wheels do not crush a frog, the pressure differential caused by the car passing over it can still kill it. This awareness, knowledge, and the willingness to act for nature are “built up” in such practical engagement with nature.

Eric’s experiences also strongly support his intriguing perspective of “grasping” nature:

Und da es kein Fernseher gab, das heißt, die Freizeit, die wir hatten, die verbrachten wir wo? Draußen. In der Natur. Und da haben wir, ich habe mit meinen Brüdern, wir hatten da nicht weit entfernt von unserem Haus, da gab es einen Bach, damals war der Bach noch sauber. Wir haben da Fische gefangen, kleine. Die haben wir dann in Aquarien gemacht und wir haben dann gesehen, wir haben Froschleicht genommen. Und wir haben dann gesehen, wie aus den Eiern da auf einmal kleine Fröscht kommen, Kaulquappe und so. Das war so, so wichtig, dass wir das konkret erlebt haben. Der Nachbar, der war auch ein Bauer bei uns. Und jetzt hat, auf einmal, hat seine Katze, die hatte drei Junge bekommen. Und er hat uns jedem, von meinen zwei Brüdern damals, der Jüngste war noch nicht auf der Welt, wir bekamen dann einen Katz. Ah! Das war! Das war natürlich SO wichtig, dass wir uns da auch darum kümmern mussten, wir haben dann festgestellt, ja wie, was fressen die, wie verhalten sie sich, und so weiter und so weiter. Und da es kein Fernsehen gab, was machten wir? Sonntags mit unseren Eltern haben wir jeden Sonntag wenn frei war, gehen wir spazieren in die NATUR. Und da haben wir, alle, wir haben Pilze gesammelt. Wir haben Früchte gesammelt. Wir haben Blumen gesammelt, einen Blumenstrauß für meine Mutter. Das war so wichtig. Ich habe die Bäume kennengelernt, die Blätter der Bäume, die Früchte der Bäume. Und das war die BASIS, sagen wir mal, für meinen ganzen Naturschutzgedanke. Ohne diese Basis, glaube ich, hat man es sehr, sehr schwer.

(And since there was no television, so to say, the free time we had, where did we spend it? Outside. In nature. And there, I, with my brothers, we had a stream not far from our house, back then the stream was still clean. We caught fish there, small ones. We built aquariums and we saw, we took frog spawn. And we saw how from the eggs, little frogs emerged, tadpoles and so on. It was so so important that we experienced this concretely. The neighbour, he was also a farmer near us. And then once, his cat had three kittens. And he gave each of us, my two brothers at the time, the youngest wasn’t born yet, we each got a cat. Ah! That was! That was, of course, SO important, that we had to take care of them, we then found out, yeah, like what do they eat, how do they behave, and so on and so forth. And since there was no television, what did we do? On Sundays with our parents, every Sunday when we were free, we went for a walk in NATURE. And there, all, we collected mushrooms. We collected fruits. We collected flowers, a bouquet for my mother. It was so important. I got to know the trees, the leaves of the trees, the fruits of the trees. And that was the BASIS, let’s say, for my whole idea of nature conservation. Without this basis, I believe, it is very, very difficult.)

This enthusiastic recollection resonates powerfully with his viewpoint that grasping nature with hands lays the foundation of grasping nature in mind. In Eric’s view, nature is so concrete, inviting and within reach: it is the stream near his childhood home; it is the fish and frogs that he and his brothers caught and observed; it is the kitten that he took care of; it is the mushrooms, fruits, leaves and flowers that he picked with his family. As demonstrated by his repeated statement “that/it was so important” and explicit emphasis on these practical experiences as the essential basis for his conservation mindset, Eric is convinced that hands-on interactions with nature are fundamental for fostering cognitive connection with nature.

Immediately after sharing with me the fulfilling memories of “concretely experiencing nature” with his family, Eric continued with a fond recollection of his primary school teacher, who had guided children in hands-on explorations of the natural world:

Jetzt kam dann noch dazu, wir hatten dann einen Lehrer, der war auch ganz interessiert an Naturkunde. Und bei dem haben wir unwahrscheinlich gelernt. Ein Beispiel. Wir gingen in den Wald im Herbst und sammelten dann wilde Kirschbäume. Und jeder der Schüler und Schülerinnen, nein das waren nur Schüler, damals waren wir noch getrennt, manche. Jeder von den Kindern, Jungen, da bekam einen wilden Kirschbaum, den wir selbst aus dem Wald genommen haben. Der wurde in die Schule mitgenommen und der Lehrer, der bekam von der Gemeinde, ein Stück Garten zur Verfügung, da pflanzen wir diesen Kirschbaum da ein und er konnte pfropfen. Du weißt was das ist? Pfropfen, das heißt, da werden Sprosse des echten Kirschtbaums auf den Alten gepfropft. Also, das ist eine ganze Wissenschaft für sich.

(And what’s more, we had a teacher who was also very interested in natural history. And we learnt an incredible lot from him. One example. We went to the forest in autumn and collected wild cherry trees. And every boy and girl, no, we were only boys, at that time we were still separated, some. Every child, boy, got a wild cherry tree that we took from the forest ourselves. We brought it to school and the teacher, he got a garden from the commune, so we planted the cherry trees there and he grafted them. Do you know what that is? Grafting, that is, to graft the new branches of the cherry onto the old one. It’s a whole science itself.)

After explaining to me the term pfropfen (to graft), Eric continued to share the nature activities that the teacher organised:

Und jetzt hat dann das, ah, für mich sehr wichtig, zum Schluss des Schuljahres bekam jeder seinen Kirschbaum mit nach Hause. Super! Und wir konnten dann diesen Kirschbaum in unseren Garten einpflanzen. Das war eine unheimliche Erinnerung. Und der Lehrer, der hatte auch Bienen. Da haben wir mit ihm Honig zusammen gemacht. Er hatte einen großen Garten, da haben wir dann Erdbeeren gepflanzt und so. Das war auch sehr wichtig, dass man da so ein Lehrer hat, der vermittelt einen Aspekt aus der Natur. Und wenn man das nicht hat, ist das sehr, sehr schwierig.

(And then, ah, very important for me, at the end of the school year everyone got their own cherry tree to take home. Super! And we could plant the cherry tree in our garden. That was an incredible memory. And the teacher also had bees. We collected honey together with him. He had a big garden and we planted strawberries there and so on. It was also very important to have a teacher like that who conveys an aspect of nature. And if you don’t have that, it’s very, very difficult.)

Eric has learnt “an incredible lot” from this teacher, who “conveyed an aspect of nature” through the hands-on activities such as picking wild cherry trees, grafting and planting them, collecting honey and growing strawberries. In these activities, nature was experienced as a tangible partner – a partner into which labour is invested and which, in return, offers fruit, honey and joy. Rather than viewing the harvesting practices through an exploitative lens, Eric perceives such practical engagement as joyful learning experiences that have formed the foundation of his conservation ideas, which would have been “very, very difficult” to develop without such experiences.

Overall, hands-on contact with animals, plants, and their living environment is highly valued as a fundamental way of forming a close, internal connection with the natural world. As Eric insightfully put it: grasping nature in mind comes from grasping nature in hand. Such physical contact can be simple actions such as touching a worm, holding a bird, hugging a tree, and picking up a wildflower, or it can be more skilful practices, such as building paludariums, grafting fruit trees, and rescuing migrating amphibians. Through these on-ground, practical interactions with nature, people can develop nuanced knowledge about nature, positive emotions towards it and awareness of the relationship between humans and nature.

While participants perceive “grasping nature with hand” as an essential way to initiate and develop experiential, cognitive and emotional connection with nature, they also acknowledge other pathways to experience nature physically. In the next section, I invite readers to join my participants in experiencing nature as a serious leisure.

Interacting with Nature as Serious Leisure

When I started participating in Aktioun fir d’Ëmwelt in October 2022, weekends became almost the last thing I was looking forward to. I would prefer to spend my after-work time in a more relaxing way than getting up before sunrise and exposing myself to the damp chill of late autumn mornings “in the middle of nowhere in Luxembourg’s nature” (as I often joked with colleagues). Yet, my research participants, such as the volunteer bird ringers at the local section, Reed Marsh, seem to hold a different view.

The local section Reed Marsh is located in a wetland conservation area on the eastern edge of the Canton of Luxembourg. Its main activity is bird ringing, which is mainly done by volunteer ringers led by the founder of the section, Tom. Bird ringing consists of the following techniques: mist-netting, extracting, processing, measuring and releasing. For mist-netting, fine nylon nets are set up along the wetland habitat. The nets are too thin to be visible to birds, so they fly into them (see Figure 2 “Bird netting among the reeds”). To ensure the safety of birds, volunteers do not open the nets in inclement weather such as heavy rainfall. After setting up the nets, the volunteers regularly check the nets every 30 to 40 minutes to ensure all captured birds are extracted in a timely manner. When removing the birds from the nets, the volunteers handle the birds with a gentle but firm grip and carefully untangle the nets from the birds’ wings and legs. The birds are then put into breathable cloth bags and taken back to the ringing station for processing. With ringing pliers, the ringers place a uniquely numbered aluminium ring on the bird’s leg. Then, they determine its species and sex, measure its weight and the length of the wing and leg, and record the data in the database. The birds are released once the ringing is completed and the data are documented.

On February 18^th, 2023, I visited the Reed Marsh team for the first time. Tom asked me to meet him at 8:30 am. Upon arrival, I realised that I was already the last person arriving at the wetland. Tom, Ken and John had already started their ringing session.

Love, dedication and persistence are the key words that describe my first impression of these bird ringers. A few months after my visit, Tom introduced Laura to me, who was not present during my visit but was interested in participating in my research interview. Having obtained her Bachelor’s degree in biology and Master diploma in evolutionary anthropology, Laura works at the ecological service of commune W in Luxembourg. Laura learnt about Reed Marsh through her internship supervisor at a nature conservation syndicate in Luxembourg. She joined the local section at the beginning of the large-scale lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic:

Wie ich es kennengelernt habe, Reed Marsh, also ich habe als Student, habe ich ein Praktikum gemacht bei [Name des Syndikats]. Und da war mein Betreuer, er hat von der Reed Marsh geredet und er hat gesagt, ich kann mal vorbeikommen. Und deswegen, also ich habe es durch ihn dann kennengelernt, Reed Marsh. Und da bin ich ein paar Mal da hin und es war auch, also es war genau zu Beginn von Corona. Und man konnte sehr, sehr wenig andere Sachen machen. Aber Reed Marsh, das war, geradewegs, auch Corona mit Maske und so, aber trotzdem man konnte geradewegs dahingehen. Und deswegen, weil es mir so gut gefallen hat, also bin ich am Anfang so zwei Mal die Woche dahin, ich hab irgend nichts Besseres zu tun. Und irgendwann habe ich gemerkt, auch dass nach Corona-Zeit es mir immer noch gefallen hat. Und so bin ich da hängen geblieben. […] Das war wirklich nur Zufall. Ja, weil eigentlich, also wirklich, sagen wir mal so, er hat das dann vorgeschlagen, aber so wirklich gedacht so, auch das schaue ich mir jetzt an, das war wirklich, ach verdammt, ist jetzt schon ein Monat hier zu Hause, ich muss was machen.

(How I got to know it, Reed Marsh, well when I was a student, I did an internship at [syndicate name]. And there was my supervisor, he talked about Reed Marsh and said I could come by. And that’s why I got to know Reed Marsh through him. And I went there a few times and it was right at the beginning of Corona. And you could do very, very few other things. But Reed Marsh, during Corona too, with a mask you could still go straight there. And that’s why, because I liked it so much, I went there twice a week in the beginning, I have nothing better to do anyway. And at some points I realised that even after Corona I still like it. And so I’m sticking around. […] It was really just a coincidence. Yes, because actually, in fact, let’s say, he suggested it back then, but I only really considered it like, let’s now really have a look, it was really, damn, it’s been a month at home, I must do something.)

At the beginning of March 2020, the Luxembourg government adopted a series of control measures amid a sharp increase in COVID-19 cases, including suspension of education activities, promotion of home office, prohibition of large events and limitation of private gatherings. The interruption of occupational routine and restrictions on recreational activities resulted in many people suddenly having an abundance of unoccupied time. In this context, Laura turned to nature to fill this undesired idleness, which is articulated as a choice with no other alternatives and an unintentional “coincidence” that would unlikely to have happened without the excessive free time. However, Laura stayed in the team after the pandemic, even though she no longer needed to pass the time, which suggests that Laura perceived this engagement beyond simply a time killer.

Research found that one common motivation for people to visit nature during the COVID-19 pandemic is to “relax and unwind” (Peterson et al., 2024). Nevertheless, Laura’s account of her experiences, along with my fieldwork at Reed Marsh and exchanges with her fellow volunteers, reveals an alternative narrative of experiencing nature during leisure time that does not necessarily align with a conventional notion of “relaxation”. As discussed before, bird ringing requires technical skills, dedicated time and personal effort. Yet, such demands do not undermine Laura’s involvement. She does not see getting up early on weekends as an off-putting; quite contrary, it is among the reasons why she enjoys working there:

Yimin: […] Aber trotzdem bist du schon im Team geblieben, trotzdem da keine Pflicht dafür haben. Und darf ich fragen, wieso ist das, dass du, ja, well, there is no obligation, aber trotzdem bist du geblieben?

Laura: Weil... it is more... also es gibt mehrere Gründe. Erstens, das ist, man macht es morgens früh. Und ich habe so den Eindruck, wenn ich am Wochenende nichts morgens plane, dann vertrödele ich den Morgen. Gehe ich dahin, dann habe ich den Eindruck, ich habe schon etwas gemacht. Es fühlt sich ja, für mich fühlt es sich nicht nach Arbeit an. Es ist einfach so, ich gehe dahin, ich bin in der Natur. Das ist auch so was, gerade jetzt auch, wo ich arbeite, ich bin viel im Büro eigentlich und da bin ich dann draußen und dann habe ich so sozusagen und schon mein Pensum an Natur habe ich dann bekommen. […] Ich würde nicht einfach so morgens und fünf Uhr grundlos aufstehen, niemals. Aber wenn ich ein Ziel habe, dann geht es. Und dann ist das kein Problem. Also stört mich nicht. Also jetzt wo ich arbeite, merke ich, ich kann nicht mehr jedes Wochenende dahin gehen. Das schaffe ich nicht. Und ich kann auch nicht zwei Tage hintereinander, weil ich muss irgendwann halt schlafen. Aber ja, trotzdem, irgendwie stört es mich nicht so. Und irgendwie ist es auch schön, dann ja, irgendwie stört es mich tatsächlich nicht, dass das so früh ist.

(Yimin: […] But still, you stayed in the team even though there’s no obligation to do so. And may I ask, why is that? Well, there is no obligation, but still, you stayed?

Laura: Because... it is more... there are several reasons. First, it’s something you do early in the morning. And I have the impression that if I don’t plan anything in the morning on weekends, I waste the morning. If I go there, I feel I’ve accomplished something. For me, it doesn’t feel like work. It’s just that I go there, I’m in nature. That’s also something, especially now, while I’m working, I spend a lot of time in the office actually, and there I’m outside, and so to speak, I’ve already fulfilled my quota of nature. […] I wouldn’t just get up at five in the morning for no reason, never. But if I have a aim, I can do it. And then that’s not a problem. So it doesn’t bother me. So now that I’m working, I realise I can’t go there every weekend. I can’t manage that. And I can’t go two days in a row either, because I have to sleep well at some point. But still, somehow it doesn’t bother me that much. And somehow it’s also nice, then yes, somehow it actually doesn’t bother me that it’s so early.)

Laura does not perceive the fact that bird ringing requires her to be active in wetlands early in the morning on weekends as an unpleasant challenge or a discouragement, but rather as a joyful impetus that enriches her life with a sense of accomplishment. Her comparison between her engagement with birds and work suggests that this activity is something that she genuinely enjoys rather than an enforced obligation, despite the significant time and energy it demands.

In addition to the willingness to invest time and effort, Laura demonstrates a strong sense of passion and identity alignment with this engagement. She notes that she often speaks excitedly and frequently to her family about the wetland reserve, and as a result, her grandparents and aunt visited Reed Marsh to watch the swallow migration:

Also weil ich es mag und so viel immer über Reed Marsh rede, weil, immer wenn wir irgendwie, Sachen die man mag, auf die, auf die kommt man ja automatisch immer auf das zu sprechen, über die erzählt man dann mit Leidenschaft. Und weil ich dann oft über die Reed Marsh rede, weil ich es sehr mag, dann meine Großeltern und meine Tante, die waren dann auch schon mal so kommen, als die Schwalben im Juli – das ist so schön, das musst du dir anschauen, das ist so schön, weil die kommen dann und dann fliegen die so umher, es war immer mehr um Tausende und dann gehen sie in den Schilf schlafen. Das ist ein richtiges Spektakel. Und dann sind sie gekommen, um das zu schauen.

(So, because I like it and I always talk about Reed Marsh so much, because whenever, somehow, when it comes to the things you like, you automatically talk about them, you talk about them with passion. And because I often talk about Reed Marsh, because I really like it, then my grandparents and my aunt, they came when the swallows in July – it’s so beautiful, you must see it, it’s so beautiful, because they come and then they fly around like this, there were always thousands of them and then they go to sleep in the reeds. It’s a real spectacle. And then they come to watch it.)

Laura’s enthusiasm for the wetland reserve and the birds stands out in this excerpt. Her strong identification with the engagement is evident in her self-report of “speaking proudly, excitedly, and frequently about [it] to other people”, and her tendency to “present [herself] in terms of [this engagement] when conversing with new acquaintances” – as she did with me (Stebbins, 1982, p.257). While she began by narrating how her grandparents and aunt were influenced by her passion to come to watch the bird migration, she shifted the focus mid-sentence from narration to a spontaneous and warm invitation to me. It is not an invitation to merely “be in nature” or “do something in nature”, but to immerse oneself in nature by mindfully admiring birds and their migration as a “beautiful spectacle”. The migrating swallows are not merely components of the wetland scenery, but rather the focus of the experience that evokes appreciation and passion.

Laura also observes the shared enthusiasm within the Reed Marsh team among her fellow volunteers:

Laura: Dann, was ich auch so mag, weil ich Anthropologie studiert habe, die anderen zu beobachten, ich finde es lustig zuzuschauen, gerade die, die so voll Vogel fokussiert sind, wie die da aufblühen oder, ich finde es lustig, ich glaube, like, denke nicht, dass ihnen das auffällt. Aber manchmal kommt so ein Rotmilan und dann stehen alle auf, dann kannst du vergessen. Dann sind sie alle da fokussiert, dann ist alles andere unwichtig, oder so wie deren Augen glühen, ich mag das, so zuzusehen.

Yimin: Ja, die Begeisterung in den Augen.

Laura: Ja, dass du es so siehst. Und das... das ist einfach irgendwie die Natürlichkeit, dass du nicht deine Freude unterdrücken musst, weil du dann sozusagen als so Naturfreak oder so dergestalt bist, weil wir sind dann unter uns. Und ja, du kannst sozusagen deinen Gefühlen zu den Vögeln dann auf einen freien Lauf lassen.

(Laura: Then, what I also like, because I studied anthropology, is observing other people. I find it interesting to see, especially the ones that are so fully bird-focussed, how they glow in high spirits or, I find it funny, I think, like, I don’t think they noticed that. But sometimes a red kite comes and then everyone stands up, then you can forget. Then they’re all focused, then everything else is not important, or the way their eyes glow, I like seeing that.

Yimin: Yes, the enthusiasm in their eyes.

Laura: Yes, that you see it like that. And that... that’s just kind of the naturalness, that you don’t have to suppress your joy, because then otherwise you’re like a nature freak or something, because then we’re among ourselves. And yes, you can let your feelings for the birds run free, so to speak.)

Her observation of the nuanced emotional expressions of her fellow volunteers reflects not only her deep understanding of them, but also her own shared sense of wonder towards the birds. Laura’s comments on her observation convey a sense of community and identity. The sentence “we’re among ourselves” signals her identity alignment with the bird ringers. While within the community, the excitement about birds is regarded as “naturalness”, namely something normal and common, such enthusiasm might be considered negatively as exaggerated or even pretentious as a “nature freak”. As such, the wetland reserve represents a special safe space to share their passion for birds unreservedly.

Laura’s engagement with birds at Reed Marsh began as a way to pass time during the COVID-19 lockdown, and evolved into a form of passionate leisure that embodies personal effort, dedication, fulfilment and identity alignment. These features convey a sense of seriousness, that Laura takes her engagement with birds seriously as something meaningful and enduring, rather than an evanescent pleasurable pastime. This “seriousness” does not undermine her enjoyment of the experiences, as it entails “earnestness, sincerity, importance, and carefulness, rather than gravity, solemnity, joylessness, distress, and anxiety” (Stebbins, 1982, p.258). As such, I came to understand that nature can be experienced and valued as serious leisure. Through the lens of serious leisure, Laura’s gradually developing connection with birds and the wetland crystallises through both experiential and emotional dimensions.

This combination of seriousness and joyfulness is also evident in other participants’ discourses on their engagement with nature. Eric shared his extensive experiences of carrying out various on-ground conservation projects in his early years. These projects demanded substantial physical, mental and time investment, and Eric undertook them on a full voluntary basis outside of work. He spent five years conducting fieldwork in Luxembourg’s natural landscapes and an additional five years co-authoring an atlas of breeding birds in Luxembourg, based on this fieldwork, which was published by the predecessor of LetzEarth. Disappointed by the lack of awareness and institutional action to prevent the overexploitation of natural habitats, Eric, alongside Tom, mobilised grassroots donations for the purchase of land in Northern Luxembourg to establish nature reserves. This initiative eventually evolved into the establishment of LetzEarth’s conservation foundation, GreenLove. He also engaged in building one of the biggest wildlife rescue stations in Luxembourg. While none of these projects sound like light tasks, Eric perceives these experiences with nature as “incredibly fun” and remarked that he was still trying to continue some activities in nature as much as possible despite age-related mobility limitations:

Aber das macht unheimlich Spaß. Ich bin jetzt 81, leider muss ich jetzt feststellen, also mit der Dynamik, die ich mal früher hatte, ist es nicht mehr so. Aber das ist das Leben, das ist normal. Man wird älter und ich mache jetzt nur noch das, was ich schaffe. Ich habe Probleme mit meinem Knie und so. Ich mache jetzt nur noch das, was mir Spaß macht. Ich helfe Guihelm und Tom beim Ringen. […] Aber daher will ich dann noch so gut ich kann, macht mir Spaß. Ich bin nach wie vor ein begeisterter Ornithologe. Also die Vogelwelt interessiert mich natürlich nach wie vor am meisten. Aber ich bin genauso interessiert an Pflanzen, an alles was kreucht und fleucht, alles was rein der Natur vorkommt interessiert mich.

(But it’s incredibly fun. I’m 81 now, unfortunately, I must admit that I no longer have the dynamism I used to have. But that’s life, it’s normal. People get older and now I only do what I can manage. I have problems with my knees and so on. I only do what I enjoy now. I help Guilhem and Tom with ringing. […] But that’s why I still want to do as much as I can, I enjoy it. I’ve always been an enthusiastic ornithologist. Well of course I’m still most interested in the world of birds, as always. But I’m just as interested in plants, in everything that creeps and flies, everything that occurs in nature interests me.)

Eric’s genuine and enduring love for actively engaging with nature is evident in these excerpts, as showcased in his continuing involvement in bird ringing. Although his stamina declines due to ageing, his high spirit and perseverance remain. His remarks indicate the psychological continuity for this lifelong endeavour with nature, which is another essential quality of serious leisure (Stebbins, 1982). The enjoyment and dedication have forged a lasting and close bond between Eric and nature.

Like Eric, Bob was an old-timer of LetzEarth. He worked as a tax inspector in the UK before moving to Luxembourg in his twenties to serve as an EU official responsible for translating and editing. Upon settling down in the town M in south-western Luxembourg in the 1980s, Bob and his ex-wife engaged in local conservation and were among the founders of the local section M. In 2020, he was awarded the prize “GreenLove” by LetzEarth for his lifelong outstanding dedication. According to Bob, one of the reasons he was awarded the prize was his leadership in creating a standing water area by excavation of ponds to restore biotope diversity around town M, as a remedial measure for the environmental impacts of infrastructure development:

We got the prize GreenLove for digging lots and lots of ponds because M has very heavy soil. If you dig a hole in M and just leave it, it fills with water and you’ve got a pond. So, we did, we dug ponds and we did planted hedges and we cut hedges and we planted trees, and we did all kinds of things and we were amazingly active. But it’s exhausting. [laughing] After a time you start thinking “I can’t keep up this pace.” So gradually slowed down a bit, but we, we were really active. […] What’s really fun, what’s really “dirty” though, is digging a pond by hand. I mean we, the first one we did in M, we took an entire summer holiday to do it, the school holidays. And we have people there every single day, just with spades and shovels and wheelbarrows. And it requires incredible organization because if you have people just digging a hole, then they reach a point where you think, “How do I get the earth out of this hole? I haven’t left a barrow run.” [Yimin laughing] So you have to dig a barrow run. [laugh] I mean, you really get the sense though, at the end of that work, you’ve done something incredibly constructive. Because, like we said, in M, you just leave nature to establish itself. Just dig the hole and nature will come. The vegetation will come, and the rainwater will come, and it’s got nowhere else to go so it just fills the pond. And after a time you’ve got the most amazing habitat there and it’s very very inspiring.

Digging ponds in an area with “very heavy soil” is obviously time-consuming and laborious work that was “exhausting” and “took an entire summer holiday,” indicating the commitment and effort that Bob put into his engagement with nature. Meanwhile, his passionate involvement and sense of achievement stand out through several emotional expressions with positive connotations of enjoyment such as “what’s really fun”, “incredibly constructive”, “most amazing habitat” and “very very inspiring”. The example of someone who might forget to leave a barrow run and therefore would end up trapping himself in the hole implies that the work required skills and careful planning – in his words, “incredible organisation” – and humorously frames the activity as a fun experience rather than a tedious or arduous work. Therefore, it can be concluded that Bob also experienced nature as a form of serious leisure. The challenging but fun work has paid off for both Bob and nature. Bob had the opportunity to personally experience nature’s self-reconstruction and reaction to human interventions, which deepened his inner connection with nature. The pond area has evolved into one of Luxembourg’s nature reserves, serving as a successful example of renaturalisation and compensation for infrastructure development, thereby projecting the dynamics and balance that people seek in their relationship with nature.

Maria’s case provides another example of how engaging with nature as serious leisure promotes a deeper, internal connection with nature. Maria joined the section Nord about ten years ago. Initially, she felt hesitant and timid about participating in the section’s activities, as she was concerned about her lack of specific knowledge about flora and fauna. Eventually, Maria “gathered her courage”¹¹ habe meine Mut gefassen to try the activities such as butterfly observation hikes, ringing water birds and cleaning nest boxes in the woods, and found them beginner-friendly and interesting. She also began attending continuing education courses offered by LetzEarth on topics such as butterflies and birds. She recounted how she has developed a passion for birdwatching and contributed to the red-backed shrikes inventory created by LetzEarth:

Ich bin auch jetzt süchtig nach, ich habe da ein Fernglas gekauft, schon immer, und natürlich muss man das haben, wenn man Vögel, und dann bin ich ein paar Mal die Woche geh ich da, ob schon, da viel mal, ja nicht jeden Tag als super Neues, aber ich gucke mir dann gerne an Besonderes, wenn die jetzt wieder zurückgekommen sind, die Maise, und dann gehen die Vögel wieder gucken, sind die da und so? Die sind, die zurück. Und ich mache jetzt auch beispielsweise bei einer Bestandsaufnahme von dem Neuntöter. Das ist ein kleiner Vogel, der, also, nur im Sommer bei uns ist. Und das kommt auch von der [Ort], von der LetzEarth. Die machen jedes Jahr Bestandsaufnahmen von Vögel und so. [...] Und der Neuntöter, den ich jetzt gemacht habe, den, der sitzt gerne auf Dornen, Hecken und der spießt seine Käfer da drauf, und so. Ein sehr schöner Vogel. Die gute Nachricht ja, sie sind sehr häufig dieses Jahr, an der Fenstergestelle, überhaupt, ich habe auch mit Daniel schon gesprochen.

(I am also now addicted to, I bought a pair of binoculars, always, and of course, you must have them if you [watch] birds. So, a couple of times a week, I go there, even though, well, often it’s not like you have something super new every day, but I like to see something special, like when the tits return, I go watch the birds again, are they there and so not? They’ve returned. And now I’m also participating, for example, in making an inventory of the red-backed shrike. That’s a small bird that’s only with us during summer. And it [the inventory] is also from [place], from LetzEarth. They do bird inventories every year. […] And the red-backed shrike, in which I’ve been engaging now, it likes to sit on thorns, hedges, and it impales its insects on them, and so on. A very beautiful bird. The good news is that they are very common this year, on the window frames, whatever, I’ve also already discussed it with Daniel.)

Maria’s enthusiasm for birdwatching becomes evident in her description of feeling “addicted to it”, a phrase that also suggests sustained participation and deep emotional attachment. She invested in equipment such as binoculars and spent time on repeated observations, which indicates her persistent effort. Furthermore, specific knowledge and skills are developed in this pursuit. Using everyday language, Maria concisely describes red-backed shrikes’ physical appearance (small), behaviours (only in Luxembourg during summer, sit on thorns and hedges and impale the prey on them) and distribution changes (appear more common this year), demonstrating her knowledge gained from her firsthand observation of the bird and relevant training. The observation skills and species knowledge enabled her to contribute to the scientific inventory project. This marks a significant progress in Maria’s engagement with nature and personal growth, given that she once hesitated to join the local section due to a lack of confidence in her knowledge of nature. As such, Maria has also experienced nature in the sense of serious leisure, which has primarily nurtured her cognitive connection with it.

As demonstrated in the above analysis, several common qualities have emerged in participants’ accounts of their experiences engaging with nature: passion, skills and knowledge, identification with the pursuit, significant personal effort, persistence, psychological continuity, personal growth and enrichment. These qualities form the discourse of experiencing nature as serious leisure. Thirty years after first introducing the concept of serious leisure, Stebbins, together with Davidson, examined the concept in relation to nature challenge activity (NCA) in their 2011 book Serious Leisure and Nature. While the authors highlight nature as a dominant element of serious leisure pursuits, they still mainly conceive nature as a “setting” and an “environment” to practice the leisure activities, as indicated in their definition of NCA:

A nature challenge activity (NCA) is a leisure pursuit whose core activity or activities centre on meeting a natural test posed by one or more of the six elements [air, water, land, animals, plants, ice and snow]. A main reason for engaging in a particular NCA is to experience participation in its core activities pursued in a natural setting. (p.2)

As such, NCA as serious leisure substantially focuses on the challenges that participants seek in nature. From this angle, the authors provide detailed descriptions of how relevant outdoor activities are rendered “challenging” by the natural environment, essentially treating nature as the backdrop but not the content of the serious leisure. As a result, the authors did not delve into the link between serious leisure and conceptions of nature (Bissix, 2014). In my participants’ discourses, nature is meaningfully experienced as serious leisure. For them, it is the birds, the ponds that create new biotopes, and “everything that creeps and flies” that have generated curiosity, enthusiasm and the sense of wonder and enrichment. While a passionate birdwatcher like Maira may not hold a bird in her hand as bird ringers like Laura and Christophe do, she nonetheless establishes a personal connection with birds and experiences this connection through sensory engagement. By engaging with nature as serious leisure, people deepen their emotional and cognitive connections with nature, which are reflected in their enjoyment of nature and their strong willingness to learn about and act for nature.

Reaping Meaningful Connections with Nature through Embodied Experiences

In grasping nature with hands and interacting with nature as serious leisure, participants do not conceive nature as an empty substrate or an object that is subjected to exploitation and power domination. Instead, nature is a valued entity – one from which to learn and draw inspiration, deserving of mindful attention, passionate investment and dedicated effort to establish a meaningful connection with, and with which a once-strained relationship needs to be repaired through actions. This constitutes a discourse that embodies experiences with nature foster meaningful human-nature connections. Here I use the preposition of “with” instead of “in” to describe the relevant experiences, because my participants’ discourse does not push animals, plants and biotopes into the background as merely a substrate to perform human activities; rather, nature stands in the centre of the physical and sensory interactions. This perspective suggests that physical engagement with nature driven by curiosity, reverence and self-enrichment sparks people’s positive experiential, emotional and cognitive connections with nature. It provides a meaningful contrast to the capitalist and extractivist view of human-nature interactions, which centres on commodification, the acquisition and appropriation of natural resources, and the perpetuation of exploitative relations between humans and nature, as well as among people.

Dominant scholarly discourses on human activities in nature tend to take a critical stance. The concept of Anthropocene has become an intellectual zeitgeist to address the anxiety over the harmful consequences of “the end of nature” – the idea that nature is no longer untouched by human activities (Lorimer, 2015, 2017). The meta-narrative of Anthropocene tends to view the future as dystopian, where human exploitation of natural resources will eventually threaten the continuity of human life (Chernilo, 2017), highlighting anthropogenic pollution, climate change, and biodiversity loss. At a more micro level, researchers also criticised the “tendency to consider the environment as a backdrop or a substrate for humans/children to act upon: to be loved, to care for, to save, to conserve, to steward, to sympathise for, to respect, to experience and to appreciate” (Weldemariam et al., 2017, p.346). Nevertheless, my data and findings suggest an alternative perspective to ponder on the role of human agency in the human- nature connection. Active direct interactions with animals, plants and natural landscapes form embodied experiences with nature, which nurture people’s connection with nature at cognitive, emotional and philosophical levels.

Sometimes, mindful embodied experiences can be achieved without exercising actions that intervene in nature but simply through bodily sensations. Through feeling and sensing nature, people can refocus on nature itself as an entity with subtle vigour transcending the noise of human society, as Michael’s experience with children shows:

Michael: It was my mother who, die hat uns so Augenbinde genäht. Augenbinde, bin ich mit den Kindern, so haben wir barfuß dann, sind wir durch die Wald gegangen, mit den Augenbinden haben sie, einander so mit der Hand genommen, dann den durch den Wald zu gangen, um den Wald zu fühlen mit den Füßen. With our feet. Meine Mutter hat uns die Augenbinden genäht, weil wir hatten kein Geld für meine Projekte, also ich hatte kein Geld, gar nichts. So habe ich angefangen, mit so Augenbinden, die meine Mutter noch genäht hat. [laughing softly]

Yimin: Ja, dann without seeing anything, you feel better.

Michael: Yes. You can more concentrate if you don’t see. Afterwards you tell the children, “What did you feel?” Or you go to make one kid next to a tree and you say, “Listen, and listen to what you hear.” But it was a funny experience. One of the kids he said afterwards, “I heard a spinner, a Spinne, a spider going down near me.” How could you hear a spider? He thought, he said that, but I don’t believe it. I think he looked, he saw it, yes, but he didn’t hear it. To hear a spider, it must be a noisy spider, I think. [laughing] That was funny, yeah? And then, we had the planes that passed, they didn’t hear them. They didn’t talk about it. It was, for them, perhaps, natural noise for them. There were three in the time set, for five minutes, we concentrate and we just listen what we hear. So there was the noise of the cars on the road, they didn’t tell about it and also the planes that passed, they didn’t tell about it. They excluded these noises. Because they hear it all the time, I think.

Yimin: Yeah and people take it for granted.

Michael: Yes, yes. So the small noises that are just, normally we don’t hear when a bee is fleeing by or some...So, these small... And there are kids that are here, then the leaves are moving in the wind.

Yimin: Yeah, it’s like when the wind, es zieht, wenn es zieht, aber ja? Die Blätter…

Michael: Ja die Blätter rauschen. Das Blätterrauschen. Auch wenn es nur ein bisschen ist, das hört man, dann muss sich konzentierte, hörte man das. Das sind all die Sachen, die man auch dann im Wald, dann spüren muss.

(Michael: It was my mother who sewed these blindfolds for us. Blindfold, I went with the children, we walked barefoot through the forest, with the blindfolds, we held each other by hand, then walked through the forest to feel the forest with our feet. With our feet. My mum sewed the blindfolds for us because we didn’t have money for my projects, well I had no money, nothing at all. That’s how I started, with blindfold sewed by my mum. [laughing softly] […]

Yimin: Yeah, it’s like when the wind, it blows, when it blows, no? The leaves...

Michael: Yes, the leaves rustle. The rustling of the leaves. Even if it’s just a little bit, you can hear that, then you must concentrate, you hear that. These are all the things that you must feel in the forest.)

Practical engagement with nature through mindfulness is regarded as an important pathway for cultivating inner connections with nature, as these lived encounters raise awareness by making aspects of nature perceptible and tangible. For example, Michael shared how observing birds breeding in garden nestboxes contributes to an understanding of ecology and prompts reflection on everyday treatment of nature:

Michael: Bilder von Vögeln, das ist schön, aber weil du den selbst im Garten sehen kannst, wenn sie dann die, ich habe im Moment zwei Brüten bei mir im Garten, zwei so Nistekästen, wo in dem einen ist eine Blaumeise, in dem anderen ist eine Kohlmeise. Da siehst du die mal reinfliegen und so, dann kriegst du ein anderes Verhaltnis auch zur Natur. Das finde ich wichtig für die Kinder oder auch für die Erwachsene, dass sie diese Erfahrung auch machen können. Dass du die Tiere genau beobachten wirst. Wenn du sie nicht kennst, wirst du auch nicht schützen.

Yimin: Ja, und dann direkt Kontakt mit den Tiere.

Michael: Direkt Kontakt, ja. Die bringt dann Maden und Raupe oder so, bringt sie dann rein zu füttern. Das kannst du dann beobachten. Dann siehst du auch, die nützt die Raupe jetzt hier von der Brennessel. Also muss ich die Brennessel auch mal vielleicht im Garten stehen lassen. Weil diese auch nützlich nicht nur für die Raupen, mäi auch für den Vogel, der die Raupen frisst. Dass das ein ganzer Kreislauf ist, die Natur. Wenn ich alle Unkräuter im Garten rausreiße, dann haben auch diese Insekten und diese Vögel nichts mehr zu fressen. Dass die Leute wieder die ganzen Kreuze aufsehen wissen.

(Michael: Pictures of birds, that’s nice, but because you can see them personally in the garden, when they, I have two broods in my garden at the moment, two nest boxes, where in one is a blue tit and in the other is a great tit. You can see them flying in there and so on, and you get a different relationship with nature. I think it’s important for children and adults to be able to have this experience. That you observe the animals closely. If you don’t know them, you won’t protect them.

Yimin: Yes, and then direct contact with the animals.

Michael: Direct contact, yes. They bring maggots and caterpillars or something, then bring them in to feed. You can then observe that. Then you can also see [the birds] use the caterpillar from nettles. So maybe I also have to let the nettles grow in the garden. Because it’s not only useful for the caterpillars, but also for the bird that eats the caterpillars. It’s a whole cycle, nature. If I pull out all the weeds in the garden, then these insects and birds have nothing left to eat. People are aware of these crosses again.)

In this example, consciously engaging with nature through embodied experience is perceived as a gateway to an ecological view of nature. The notion of ecology unfolds concretely in on-the-ground, everyday scenarios through mindful observation of nature, forming a “different relationship with nature” – a connection that is empirical rather than conceptual, and driven by experiential environmental knowledge and awareness (“If you don’t know them, you won’t protect them”).

Hendee (1969, as cited in Dunlap & Hefferman, 1975) distinguished “appreciative” and “consumptive” activities in nature. Participants in appreciative nature activities, such as hiking, camping and photography, engage with nature without altering it (in a substantial or intentional way), whereas practitioners of consumptive activities like hunting and fishing intentionally take things from nature (Dunlap & Hefferman, 1975). I borrow this conceptual distinction to elaborate on the significance of embodied experiences with nature for people’s connection with it. My data indicate that, in addition to appreciative experiences with nature such as touching, observing and listening, certain consumptive interactions with nature can also enhance people’s environmental awareness in nuanced ways. An example is how Birgit and Maria have experienced the “Krautwësch” tradition. Krautwësch is bouquets made of wildflowers, herbs, cereals and vegetables for the herbal consecration on the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary on 15^th August in Luxembourg. On 14^th August, people collect plants in their neighbourhood and prepare the bouquets. On the day of the Feast, the bouquets are brought to the church and blessed during the Mass (Figure 23). A typical Krautwësch contains the following plants: crops (e.g. wheat, oats, barley, rye), a carrot, an onion, a walnut leaf, dill, oregano, St John’s wort, sorrel, willowherb, kingcup, mugwort, sage, yarrow, camomile and lovage (Arendt et al., 2020). Birgit and Maria have been participating in this tradition for a long time, and they noticed that climate change has manifested in their bouquets:

Birgit: Das ist ja immer viel Arbeit, aber es macht auch Spaß.

Maria: Ja, das macht Spaß. Der einzige Nachteil, finde ich, weil jetzt die Sommer so warm sind, viele Kräuter finden nicht mehr. Beispielsweise Johanniskraut.

Birgit: Ja, das ist bei mir im Garten verblüht.

Maria: Ja, aber ja, vor einer oder zwei Wochen herrlich. Aber das dauert jetzt noch ein Monat. Dann ist das verblüht, ist alles also früher jetzt Kräuter.

Maria: Ein bisschen Schwierigkeiten, müsste Marirhimmelfährt-

Birgit: - müsste vorverlegt werden. Nee, das ist wirklich, also, okay, wir nehmen halt jetzt verblühten Johanniskraut, deshalb dann, man hat nicht mehr so schön blühtig drauf wie das früher war, sondern eher vertrocknete, die nicht mehr blüht.

(Birgit: It’s always a lot of work, but it’s also fun.

Maria: Yes, it’s fun. The only downside, I think, is that because the summers are so warm now, you don’t find many herbs anymore. For example, St John’s wort.

Birgit: Yes, they withered in my garden.

Maria: Yes, but yes, a week or two ago it was marvellous. But there’s still one more month [until the Assumption]¹²This interview was conducted on July 12., 2023.. Then it’ll have faded, all the herbs are earlier.

Maria: A bit of difficulties, Assumption of Mary -

Birgit: - would need to be brought forward. No, that’s really, well, okay, we’re using faded St John’s wort now, so then, you don’t have the beautiful flowers as it used to be, but rather dried up flowers that no longer bloom.)

Through collecting the plants for Krautwësch over the years, Birgit and Maria are able to experience the concrete impacts of climate change on nature first-hand. For them, climate change becomes real and tangible through direct contact with the wilted St John’s wort. Their observation resonates with LetzEarth’s primary objective of promoting this activity with strong religious characteristics: to familiarise people with the diversity of everyday herbs and to raise awareness about the decline of this diversity. As such, moderate consumptive interactions with nature can render environmental issues tangible, thereby raising public awareness of them.

Moreover, bodily interactions with nature are believed to cultivate positive views of nature and prevent feeling drained by environmental issues. Bob told me how he and his ex-wife brought their children into embodied interactions with nature to encourage their positive attitude toward nature:

So, yeah, and during that time, we were discussing all kinds of environmental issues at home. I remember, I mean the 1970s and 80s there was the oil price shock. And this was when the environmental movement was really accelerated. So we were part of that. And I remember we had to be very careful with the children. We would have mealtimes and we were talking about environmental issues and problems. And at one stage we said, ‘No, we’ve got to be careful about this. We’re talking very negatively. I mean, the children have got to grow up thinking positive about the environment.’ So we made sure that they knew birds, they went on walks with us, they helped dig the ponds, sometimes willingly and sometimes reluctantly.

Bob’s view supports my previous findings, which suggest that hands-on interactions with nature, when experienced mindfully, foster a positive emotional and cognitive connection with nature. Through such embodied interactions, nature is construed primarily not as a desperate victim of human destruction, but as a source of joy, wonder and fulfilment.

The discourse that embodied experiences with nature foster meaningful connections with nature may explain a somewhat surprising result in my research: a critical voice against certain conservation regulations from a nature enthusiast. The 30-year-old Daniel is the vice-president of the section Nord. His interest in nature emerged during the COVID-19 lockdown, when he began identifying species on his walks. His interest was further piqued by the “City Nature Challenge”, where participants were encouraged to take photos of plants, animals, fungi, and anything they found in nature and upload the photos to an online community for nature lovers. During a local butterfly excursion in 2022, he met Birgit, who was impressed by his keen interest in nature and thus invited him to join the section Nord. During the interview, Daniel openly expressed his opposition to the regulation prohibiting the private capture of butterflies:

Daniel: Also, mein Problem, dass man, wie soll ich sagen, man darf keine Schmetterlinge fangen, pauschal. Also selbst wenn man sie einfach mal einfängt, um sie zu bestimmen und dann sofort wieder frei ist. Ja, das ist verboten hier in Luxemburg.

Yimin: Man kann keine Schmetterlinge fangen?

Daniel: Ja. Das Fangen, selbst wenn man sie nicht tötet, um sie in die Sammlung zu tun, dann hab nur kurz fangen und dann wieder so schauen, was habe ich gefangen und dann sofort wieder frei, was ja überhaupt keinen Schaden angerichtet. Das ist verboten. Man braucht dann eine Ausnahme, also man braucht eine Genehmigung dafür. Und dann muss man so eine Formular ausfüllen mit persönlichen Daten und so weiter. Aber das, was ich ärgere, ich finde, auf diesem Formular muss man auch wissenschaftliche Publikationen und Referenzen von anderen, in dem Fall Lepidopterologen oder was, die dann bezeugen können, dass man irgendwie eine Ahnung hat. Aber was ich daran so irrsinnig finde, ist, wie soll man irgendwie wissenschaftliche Publikationen dazu sagen, wie mal Schmetterlingen oder sonst, was veröffentlichen können oder schreiben können, wenn es verboten ist, die Teile überhaupt mal zu fangen. Also da beißt sich die Katze in den Schwanz, weil man braucht hier seine Referenzen, um fangen zu dürfen, aber um überhaupt was Vernünftiges schreiben zu können, muss man bereits fangen dürfen. Das ist sehr unsinnig. […] Die Leute, die müssen Kontakt zu Natur haben, um sich überhaupt damit zu interessieren, damit auszukennen, damit überhaupt zu verstehen, was es da ist, was man irgendwie schützen sollte. Und wenn man solche Regeln hat wie hier, dass man nicht mal Schmetterlinge einmal kurz fangen darf, um sich zu, um sich anzuschauen und zu bestimmen, dann entfremdet das die Leute von der Natur. […] Also es gibt schon Fälle, wo einzelne Individuen sehr großen Schaden anrichten. Aber dann sollte man diese Fälle irgendwie separat behandeln und dann separat die Orchideen oder Bärlapp oder was auch immer, da schützen sollen. Nicht sagen irgendwie, alles ist PAUSCHAL geschützt. selbst die Arten, wo es gar keinen Sinn ergibt. Weil dann zieht man nur eine Barriere, eine Mauer zwischen den Menschen und der Natur hoch und das ist weder für die Menschen noch für die Natur gut.

(Daniel: Well, my problem is that, how should I put it, you’re not allowed to catch butterflies in general. So even if you just catch them for identification and release them immediately. Yes, that’s forbidden here in Luxembourg.

Yimin: You can’t catch butterflies?

Daniel: Yes. Catching them, even if you don’t kill them to put them in the collection, just catch them briefly and then look and see what I’ve caught and then immediately set them free again, which does no harm at all. That is forbidden. You then need an exception, so you need a licence. And then you have to fill in a form with personal details and so on. But what I find annoying is that on this form you also have to include scientific publications and references from others, in this case lepidopterists or whatever, who can then prove that you have some knowledge. But what I find so insane about it is that how are you supposed to be able to publish or write scientific publications about butterflies or anything else if it’s forbidden to catch them in the first place? That’s cat biting its tail, because you need your credentials to be allowed to catch them, but to be able to write anything that makes sense at all, you have to be allowed to catch them. That’s such nonsense. […] People need to have contact with nature in order to be interested in it at all, to get familiar with it, to really understand what it is that should be protected somehow. And if you have rules like this, where you’re not even allowed to catch butterflies to observe and identify them, then that alienates people from nature. […] Well there are certainly cases where single individuals cause a lot of damage. But then these cases should somehow be treated separately, the orchids or lycopods or whatever should be protected separately. Not somehow say that everything is GENERALLY protected, even the species where it makes no sense at all. Because then you’re just putting up a barrier, a wall between people and nature, and that’s neither good for people nor for nature.)

The legal framework Daniel refers to here is Article 19 (2) of Luxembourg’s Act of 18 July 2018 concerning the protection of nature and natural resources and amending related legislation¹³ Loi du 18 juillet 2018 concernant la protection de la nature et des ressources naturelles et modifiant. :

Sauf autorisation du ministre, sont interdites la capture, la tenue en captivité et le relâchement dans la nature de spécimens appartenant aux espèces animales sauvages quelle que soit leur provenance […]

(Unless with ministerial authorisation, the capture, keeping in captivity, and release into the wild of specimens belonging to wild animal species, regardless of their origin, are prohibited […])

Under this Act, the capture of butterflies without prior official authorisation is illegal. Daniel takes a strong critical stance against this regulation, as indicated by phrases such as “I find so insane”, “that’s cat biting its tail”, “that’s such nonsense.”, “that alienates people from nature” and “putting up a barrier, a wall between people and nature”. Here, I do not seek to delve into a discussion on environmental policy and its enforceability, but try to understand Daniel’s view on human-nature connection based on his opinion on this regulation. He opposes this regulation because it delegitimises the practice of capturing in general, attributing exclusively environmentally negative connotations to it. Such connotations disregard non-destructive capture as a means to establish direct physical contact with nature and the significance of hands-on interactions with nature in fostering reciprocal human-nature connections. Moreover, the practical implementation of this regulation, namely, one needs a scientific reference to apply for the authorisation, imposes that discourse that physical interactions with nature can only be legitimised by institutional knowledge. This contrasts with the viewpoint of Daniel and the experiences of other participants, that direct practices with nature are an important pathway to gain environmental knowledge and awareness. As such, Daniel perceives this regulation posing a dilemma of “cat biting its tail” and erecting “a wall between people and nature” that cuts off not only the physical but also the cognitive connection between people and nature, hindering the on-the-ground understanding of “what it is that should be protected”. Daniel’s critical view on the conservation Act suggests that he highly values embodied experiences with nature as a crucial entry point to learn about nature and integrate environmental awareness.

In the current section, I elaborated on the finding that participants value embodied experiences with nature as a significant gateway to meaningful connection with nature at experiential, emotional and philosophical levels. Participants’ lived experiences and opinions reveal that such embodied experiences can be realised through “grasping nature with hands”, namely hands-on interactions with nature, and mindfully experiencing nature as a form of serious leisure. They believe that embodied experiences with animals, plants and biotopes form the foundation of inner connection with nature as a tangible and vigorous entity rather than an overlooked substrate to exert human domination. This view constructs a positive discourse on the role of human activities in human-nature relationships. In the next section, I will move to another perspective that is valued in fostering reciprocal human-nature connections: intellectual engagement with nature.

Relational Learning about Nature

One prominent form of intellectual engagement is learning. Examining how participants describe and reflect on their experiences of learning about nature and how they facilitate such learning, I noticed that learning about nature is perceived as deeply relational. The process and content of learning about nature involve relationality in three interconnected dimensions: the relationship among people, the relationship between people and nature, and the ecological relationships within nature itself.

Using an example of “learning about seeds”, Michael elaborated on his observations and concerns regarding the declining awareness of ecological processes among people, emphasising that such processes should not be appropriated or obscured by commercialisation:

Wir zeigen, wo kommt der Samen her. Das ist ein Projekt mit den Bienen. Die Bienen machen die Befruchtung, das wir säen und denen können wir wieder nehmen, um dann neues Gemüse zu sähen. Wann, fragt die meisten Leute, wo kommt der Samen in diesen Tüten her? Die kaufen da sind Tüten, mein Salatsamen oder Tomatensamen. Aber dass das dann auch von den Pflanzen kommt, das sind die auch nicht mehr sich bewusst so richtig. Also es kommt aus dem Läden.

(We show where the seeds come from. This is a project with bees. The bees do the pollination, we sow the seeds, and we can harvest seeds again to grow new vegetables. Most people then ask, where do the seeds in these bags come from? They buy bags, my lettuce seeds or tomato seeds. But they’re no longer really aware that, those seeds also come from the plants. It comes from the shops.)

Therefore, he believes it is important for people to (re)learn about nature:

It’s important to learn about it. Because the other generations before they knew everything about nature. And now people in the big cities they don’t know any more anything. And I think there’s more than one generation that got lost there. Because it was also everything of, we knew about nature was transported from the grandparents to the parents and the children and so on. And there was a cut when we went into big cities.

Michael emphasises learning about “where seeds come from” as a dynamic, relational process involving plants, animals and human practices, rather than “what seeds are” as isolated botanical units. Here, learning about seeds is framed as understanding the interconnectedness within nature: that the life cycle of plants is closely linked to other organisms like bees, and therefore, seeds should be perceived as part of the ecological process instead of merely as commodities. In addition to the content of learning, Michael also perceives the process of learning about nature as relational. According to him, the widespread lack of knowledge about nature today is largely a result of diminished close contact with nature caused by people’s migration to urban areas. This view suggests that learning about nature is believed to occur through a direct relationship with nature. In the meantime, Michael believes that learning about nature is achieved through relationships among people, for example, intergenerational connections that pass on knowledge and experiences.

For Eric, the “key experience” that sparked his love for birds is his first successful identification of a fieldfare:

Aber dann gab es da ein Schlüsselerlebnis. Meine Mutter, die hat im Winter immer Vögel gefüttert, damals gab es noch echte Winter mit viel Schnee. Heute ist es Konfekt. Gut. Und dann hat her, meine Mutter hatte dann eine Futterstelle eingerichtet hinter dem Fenster, dann saß ich hinter der Gardine und habe dann gesehen, welche Vögel kommen da. Und da hat, damals hatte die Vorgängerin von LetzEarth, die Vögelschutzliga. Die hat einen Büchlein veröffentlicht, die wichtigsten Vögel Luxemburg. Und das hat meine Mutter mir geschenkt. Es gab damals in unserer Familie, in unserem Haus, gab es wie gesagt jetzt aber schon drei Bücher. Es gab die Bibel, [laughing], dann hatte meine Mutter mir, den Meyers Kinderschul-Lexikon geschenkt. Das war so ein Ding, sagen wir mal, ein Lexikon mit allen über die Natur hauptsächlich. Ja, ja, ja, ja. Und ob du glaubst oder nicht, ich habe dieses Buch auswendig gekennt. Also, tatsächlich. Ich habe nur immer darin gelesen und habe da eine ganze Menge gelernt, auch wenn ich nicht alles verstanden habe. Und das dritte Buch war dieses Vögelbuch, Vögel. Und ja, dann habe ich dann den Vögel nach-, zugeschaut, das war sehr schön. Und da plötzlich taucht ein Vogel auf, der gar nicht, den wir noch niemals gesehen hatten. Auch meine Mutter hat ihn noch nie gesehen. So wie eine Amsel, ich habe das auch hier in diesem großen Buch beschrieben. Du hast das ja. Das habe ich auch beschrieben da. Und plötzlich saß dieser Vogel da wie eine Amsel, aber grau und braun. “Wah! Was ist das?” Und dann in meinem Büchlein, tatsächlich, da war der Vogel abgebildet, da war eine Wacholderdrossel, damals, war die äußerst selten, heute brüten sie in Luxemburg, heute, aber damals war sie nur im Winter da, na? Wow ich war so begeistert, und da begann meine Liebe zu den Vögeln.

(But then there was a key experience. My mother, she used to feed birds during winter – back then we still had real winters with lots of snow. Today it’s just confectionery. Anyway. So, my mother had set up a feeding station behind the window, and I would sit behind the curtain and watch which birds came. And then, back then, the predecessor of LetzEarth, the Bird Protection League, had published a booklet about the most important birds of Luxembourg. And my mother gave it to me as a gift. At that time, in our family, in our house, there were, as I said, only three books. There was the Bible [laughs], then my mother gave me the Meyers Children’s School Encyclopedia. That was like, let’s say, an encyclopedia mainly about nature. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, and believe it or not, I knew that book by heart. Well, really. I just kept reading it and learned a lot from it, even if I didn’t understand everything. And the third book was this bird book, birds. And yes, I watched the birds, it was wonderful. And then suddenly a bird appeared that we had never seen before. Even my mother had never seen it. It looked like a common blackbird, I also described this in the big book, you have it. I described it there. And suddenly this bird was sitting there, like a blackbird, but gray and brown. “Wow! What is that?” And then in my booklet, really, the bird was illustrated, it was a fieldfare. Back then, it was extremely rare. Today they breed in Luxembourg, but back then they were only around in winter, no? Wow, I was so excited, and that’s when my love for birds began.)

In this account, young Eric’s learning about nature, particularly birds, began from two aspects. On the one hand, he eagerly engaged with cognitive learning by reading and even memorising the Meyer Children Encyclopaedia, despite not fully understanding its content. On the other hand, what he highly values as “key experience” is the direct observation and identification of birds. The highlight of this experience lies not merely in acquiring factual knowledge about the fieldfare from the handbook, but in forming a direct, affective relationship with birds. As he put it, “that’s when my love for birds began”. Through identification and recognition, previously unfamiliar, or even unseen species are no longer “something” vague and abstract, but become “someone” with a concrete form of existing, clear presence and identity, which creates a sense of personal relationship. This process showcases a form of relational learning about nature, where learning is fostered through lived experiences and personal connections.

Similar to Eric’s passion for birds, Birgit has a particular interest in bees and wasps. Besides serving as the president of the local section Nord, she also volunteers as a wasp consultant for LetzEarth, advising people who are concerned about wasp nests. The goal of such consultancy is not to assist people in removing the nest and eliminating the wasps, but rather, to calm people down by explaining that wasps do not attack humans blindly and to offer ways to co-live with wasps. Birgit shared her thoughts about her relationship with wasps in the interview:

Also Jugendliche habe ich auch [making a shocking face]. Ja, man wusste auch nicht, Wespen sind wichtig für die Natur. Und so man hat das einfach so gelernt, "Wespen stechen, Wespen sind schlecht, Wespen stören, man kann Allergie bekommen, man kann sogar sterben davon." Die Tiere waren einfach negativ. Man hat sich einfach nicht die Zeit genommen, um sie mal wirklich zu beobachten, was sie machen und so weiter. […] Zu Hause habe ich sowieso Vogeltränke stehen und da kommen die Wespen dann auch trinken, weil sie halt um, so wie gestern warst es so schwül warm, über 30 Grad und so. Die müssen dann auch die Nester kühlen. Und dann kommen die Arbeiterinnen heraus, nehmen Wasser auf, und bringen das wieder ins Nest rein und damit kühlen sie das Nest und sie machen auch mit den Flügeln, dass es verdunstet, um Kühle in das Nest einzubringen. Und wenn die da dann sitzen und das Wasser aufnehmen, und dann beobachtet man sie, wo sie hinfliegen. Das habe ich dann anfangs auch gemacht. Da habe ich auch gemerkt, ah, da oben, da ist das Nest, da liegen reinraus.

(Well, as a teenager, I also had [making a shocking face]. Yeah, we didn’t know that wasps are important for nature. We just learned things like, “Wasps sting, wasps are bad, wasps are annoying, you can get an allergy, you can even die from it.” These animals were just negative. People just didn’t take the time to really observe them, to see what they actually do, and so on. […] At home, I have a birdbath anyway, and the wasps come to drink there too, because they, like it was so hot and humid like yesterday, over 30 degrees, like that. They also need to cool their nests. So the worker wasps come out, collect water, and bring it back to the nest to cool it down. They also fan their wings, so the water evaporates, to cool down the nest. And when they sit there and drink the water, you can watch where they fly off to. That’s what I did at first. I noticed, ah, up there, that’s where the nest, lying there.)

Birgit attributed both her own and others’ biased view of wasps solely as dangerous animals to a lack of relational understanding: specifically, a lack of knowledge about their ecological role and the absence of a personal, attentive relationship with the species. The example of her personal observation of wasps implies a strong sense of attentiveness and signals the development of a close, caring relationship with the species. Through careful observation of their behaviour, a more nuanced understanding of the wasps emerges: stinging is not their only behavioural trait; they are not always aggressors, but also engineers with sophisticated survival strategies. Such observation enables one to perceive species in their own right beyond anthropocentric assumptions and fears, fostering a convivial relationship with nature.

Observing and identifying species also play a fundamental role in Daniel’s connection with nature. Daniel “didn’t know much about nature before 2020” ¹⁴ Ich meine, ich selbst, vor 2020, hatte ich jetzt auch nicht so viel Ahnung. until he started photographing and identifying the plants and animals he saw while taking walks during the COVID pandemic. He participated in the “City Nature Challenge”, an annual international community science competition for people to find and document plants and wildlife in cities. Participants of this challenge share their observations through the online platform iNaturalist, which is “an online social network of people sharing biodiversity information to help each other learn about nature” (iNaturalist, n.d.). The following screenshot illustrates how iNatualist works:

Daniel considers this experience to have had an important influence on his learning about nature:

Seit dann im Frühjahr 2020 angefangen habe, meine, zu dokumentieren, was in der Natur so kräust und fleust und wächst, da habe ich halt schrittweise immer weiter gelernt. Ich meine, ich habe dann auch einige Bestimmungsbücher, über zu Pflanzen, Pilzen, Vögel, Schmetterlinge, Insekten, im Allgemeinen und so weiter, habe ich mir dann auch besorgt, aber hauptsächlich auch habe ich dann dadurch gelernt, also zumindest der Bestimmung, die Arten zu erkennen, indem ich die Fotos auf iNaturalist gepostet habe und dann gesehen habe, was dann wie die, ja die automatische, der automatische Vorschlag ist, was es sein könnte, respektive dann, gibt es ja auch noch andere Leute auf iNaturlist, die dann auch noch eine Bestimmung liefern oder bestätigen. Und so habe ich dann mich Stück für Stück immer weiter familiarisiert mit den Arten und so weiter. So viel zumindest zum Bestimmen der Arten und dann ja weitere biologische Zusammenhänge oder ökologische, dass das kommt dann noch so ein bisschen dazu. Je mehr man, wie sagt, die Protagonisten in der Natur kennt, dann auf einmal versteht man auch wie die miteinander so ein bisschen wechsel, wirken. Genau.

(Since I started in spring 2020 to document everything that crawls, flies, and grows in nature, I’ve been always gradually learning more and more. I mean, I also have some identification handbooks on plants, fungi, birds, butterflies, insects, in general and so on, I also got. But mainly I learned through, at least when it comes to identifying species, by posting photos on iNaturalist and seeing what the automatic suggestions were for what it might be. And there are also other people on iNaturalist who provide or confirm identifications. In this way, I got more and more familiarised with the species and so on, little by little. So much at least for identifying the species, and also further biological or ecological connections, that comes then. The more, like I said, the more you know about the protagonist in nature, then you also understand how they exchange, influence each other. Exactly.)

In this example, Daniel’s learning about nature is relational in two ways. First, it is socially relational in process. Identifying species is a community-based activity. Learning about the species builds on collaborative knowledge within the online community. Second, it is ecologically relational in content. The outcome of this learning is not limited to identifying species individually but leads to the perception of ecological interactions among them. Identifying a species is not only about acquiring isolated factual knowledge, but also about understanding it within a broader ecological context involving intricate interactions. As such, this relational learning about nature fosters knowledge about nature and ecology, thereby enhancing cognitive connection with nature.

In addition to the City Nature Challenge and learning with the online community, he shares his experiences of exploring new species during activities organised by the section Nord:

Also was ich interessant finde ist, wenn ich irgendwelche Dinge sehe, die ich noch nicht gesehen habe, irgendwelche Arten. Ich meine zum Beispiel am 1. Mai bei der Wanderung, wo ich auch mitgeholfen, die zu organisieren, da wurden, da ging es auch um Weiher und so weiter. Und da wurde auch eine Reuse am Vortag ausgelegt, wo dann halt Amphibien sich drin sammeln können, damit wir dann am Tag der Wanderung da vielleicht was zu sehen haben. Und da war alles drin. Da hatten wir, das haben wir, Bergmolch, den man häufiger sieht, der war da drin, aber dann war auch der Fadenmolch drin, der Teichmolch und sogar einen Kammmolch war drin und auch ein Blutegel, sogar. Das finde ich, besonders der Kammmulch in diesem kleinen Weiher, der von der SICONA¹⁵ Le syndicat intercommunal pour la conservation de la nature, “Intercommunal nature conservation association”. da erst ein paar Jahre vorher angelegt wurde, war schon, wir waren beeindruckt, dass da sogar einen Kammemulch drin zu finden war. Genau. Oder bei dieser Wasseramsel Beringung. Ich meine, natürlich die winzig kleinen Wasseramsel. Die waren schon cool, weil die irgendwie so einen riesigen Schnabel hatten. Und die waren so ein paar kleine [xxx]¹⁶¹This part contains incomprehensible or inaudible words. The same applies below. schon sehr lustig aus. Aber was ist dann noch was besser fund, das war, dass wir da am Ufer zufälligerweise da haben. Da habe ich eine Pflanze gesehen, die ich noch nie gesehen habe. Das war irgendeine Sommerwurzen, habe ich leider den Namen vergessen. aber so eine parasitäre Pflanze, die gar kein Chlorophyll ausbildet und an anderen Pflanzen, da gibt es ja sehr viele von diesen Sommerwurzen. Aber das hier, ich habe jetzt die genaue Art leider vergessen, aber zumindest dieses [xxx] , das fand ich schon sehr spannend, so ein Zufall.

(What I find interesting is when I see some things I’ve never seen before, whatever species. I mean, for example, on May 1st during a hike I helped organise, there was, it was about ponds and such. The day before, a trap had been set to collect amphibians, so we might have something to observe during the hike. And there was everything in it. We had, we have alpine newts, which people see more often, it was there, but also smooth newts, palmate newts, and even a crested newt were inside, and even a leech. I found, especially the crested newt in this small pond, which had been released by SICONA only a few years before, was really, we were amazed that even a crested newt was found there. Exactly. Or during the dipper bird ringing. I mean, of course the tiny little dippers. They were cool, because they somehow have such big beaks. And there were a few small [xxx] quite fun. But what I found even better was that we happened to have on the bank, I saw a plant there that I’d never seen before. It was some kind of summer root, unfortunately I forgot the name, but it was a parasitic plant that doesn’t produce any chlorophyll and [is parasite] on other plants, there are lots of these summer roots. But this one, unfortunately I forgot the exact species, but at least this [xxx], I found it very exciting, such a coincidence.)

During this interview conducted almost two months after the hiking, Daniel could still effortlessly remember and list the different newt subspecies that he had observed at the time. In Daniel’s view, the individual animals are not merely “newts” as a homogeneous species, but are perceived with distinctions. This reflects not only his nuanced understanding of the species, but also an emotional engagement, as implied by the phrase “we were amazed”. His emotional connection with nature, marked by curiosity, wonder and enthusiasm, particularly stands out in the example of the parasitic plant. Although he cannot remember its exact name, his intuitive understanding of parasitic relationships between plants, along with the lingering excitement and sense of wonder, remains vivid. As such, his learning about nature is relational: it occurs through direct interactions with nature, interplays with emotional engagement with it, and visualises ecological interactions within nature.

Considering himself a “small expert in butterflies in Luxembourg”¹⁶ Bei Tagfaltern als kleiner Experte, Daniel also shared how his engagement with butterflies had developed during the past few years. It can be largely attributed to a personal network. When he started doing nature photography during the COVID-19 pandemic, “butterflies in particular crystallised as my main interest”¹⁷ Schmetterlinge insbesondere haben sich dann auch als Hauptinteresse dann rauskristallisiert, deswegen dann auch die Schmetterlingsführung., and therefore, he joined the butterfly excursion organised by the section Nord in 2022. In this excursion, Daniel met Mark, one of the most prominent lepidopterists in Luxembourg. As their acquaintance developed over time, Marc showed Daniel his collection of butterfly specimens, taught him techniques to research butterflies and took him on transactions. Later, through Mark’s introduction, Daniel began volunteering at the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST), where he regularly conducts systematic surveys along transects to gather data on insect distribution.

Ja, daraufhin, ich meine, hab ich auch dann privat mich mit Mark ausgetauscht. Und da hat er mich auch mal mit zum Leuchten genommen, also um Nachts, dann einfach eine Lichtquelle, da irgendwo platziert mit einem Netz runter rum, um halt Nachtfalter anzulocken. […] auch hat er mir das gezeigt und dann auch ein paar Microlepidoptera, die man heute unter der Stereo-Lube untersuchen muss, die er mitge-, der er dann angefangen hat. Dann am Tag darauf dann gezeigt, wie er das dann irgendwie auch präpariert in seine Sammlungen gezeigt und so weiter. Er ist auch mit mir seine Transakte mal gelaufen, und hat auch den Kontakt zum LIST hergestellt. Wie gesagt, ja gut, das war dann nicht direkt über LetzEarth, aber das war, da dann die Schmetterlingswanderung, wo, wo ich dann auch einerseits von LetzEarth rekrutiert wurde und andererseits habe ich dann Kontakt mit Mark bekommen, der mir dann auch noch weitere Dinge gezeigt hatte, dass er dann irgendwie Kontakt zum LIST hergestellt hat. Also das war schon irgendwie dann, da haben wir mal eine wichtige Wanderung davon, weil da viel Kontakt hier und da hin hergestellt wurde.

(Yes, after that, I mean, I also exchanged privately with Mark. And he once took me with him to light things up, so at night, he simply placed a light source somewhere with a net around it to attract moths. […] and he showed me that and then also a few micro-Lepidoptera that you have to examine nowadays under the stereoscope, which he started with. Then the next day he showed me how he somehow prepared them in his collections and so on. He also went through transects with me and put me in contact with LIST. As I said, well, it wasn’t directly via LetzEarth, but it was the butterfly excursion, where I was recruited by LetzEarth on the one hand and on the other I got in touch with Mark, who then showed me other things and somehow made contact with LIST. So that was kind of an important excursion, because a lot of contacts were made here and there.)

This excerpt shows that Daniel’s connection with butterflies is anything but an unaccompanied journey involving only himself and the butterflies. His practical learning about the species is essentially supported by the “lot of contacts”, including the ones with Mark and LIST. Without Mark’s guidance, it would likely be difficult, if not entirely impossible, for Daniel to get such direct, hands-on experience with the specific lepidopterist research practices, which significantly promotes his learning process from a practical perspective. As such, Daniel learns about lepidoptera through the relationship with the knowledge keeper. This relational dimension of learning about nature is highly valued, as indicated by Daniel’s comment, “that was kind of an important excursion”.

Similar to Daniel’s fruitful learning from Mark, Michael had an interesting experience of learning from a “donkey whisperer” in southern France. When Michael started working at the Green Charlet, he had to develop nature pedagogy projects from scratch with his colleagues. One of Michael’s first projects at the nature activity centre was to build a donkey stall. To prepare for this project, Michael visited the donkey whisperer to learn about the animal.

It was a woman who was very like eine Pferdflüstererin¹⁸Horse whisperer, also eine Eselflüstererin¹⁹Donkey whisperer, who could do very good with the donkeys. And there I went for a week with her, we made the stalls there. It was very interesting. We learnt everything about donkeys there, how to guide them, how to look after their feet, everything and so on. We even went to a guy who makes the saddles for them.

One of the takeaways from this learning experiences was that donkeys are not as unintelligent as they are often assumed to be:

Michael: The donkey was always considered as a not intelligent.

Yimin: Oh yeah, same here in Europe?

Michael: Not being intelligent, yes. And if you learned bad in class, for example, you said you were a donkey. And even there was a time, the children who didn’t work well in class, they had the donkey ears. They had to put them on their head, on their head and they had to sit on the last bench of the class. That was before my, before I lived. But I remember that, yes. A generation before, yes. Yes, always donkey considered as a not intelligent animal, but they are more intelligent than horses, because you say they are stubborn, no, they are not stubborn. If you come on your way, you come on a place where there is water, in the middle of the road or in the wood, the donkey, he will not go in the water when you pull him. He stops, because he does not know if it’s deep or not, the water. A horse is going, just leading you, leading him through the water. There’s no problem. He’s not reflecting it. And then the donkey, also when there is some problem and he is afraid, so he runs and after a few passes he stops and he returns and he looks, what was the problem now? And the horse is running and running, never turning back.

Yimin: Oh yeah, the horse is like always forward.

Michael: Yes, forward. The donkey is more sensitive also.

Yimin: Oh, I didn't know about that.

Michael: Yes, therefore, I didn’t know also because I did that stalls in South France. This woman really, she knew everything about donkeys. She lived all her life with donkeys. That was her life in donkeys. But it was a kind of [xxx] there, where the housing, because she made more, she did care more for the donkeys than for people.

The relationality of Michael’s learning about donkeys is intriguing from three perspectives. First, it is socially relational. This learning process is fundamentally realised and supported through the connections that Michael had with the people who knew well about the animal, such as the donkey whisperer and the saddle maker. Secondly, the learning was grounded in the forming of a living relationship with the animal rather than abstract facts from textbooks or lectures. Taking care of the animal and learning relevant skills from someone who deeply cares for it is a profoundly relational act. Third, the learning outcome is a changing perception of the animal. The example of using donkey ears as the symbolic punishment for underachieving children reflects a long-standing association of donkeys with insensitivity and stupidity. However, through directly engaging with the animal and a caring relationship with it, Michael came to understand donkeys beyond cultural stereotypes, forming a new cognitive connection with the animal. Therefore, the learning is deeply grounded in a relational context where the relationships between people and donkeys unfold rather than in isolated abstract facts.

Reflecting on his experiences of learning about nature, Michael offered the compelling metaphors of sponge and blinkers, which I find intriguingly capture the multidimensional relationality of learning about nature:

Ja, das ist auch, weil ich viel Kontakt damit hatte, all diesen Leuten hatte. Im Green Charlet habe ich auch dann Spezialisten für den Wald begenet , ich habe Spezialisten für die Vögel begegnet und sogar dann, wie man dann Steinmauern baut, die auch gut für die Natur sind, wo Tiere sich verstecken können. Es ist halt gut, wenn man irgendwo arbeitet, wo viele Spezialisten sind, dann kann man von jedem so was aufsaugen. So wie ein Schwamm musst du sein und alles so aufsaugen. Information von da, von da. Wenn du eine Frage hast, kannst du zu jemanden hingehen. Das ist schön für mich als Lehrer. Von alles ein bisschen kannte, aber nicht viel. Nicht ein Spezialität. Machmal wenn du sehr Spezialist bist, hast du ein bisschen Scheuklappen. Du siehst nicht nach rechts nach links alles. Du hast Scheuklappen haben. Du musst kucken zu allen Seiten, so finde ich.

(Yes, that’s also because I had a lot of contact with all these people. At the Green Charlet I also met specialists for forest, I met specialists for birds and even how to build stone walls that are also good for nature, where animals can hide. It is indeed good when you work somewhere where there are lots of specialists, then you can absorb things from everyone. You must be like a sponge and absorb everything, information from here and there. If you have a question, you can turn to someone. That’s nice for me as a teacher, I know a little bit about everything, but not much. Not a speciality. Sometimes when you’re very specialised, you have a bit of blinkers. You don’t see everything from right to left. You have blinkers. You have to look to all sides, I think.)

According to Michael, one should learn about nature like a sponge and without blinkers. By learning like a sponge from a community of nature friends, one develops knowledge and skills of nature through a personal network. In this way, the learning process is embedded in social ties, and is thus socially relational. The metaphor of the sponge absorbing everything, combined with Michael’s experience of learning from colleagues with diverse focal interests in nature, also suggests his view that learning about nature involves understanding it from different perspectives within a comprehensive context, rather than solely focusing on fragmented aspects. This belief becomes more evident in his metaphor of blinkers. It suggests that any element of nature should not be only learnt or understood in isolation, but rather within a broader, ecological context.

In the examples above, learning about nature is perceived as a highly relational process. Participants value social networks that supported their learning about nature, the bonds formed between people and nature during the learning process, and the ecological interactions they came to recognise as a learning outcome. Relational processes such as observing, identifying, and exchanging ideas with others are considered more important than isolated, abstract facts, as the processes were frequently recalled with passionate emotions, while the factual content often went unmentioned. Participants’ experiences and views also suggest that meaningful connections with nature are fostered in learning that is grounded in real-world and ecological contexts, where direct engagement with nature and ecological interactions within nature can unfold. Relational learning promotes nuanced understanding of species, encourages perceptions that transcend cultural and social bias, and nurtures an ecological view of nature. It also boosts a sense of wonder, curiosity and conviviality towards nature.

While learning about nature is valued as an essential way to engage with it intellectually, participants also emphasise disseminating knowledge and raising awareness about nature as an important pathway to enhance human-nature connections. In the next section, I will discuss how “giving nature a voice” plays a significant role in fostering this connection.

Giving Nature a Voice

Before I begin the discussion in this section, I ask readers’ indulgence to express my respect and condolences for Bob. Just a few months after the interview, I came across an unexpected and saddening piece of news on LetzEarth’s Facebook homepage: Bob had passed away. Although I learned during the interview that Bob was living with cancer, his humour and optimistic spirit touched me so much that I did not expect that he would leave us so soon. His kind words at the end of the interview, “you will never bother me. I just love this kind of contact and I realise I have a lot to say because I’ve done a lot here”, had sadly become a bittersweet full stop for our brief yet joyful encounter, instead of a hopeful comma that signals more wholesome conversations to come. In its tribute post, LetzEarth thanked Bob for his lifelong dedication to “give nature a voice”. I find this thoughtful phrase aptly encapsulates how Bob and his fellow volunteers have been trying to bring people and nature closer together. Therefore, I borrow the phrase here to discuss how Bob and other nature enthusiasts have engaged with nature in a meaningful way.

Although Bob was actively engaged in the physical labour related to nature conservation, such as excavating ponds to restore local biotope diversity, he considered himself rather as a “head worker” who contributed mainly by writing about nature:

I think from my point of view I’ve certainly contributed far more by writing than I have by doing by hand. Because ja, I’ve dug ponds and I’ve planted hedges and I’ve done Aktioun fir d’Ëmwelt but I don’t feel entirely at ease with that. I’m not a natural worker with my hands. I'm a head worker. And so if I can contribute by writing, then I prefer to do that. That’s using the skill I have.

Bob’s self-reflection offers an interesting alternative perspective to my first finding that meaningful connections with nature originate from grasping nature in one’s hands. He considered that his multilingual writing and translating skills had contributed more to nature than his hands-on work. He served as the editor for the organisation journal, Rose, for nearly 10 years and authored numerous popular science articles focused on nature. He contributed to several nature-themed publications of LetzEarth and translated major works from German to English. Furthermore, Bob translated and subtitled into English a series of short documentary videos in Luxembourgish, produced by LetzEarth, which introduce nature reserves in Luxembourg. In 2012, he founded the LetzEarth’s Language section, aiming to include people whose most comfortable languages are other than Luxembourgish, German and French in nature-related activities. In the interview, Bob proudly mentioned one of his main works, the English translation of Die Gefiederten Freunde des Großherzogtums²⁰Grand Duchy’s Feathered friends, pseudonym for the publication. , an introductory guide to birds that breed in Luxembourg or pass through Luxembourg on migration.

They were discussing whether to do an English version of the Die Gefiederten Freunde des Großherzogtums, because they were already the German and the French version. And I said, “Look, you actually need an English version. There are thousands of people here who are interested in nature, and they read English if they can.”

Bob tried to build a “more personal” bridge between English speakers in Luxembourg and nature using his professional multilingual writing skills as an EU translation officer:

That’s my English. I get a little acknowledgement on the fly because the authors are Eric and Peter, but it says English text by Bob. I was quite pleased with that because I know both Eric and Peter, and I said to them, “Look, I know your German work. I know the French one. Can I change the English slightly? I mean, I make it a different style. And they say, “Yeah, go ahead.” And Peter, in particular, has very good English. So I sent him everything I was writing and he said, “Yeah, I like this. It sounds good.” So it’s very much my style of that. […] I know the way my colleagues write German, most of them are retired schoolteachers. So they write in a rather formal way, which is not my way of writing. So, I mean, they can do that in German and French if they like, but it just sounds terrible in English, which is why I said, I’m gonna make this much more informal, more personal. And several readers have said, I like that style.

Intrigued by “Bob’s style”, I wondered how Bob had “changed the English slightly” to make the text sound “more personal”. Therefore, I read both the original German version of Die Gefiederten Freunde des Großherzogtums and Bob’s translation in comparison. Here, I take the entries “Goldcrest” and “Eagle Owl” as examples for analysis. To give readers a clear view of the changes Bob made in his English translation compared to the original German text, I highlighted the non-literal translation in red. My analysis does not seek to judge whether the German or English version is better, but rather focuses on how Bob’s translation choices, namely additions, omissions and modifications of certain details, include English speakers in Luxembourg into the local conservation discourse and give nature a voice.

Compared to the original German text, Bob’s English translation introduces several additional details. First, he added a comment, “it is not picky”, after describing the bird’s habitat preference. This is an anthropomorphic expression that subtly attributes a human trait of being undemanding to the bird. Such personification evokes more positive and relatable feelings in readers. Furthermore, Bob’s translation adds two culturally significant pieces of information: that the Goldcrest is the national bird of Luxembourg and that Regulus²¹The scientific Latin name of Goldcrest is “Regulus regulus”. is the country’s national conservation magazine. These additions suggest Bob’s effort to make the translation more inclusive for English-speaking readers who may lack background knowledge about Luxembourg. Instead of assuming prior knowledge from readers, he enhanced the information accessibility and readers’ engagement by providing the context. These details help contextualise the symbolic role of Goldcrest in Luxembourgish culture and conservation efforts. As such, Bob’s translation conveys not only a sense of cultural inclusiveness but also the connectedness between the bird and people.

In the entry on Eagle Owl, we can also see Bob’s cultural sensitivity and awareness of the close connection between humans and birds.

In this entry, Bob’s nuanced alterations to the original German text can be classified into four aspects. The first one concerns phonological untranslatability. In German, Eagle Owl is called Uhu [`u:hu], which is a phonetic mimic of the bird’s call. Since its English name is not onomatopoeic, Bob chose not to translate the German explanation of its name. The second aspect is fact-based revision. Since Bob’s translation came five years after the publication of the German version, the breeding status of Eagle Owl in Luxembourg had improved during the time, increasing from 15-20 pairs to 22-25 pairs. As such, Bob made the corresponding revisions in his English text. Thirdly, Bob again introduced contextual information. By specifying the location of the Eifel region, Bob’s translation is more accessible to readers unfamiliar with the natural landscapes around Luxembourg, making the text more culturally inclusive. The last aspect is the translator’s voice. I argue that by bringing his own translator’s voice into the text, Bob gave nature a voice. There are two relevant excerpts in this text, as shown in the following table:

It is evident that in both excerpts, Bob shaped the translation with his own voice. In excerpt 1, he used the emotive and critical phrase “hunting persecution” to provide additional information on the reason why Eagle Owls once became extinct in Luxembourg. It was not an outcome of neutral “hunting”, which can often be perceived as justifiable human activity for survival or cultural reasons. Rather, it was a tragic consequence of “persecution”, which is a deliberate hostile act aimed at harassment and damage. Compared to the German sentence, Bob’s translation goes beyond a factual description. He critically emphasised that the extinction was not a neutral phenomenon, but a consequence of harmful human activities toward nature. Then, Bob translated the return of Eagle Owls in an active sentence with the species as the subject: “a pair returned and bred again”. Compared to the German sentence whose literal translation is “a brood was confirmed for the first time”, Bob’s translation does not frame the owls merely as an object of observation and research, but rather as agentive individuals actively performing their actions. The sentence “a pair returned and bred” not only describes a neutral ecological phenomenon, but also vividly conveys a hopeful dynamics of life starting anew. Similarly, in excerpt 2, Eric critically reframed the role of human beings in the survival challenges that Eagle Owls are still facing. Instead of keeping the expression with a somewhat positive connotation, “people seeking relaxation in quiet, remote areas close to nature”, Bob pointed out sharply that these people are “intruders” invading Eagle Owls’ natural habitats. In his translation, the birds are again brought to the foreground, becoming the subject of the sentence who “suffer from” such invasion. Therefore, Bob’s critical voice on humans’ disturbance to the species is stronger than the original German text. His critical translator’s voice makes such tensions visible to readers with greater emotional impact, highlighting the fact that the birds are actively living while bearing the harmful consequences of human disturbance. As such, Bob’s translator’s voice gives a voice to the speechless Eagle Owls within the unequal power relationship between humans and nature.

The above examples illustrate how Bob used his translation skills to foster people’s knowledge and awareness of nature. Through language as a medium, he illuminated the close relationship between birds, people and culture, gave the voiceless species a voice within human-nature relations and made these voices accessible to a broader public.

Like Bob, his friends Eric and Birgit are also committed to giving nature a voice. Instead of doing so through writing and translation, they contribute by offering consultation. As a keen ornithologist, Eric volunteered to take consulting calls from people with questions about bird encounters. He shared a case where he convinced a woman to accept a wryneck in her garden:

Eric: Und dann ruft eine Frau mich an, sagen sie mal, „Jetzt bin ich aber wütend wütend wütend!“„Ja was denn?“„Ich habe ein Nistkasten im Garten hängen. Und da waren jetzt Meisen, die hatten Eier gelegt und so. Und jetzt kommt so ein Vogel, er sieht aus wie ein Spatz, so braun und gestreift und so. Und der geht jetzt in den Nistkasten rein und schmeißt alles aus dem Nistkasten drauf, die Eier und die, die, das Moos und so. Sauerei, was mach ich jetzt?“ Ich sage, „meine liebe Dame, da haben Sie aber Glück.“„Wie denke?!“„Ja“, sage ich, „da haben Sie einen sehr seltenen Vogel, der da auch in diesen Nistkasten will.“„Ach so, ja“, sagt der. Der ist der Wendehals. Kennst du den?

Yimin: Nee, nicht genau.

Eric: Der gehört zu den Spechten, der Wendelhals. Und der braucht Nistkästen, ja, mit einem bisschen größeren Loch als die Kohlmeise und so. Und der säubert, er legt seine Eier einfach nur auf den nackten Boden. Er baut kein Nest. Und wenn da ein Nest drin ist, das stört ihn. Und dann wird das ganze Material raus. Und ich sagte dann der Frau, „Glauben Sie mir, Sie haben eine große Rarität. Lassen Sie das Tier bitte in Ruhe und sagen Sie mir, ob das hingebaut, ob das funktioniert. Das würde mich sehr, sehr interessieren und sehr freuen.“ Die Frau, „das gibt es doch nicht, ich habe nie davon gehört.“„Ja, ich, habe Sie das Vogelbuch? Schauen Sie mal Wendelhals, da lesen Sie mal. Sie haben jetzt das Glück, einen Wendelhals zu haben, das ist nicht so häufig.“ Und die Frau begreift, das hat geklappt. Der Wendelhals hat doch gebrütet mit Erfolg.

(Eric: And then a woman calls me and says, “Now I’m angry, angry, angry!” “Yeah, what happened?” “I have a nesting box hanging in my garden. And there were tits, they laid eggs and so. And now comes a bird along, it looks like a sparrow, brown and striped and so on. And now it’s going into the nest box and throwing everything out of it, the eggs and the moss and everything. It’s a mess, what do I do now?” I say, “dear madam, you’re very lucky.” “What do you mean?!” “Yes,” I say, “you have a very rare bird that also wants to use this nest box.” “Oh, yeah?” she says. That’s the wryneck. Do you know it?

Yimin: No, not really.

Eric: It belongs to the woodpecker family, the wryneck. And it needs nest boxes, yeah, with a slightly larger hole than the great tit and so on. And it cleans, it just lays its eggs on the bare ground. It doesn’t build a nest. And if there’s a nest in there, it gets bothered. And then all the stuff gets thrown out. And then I told the woman, “Believe me, you have a great rarity. Please leave the animal alone and let me know whether it takes over, if it works. I would be very, very interested and very happy to hear. The woman said, “That’s impossible, I’ve never heard of that.” “Yes, I, do you have the bird book? Take a look at the wryneck, read about it. You’re lucky to have a wryneck, they’re not that common.” And the woman realised that it had worked. The wryneck had successfully bred.)

What is intriguing in this anecdote is how the tension between the woman and the wryneck arose and how Eric mediated in it. The fact that the woman hung nest boxes in her garden indicates that she was not hostile to birds. However, she was not familiar with the wryneck species and therefore saw its behaviours merely through an anthropocentric lens. She had not realised that its “mess making” was an innate natural behaviour for nesting and interspecific competition, perceiving it as a disruptive violation of an assumed order. This suggests that certain everyday tensions between people and nature cannot be entirely attributed to human exploitation, apathy or hostility toward nature, but may also arise as a result of a lack of ecological knowledge and awareness, even among those who intend to develop a positive connection with nature. In the case of the wryneck, as the bird was unable to introduce itself or speak in its own defence, Eric lent it his voice using his knowledge and communications skills. Besides suggesting that the woman learn about the bird by referring to the bird handbook, Eric emphasised that she was “lucky” to have the “uncommon” species in her garden. Rather than focusing on lecturing her on factual knowledge and the relatively abstract principle that species’ instincts should be respected, Eric tried to inspire her excitement and sense of wonder toward the bird. As such, Eric’s consulting work represents an act of advocacy for nature by making ecological information accessible and encouraging a shift away from an anthropocentric view of nature.

Likewise, Birgit talked about her work as wasp consultant during the interview:

Birgit: Es so, ja, also ich bin, jetzt gebe ich wieder ein bisschen an, ich bin bei der Gruppe Wespenberater. Da bin ich mit dabei und da können die Leute, die irgendwo zu Hause oder irgendwo in Bienennestsen, Wespennestsen haben, was sie stört, oder was sie meinen, es würde stören, können sie dann anrufen und wir beruhigen die Leute dann erstmal und im schlimmsten Fall fahren wir hin, wir gucken uns die Sache an und meistens kriegt man die Leute beruhigt und sagt, sie können das Nest ruhig da lassen, sie bauen jetzt einen Paravent, einen Paravent, irgendwas vorne dran bauen, damit die Wespen nach oben wegfliegen und dann sind sie nicht gleich auf ihrem Tisch und so weiter. Wenn Sie am Tisch setzen, sitzen zu essen, dann setzen Sie hier neben daran die Teller mit ein bisschen Marmalade drin, ja, dann gehen die Wespen dahin und die lassen Sie da in Ruhe. Und so, solche Tricks, die wir den Leuten dann erklären und zeigen. Und ja, also, wir erklären dann auch auf, nicht nach den Wespen- machen, wie [blasen]

Maria: - schlagen oder so,

Birgit: Auch nicht machen! Das mögen sie überhaupt nicht. Den Sauerkstoff mögen sie überhaupt nicht, den man ausbläst, das mögen sie überhaupt nicht. Und dann werden die erst aggresive. Also man soll einfach nur, nur zachte Bewegung machen. Auch wenn man das Tier dabei berührt, das mach gar nicht. Also die haben nicht so schnell den hinteren gedreht und Sie gestochen, wenn Sie einfach so das Tier wegdrücken und, oder es einfach fliegen lassen, es einfach mal gucken, beobachten was es macht. Manche kommen auch gefloch-, setzen sich dahin, und dann gucke ich, das sind jetzt da rein? Okay, dann pass ich auf. [making a gesture as if a wasp as if a wasp flew into her neckline] Wenn sie da dann gedrückt wären, könnten sie stechen. Ich beobachte sie dann, irgendwann fliegt sie wieder weg. Und ich nehme sie auf den Finger, komme's auf den Finger krabbeln.

Maria: Oh! Oh?

Birgit: Dann beobachte ich sie so, und irgendwann fliegt sie weg, weil sie hat bemerkt, da gibt es nichts zu fressen, fliege ich wieder weiter.

Maria: Das muss man sich überwinden vielleicht.

Birgit: Ja, auf jeden Fall.

(Birgit: Well, now I’m going to brag a little bit again, I’m part of a wasp advisory group. I participate in that. People who have bee hives or wasp nests somewhere at home or elsewhere that are bothering them, or think they might get bothered, can call us and we calm them down first. In the worst case, we go there, take a look at the situation, and most of the time we can reassure people and tell them they can leave the nest where it is. They can build a screen or something in front of it so that the wasps fly upwards and don’t end up on their table or so. When you sit at the table to eat, you can put a plate with a little marmalade next, and then the wasps go there and won’t bother you. And so, we explain and show people such tricks. And yeah, we also explain what you should not do to the wasps, like [blowing].

Maria: - slapping them or something like that.

Birgit: Don’t do that either! They don’t like that at all. They don’t like the oxygen you blow out, they don’t like that at all. And then they become aggressive. So you should just, only make gentle movements. Even if you touch the animal, it really doesn’t matter. Well, they won’t turn around and sting you so fast if you just push the animal away like this, or let it fly away, just watch and see what it does. Some of them come flying in, sit there, and then I look to see if they’re in there. Okay, then I’ll be careful. [making a gesture as if a wasp flew into her neckline] If they were pressed there, they could sting. I watch them, and at some point they fly away. And I pick them up with my finger, let them crawl onto my finger.

Maria: Oh! Oh?

Birgit: Then I observe them, and eventually they fly away because they realise there’s nothing to eat, so I fly on.

Maria: Maybe people must overcome that.

Birgit: Yes, definitely.)

As Birgit describes it, the purpose of the wasp consultation is to help people learn how to coexist with wasps. The practical tips she shared suggest that the everyday tensions between people and wasps, such as the annoyance people feel when wasps fly nearby, often stem less from the insect’s actual stinging behaviour but more from people’s fear of encountering them in the first place. To overcome this fear, it is important to understand that wasps’ act of stinging humans is a defensive reaction rather than a predatory attack. In this sense, Birgit’s consultation work is not only about offering technical advice on dealing with wasps or educating people on factual knowledge about the species, but also about advocating for adopting wasps’ perspective, a shift away from the one-sided view of the species as aggressive pests, and coexistence with them. In the above excerpt, it is interesting how a mini consultation session unfolded between Birgit and Maria. Notice how Birgit shared recommended practices with Maria: “they don’t like [slapping] at all. They don’t like the oxygen you blow out,” and explained that when wasps realise there is no food, they simply fly away. These suggestions are articulated from the wasps’ perspective, treating them as agents in their own right rather than a problem to be dealt with. As such, drawing on factual knowledge and practical skills, Birgit and her consultant colleagues mediate the tension between people and wasps by giving it a voice, as her following words indicate:

Und das probieren wir helf den Leuten, diese Angst zu nehmen. Und was die Leute auch nicht wissen, dass die Wespen nur ein Sommer da ist. Das Nest stört dann im spätesten, ging welche Art, es ist im November ab. Und dann sind sie weg, dann ist es keine mehr da. Die Leute meinen immer, die würden da drinnen überwintern und im nächsten Jahr wieder da, aus dem gleichen Nest dann wieder, das stimmt auch nicht. […] Und halt, ja, wenn irgendwie was ist, den Leuten erklären, den Leuten erklären, wie das zusammenhängt und dass die Wespen nicht so gefährlich sind.

(And we try to help people overcome this fear. What people also don’t know is that wasps are only around in the summer. The nest only disturbs latest until, whatever kind of wasps it may be, by November it’s gone. Then they’re gone, and no wasps are left. People always think they would hibernate there and come back the next year, from the same nest, but that’s also not true. […] And, yes, whatever it is, is to explain to people, explain to them how things are interconnected with each other and that wasps aren’t that dangerous.)

In this section, I discuss how participants engage in meaningfully negotiating people’s relationship with nature through practices of nature-related writing, translation and consultation. By practising these communicative acts as a form of advocacy, participants give voice to the otherwise speechless nature, navigating human-nature relationships with both cognitive understanding of the issue and emotional resonance with the concerned species. In giving nature a voice, they make it more emotionally relatable, disseminate factual knowledge about it in accessible ways, and mediate tensions between people and nature from a less anthropocentric perspective. As such, they foster reciprocal connections with nature from cognitive, emotional, and philosophical perspectives among the wider public.

Towards a Relational Understanding of Intellectual Engagement with Nature

The previous two sections discuss two forms of intellectual engagement with nature that are valued by research participants: relational learning about nature and giving nature a voice. Examples from both aspects showcase how intellectual works such as learning, reflecting, communicating and negotiating can encourage positive connections with nature. Participants value their intellectual engagement with nature more as the process of “coming to know” through social networks and direct contact with nature than as the status of “processing the knowledge”. This perspective becomes evident in their recognition of autonomous learning about nature, and in their view that valid knowledge, especially the one that sparks further interest and curiosity about nature, is not exclusive to academic institutions. For example, Laura recognised that her learning about birds in Reed Marsh is more interest-driven compared to formal educational contexts. As she explained:

Es ist ein anderes Lernen als jetzt in der Schule und an der Uni, weil da ist immer so, du lernst und dann immer leicht gezwungen, weil du später eine Prüfung hast. Aber hier ist dann also, du machst es für dich, in deinem Rhythmus so viele Informationen für dich interessieren.

(It’s different from learning at school or university, because there you always learn and then you’re kind of forced to because you have an exam later. But here, you do it for yourself, at your own pace, and you take in as much information as you’re interested in.)

In a similar vein, Birgit described her year-long self-directed learning about nature as “simply fun”:

Das ganze Wissen, was ich zum Beispiel erhalte über die Natur, habe ich mir selbst beigebracht. Also ich bin keine Biologin, nichts gelernt, gar nicht. Habe ich nur alles im Laufe der Jahre selbst beigebracht und all die Pflanzen, all die Vögel, all die Tiere, die ich kenne, und Zusammenhänge und so weiter, wie gesagt, alles selbst beigebracht. Und eben auch am Hand von LetzEarth, wo ich Kurs mitgemacht habe und solche Sachen, weil ich Aktivitäten dabei war und gelernt habe und das heute halt wieder weitergebe. Ja, das macht einfach Spaß.

(All the knowledge, for example, what I know about nature, I taught myself. I’m not a biologist, I didn’t study it, not at all. I’ve just taught myself everything over the years, all the plants, all the birds, all the animals I know, and how they are connected with each other and so on, like I said, I learnt all by myself. And also with the help of LetzEarth, where I took courses and stuff like that, because I participated in the activities and learnt things, and now I’m passing that on. Yeah, it’s simply fun.)

She does not identify as a “biologist”, suggesting her subtle distancing from the idea that meaningful knowing about nature is only grounded in institutional credentials. Instead, she foregrounds the role of intrinsically motivated and self-paced learning about nature, accumulated personal experiences and participation in community nature activities in fostering an affective rather than purely cerebral connection with nature, asserting these forms of engagement as valid pathways of knowing nature.

The emphasis on the process of learning and engaging over intellectual mastery is also reflected in Bob’s recognition of “non-expert” knowledge:

I’m not a bird expert, because I came to it too late. People who grow up with this just know it. I mean, people like Eric and George and Tom, I mean, they know birdsong, they can listen to birdsong. So that, that, that and that. I can do it to an extent, but not to their extent. So when I do a walk, I’m not really an expert, but I’m sufficiently an expert to be able to tell other people what’s this bit. You know from teaching. You don’t have to be an academic to teach school classes, you just have to be a few steps ahead of the class. So I’ve always said, among experts, I’m a layman, but among laypeople, I’m an expert. So the people who go on these walks don’t want hugely expert opinion. If I can say, “That’s a golden oriole and it lives there and it does this,” people go, “wow! How do you know that?” It’s just something I’ve acquired over the years.

By repeating “I’m not an expert” and hedging (“I can do it to an extent, but not to their extent”), Bob was not delegitimising himself but rather asserting his legitimacy as a mediator between people and birds. His acknowledgement of his own “expert layman” identity suggests a belief that meaningful engagement with nature does not require an academic authority of knowledge. According to Bob’s experience, what sparks interest is not the “hugely expert opinion”, namely knowledge as a product of formal expertise, but rather acquiring situated knowledge as a process of “getting to know”, which makes nature relatable through concrete sensory understandings.

A similar acknowledgement of the “self-learner” identity and an understated distancing from institutional authority can also be found in Eric’s account:

Ich bin Autodidakt, aber ich habe viele Kurse mitgemacht. Ich bekam auch regelmäßig Post aus dem Ausland, und da wurde ich immer adressiert ‚Dr. [Familienname]‘. Habe aber nie ein Doktor, nie ein Doktor gemacht, aber das stört mich nicht. Das stört mich nicht. Man muss ein Leben leben. Und ich habe ein erfülltes Leben gehabt. Ich bedauere nichts.

(I’m self-taught, but I’ve taken many courses. I also received regular mails from abroad, and they always address me as “Dr. [surname]”. But I never got a doctorate, never did a PhD, but that doesn’t bother me. It doesn’t bother me. You must live your life. And I’ve had a fulfilling life. I don’t have any regrets.)

This brief excerpt reveals a nuanced confrontation between two competing discourses on the legitimacy of knowing nature. The external assumption of Eric’s doctoral title suggests a prevalent view that extensive knowledge of nature is typically the product of higher education and institutional science. This view essentially represents the discourse of credentialism, the belief that the best measure of a person’s ability or intelligence is formal qualifications such as academic degrees (Oxford English Dictionary, n.d.). Eric’s resistance to this credentialism discourse is suggested by his emphasis on “it doesn’t bother me”, which downplays the importance of the formal institutional status. He places greater value on a relational discourse of engagement with nature – the nature-inclusive eudaimonia, where the value of learning about nature lies in the process of living “a flourishing life in which nature is an integral part” (Knippenberg et al., 2018, p.43).

As such, participants’ distancing from credentialism and emphasis on informal, intrinsically motivated learning about nature reinforces the idea that intellectual engagement with nature is valued from a highly relational perspective. As discussed in the section Relational Learning about Nature, the approach of relational learning foregrounds the dynamic process of knowing that is deeply embedded within personally, socially and ecologically relational contexts over the static state of having decontextualised knowledge. Moreover, participants perceive factual knowledge about nature not merely as the end goal of their engagement, but as a means to fostering a constructive relationship with nature, as the examples of Giving Nature a Voice suggest. In other words, facts and knowledge about nature are valued as a relational tool to stimulate reflections on tensions between people and nature and prompt a human-nature relationship of care and responsibility. As Michael concisely put it:

Wenn du sie nicht kennst, wirst du auch nicht schützen.

(If you don’t know them, you won’t protect them.)

From her experience as a wasp consultant, Birgit noted that a lack of knowledge about nature could lead to a confrontational human-nature relationship:

Die Leute sehen ein Nest, das muss weg. Wie gesagt, die deutsche Wespe, die gemeine Wespe, das sind die, die auf den Tisch kommen und mitessen wollen. Alle die anderen Arten, die kommen nicht, die machen das nicht. Und die Leute verstehen das nicht. Sie sehen ein Nest, sie sehen die Wespe, das muss weg. Sie verstehen nicht, wenn das jetzt eine andere Art ist, dass sich überhaupt nicht gefährlich ist, dass man hier ruhig da sein lassen kann, ohne dass was passiert, und da verstehen die Leute nicht.

(People see a [wasp] nest and it must be got rid of. As I said, the German wasp, the Common Wasp, are the ones that come onto the table and want to eat with us. All the other species don’t come, they don’t do that. And people don’t understand that. They see a nest, they see wasps, they must get rid of them. They don’t understand that this is a different species, that it’s not dangerous at all, that you can just leave it alone and nothing will happen, and people don't understand that.)

What Birgit emphasised here is the role of ecological literacy – “the key ecological knowledge necessary for informed decision-making” (McBride et al., 2013, p.3) – as a fundamental mediator in the human-nature relationship. In the case of wasps, people commonly regard them indiscriminately as a nuisance, without understanding the behavioural differences among subspecies or the underlying drivers of the behaviours – foraging rather than attacking. This general lack of ecological literacy leads to an antagonistic relationship between people and wasps: wasps are perceived solely as a threat, and their nests are destroyed unnecessarily. As such, the intellectual engagement with nature is not confined to the mere acquisition of information, but involves cultivating a relationship-oriented awareness.

A similar point of view is also evident in Michael’s recollection of his experience as a nature educator:

We did collect Schnecken von aller Arten, und sie machen die auch Terrarium also, die behalt da auch Pflanzen drinnen, um die zu beobachten, und auch Experimente mit denen zu machen. That’s, across a knife, go over a knife, so you see they have slime that is protecting them not being cut. So you can go over the knife, yes. And then you make some Essig, here is the Schnecke, und here is the Salat and dann machst du hier Essig hin, da macht sie hier kehrt. Sie will da hinter zu den Salat, aber der Essig, das schreckt sie ab. So zwei Experimente haben wir auch mit den Kindern mit den Schnecken gemacht, dass sie einfach keine Angst haben vor Schnecken, dass die auch die anfassen und gucken, wie schön die auch sind, wenn dann ihre Augen so in die Höhe strecken.

(We did collect all kinds of snails, and they also make terrariums, where you have plants in it, and can observe them and also do experiments with them. [… And then you make some] vinegar, here is the snail, and here is the lettuce, and then you put some vinegar here, the vinegar makes it go around. It wants to go behind [to eat] the lettuce, but the vinegar scares it away. With children, we did such two experiments with snails so that the kids wouldn’t be afraid of snails, so that they would touch them and see how beautiful they are when they stretch their eyes up like that.)

It is noteworthy that Michael framed the objective of the two experiments not as teaching biochemical knowledge about snails, such as the secretion mechanism of protective mucus or their chemical perception of acidic stimuli, but ultimately as cultivating an affective perception of snails beyond a feared garden pest. This reflects a relational view of understanding nature: it is not only about acquiring decontextualised knowledge through detached observation, but also about trying to gain an emic insight into nature and reflecting on the people and nature relationships that have often been taken for granted within an anthropocentric worldview. It echoes Birgit’s remark:

Und das ist dann unsere Aufgabe als Verein, mit Aktivitäten und so weiter, die Leute aufzuklären und zu sagen, hier, versuch das doch mal, guck doch mal, ist das so schlimm, wenn da eine Schwalbe brütet? Und da ist unten Halt ein bisschen Kacke von denen, das ist gar nicht so schlimm.

(And that is our association’s mission, through activities and so on, to explain to people and say, here, try this, take a look, is it really so bad if a swallow makes its nest there? There’ll be a bit of their poo, but that’s not so bad at all.)

As Birgit’s understanding of LetzEarth’s mission suggests, a meaningful intellectual engagement with nature is not only about facts – for example, the appearance, taxonomy or biological behaviours of swallows – but also about adopting a relational stance toward nature that involves reflecting on certain anthropocentric views that frame nature as a nuisance, and moving toward a coexistent relationship rather than a judgemental one.

In this section, I discussed the second perspective that participants consider important for developing meaningful connections with nature: intellectual engagement. The process of forming a cognitive connection with nature, such as knowledge and awareness, is perceived as deeply relational. It involves learning through social networks, cultivating direct and intimate relationships with nature and recognising the web of ecological interactions. Participants emphasise their strong preference for acquiring knowledge about nature within living contexts where these relationships unfold, rather than through detached and isolated approaches. Factual knowledge is not valued as the end goal of intellectual engagement with nature, but rather as a relational tool to mediate tensions and achieve reciprocal human-nature relationships. As such, relational intellectual engagement with nature emerges as a significant perspective for deepening one’s connection with nature. In the following section, I will discuss the third perspective of fostering connection with nature: affective attachment.

Intuitive Attachment as an Entry Point

As I discussed in the previous section, Michael argues that cognitive connection with nature underpins environmental mindset and behaviours – “if you don’t know them, you won’t protect them”. Interestingly, Birgit offered a contrasting perspective. From her perspective, people are not necessarily drawn to nature through cognitive knowledge or perceived responsibility, but through emotional and aesthetic appreciation. This view is profoundly shaped by her mom:

[…] es ging ja schon zu Hause an, dass die Mutter eine auf Sachen aufmerksam gemacht hat. ‚Guck mal, der schöne Käfer, da pass auf, tritt nicht drauf.‘ Obwohl sie nicht wusste, was für einen Käfer es ist, aber sie hat Respekt einem beigebracht, beigebracht, auch vor einem Käfer, nicht nur vor einem großen Hund oder einer großen Kuh oder so, sondern auch von kleinen Sachen, oder der Blümchen, ‚guck mal wie schön das Blümchen ist!‘ und so, obwohl sie die Namen nicht wusste. Deshalb bin ich heute immer noch ein bisschen, also nicht so ganz mit dem Spruch einverstanden, ‚Erst was man kennt, schützt man.‘ Es ist eine Art Wahrheit dran, aber es muss nicht das Kennen sein. Ich muss nicht wissen, was für eine Blume es ist, damit ich sie schütze und sie nicht ausreiße oder umgrabe, und so. Und ja, also von Kindheit an, Interesse an der Natur und die Schönheit gesehen und so.

([…]it had already started at home, my mother inspired me. “Look, a beautiful beetle, be careful, don’t step on it.” Even though she didn’t know what kind of beetle it was, she taught us to respect it, also to respect a beetle, not just big dogs or cows or so on, but also small things, or flowers: “Look how beautiful that flower is!” and so on, even though she didn’t know their names. That’s why until today I still don’t quite agree with the saying, “You only protect what you know.” That makes some sense, but it doesn’t necessarily have to do with knowledge. I don’t have to know what kind of flower it is to protect it and not pull it out or dig it up and so on. And yeah, so from childhood, I’ve been interested in nature and its beauty.)

This excerpt clearly reflects Birgit’s disagreement with the notion that knowledge is the exclusive foundation for a lasting and meaningful connection with nature. She explicitly challenges the idea that knowledge is a prerequisite for care for nature through disalignment and partial alignment expressions: “until today I still don’t quite agree with the saying” “that makes some sense, but it doesn’t necessarily have to do with knowledge”. She emphasised that her mother’s lack of taxonomic knowledge did not diminish her deep, inner connection with nature marked by empathy and care. On the contrary, this intuitive bond was so powerful that it profoundly shaped Birgit’s first emotionally significant experiences with nature, characterised by interest and affection, preceding her later learning and physical engagement. This echoes Seamon’s (1984) argument: “[l]ove and responsibility for the earth cannot only be thought about cerebrally; they must be felt emotionally, with the heart” (p.769). This viewpoint does not oppose knowledge-centric environmental ethics, which emphasises the role of ecological literacy in shaping how people relate to nature; rather, it offers a complementary perspective that values the emotional foundation underlying a deep connection with nature.

Maria reported her similar experience of “affect before intellect”:

Meine Eltern waren Bauern, ich war viel draußen, kannte die Natur, immer die schöne Blumen, aber auch nie genau, das ist die und die Blumen. Aber das hat mich immer schon gefallen.

(My parents were farmers, I spent a lot of time outdoors, I knew nature, always [as] beautiful flowers, but I never knew exactly, this is this or that flower. But I always liked them.)

Maria’s description reveals that her affective connection with nature had emerged before cognitive understanding. However, Maria expressed a sense of insecurity regarding her intuitive perception of nature and limited scientific knowledge during the interview. Interestingly, Birgit’s reaction to Maria’s account reinforced the viewpoint that cerebral knowledge about nature should not be over-emphasised as the privileged – if not the only – pathway for meaningfully connecting with nature, in contrast to emotional and aesthetic attachments.

Maria: Aber ansonsten, nie, bis jetzt spät, späte, davon zehn Jahren so zirca. Aber ich, das hat mir immer gefallen, wollte immer dazukommen, zu diesem Verein hier, da habe ich, ich habe immer gedacht, ich kenne doch so, „die kennen alles“ –

Birgit: – ah nee! –

Maria: – „kennen jeden Vogel und jede Blume“ –

Birgit: – umm...[laughing] –.

Maria: – „ich bin doch nicht da geeigenet.“ Da bin ich aber einmal, habe meine Mut gefassen, so ging dahin, hat mir sehr gut gefallen, auch die Aktivitäten, die wir machen jetzt.

(Maria: But apart from that, never, until now, late, late, about ten years ago. But I always liked it, always wanted to join this association, [but] at that time I always thought, I thought so, “they know everything” –

Birgit: – ah no! –

Maria: – “know every bird and every flower” –

Birgit: – umm...[laughing] –.

Maria: – “I’m not suitable there.” But then I gathered my courage, went along, and really liked it, also the activities we do now.)

Compared to Birgit, who began environmental volunteering in adolescence, Maria perceived her own engagement that started in her 60s as “late”. One factor behind this “delay” is her assumption that comprehensive knowledge of nature is the prerequisite, and even a gatekeeper, for engagement with nature. This belief is reflected in Maria’s othering and self-positioning as an outsider of the community, as expressed in her remarks: “they know everything” and “I’m not suitable there”. Maria’s previous self-censoring reflects an axiological scientism (Stenmark, 1997) view of the human-nature connection, that science – knowledge and the state of knowing – is the most valuable part of connecting with nature. This view inevitably dismisses the significance of the intuitive and emotional aspects of people’s experience with nature in forging the connectedness with it, often rendering these aspects as superficial or secondary. Interestingly, as a more experienced environmental volunteer, Birgit immediately expressed her rejection of the expectation that “they know everything” through a vocal disagreement, humorous hesitation (“umm…”) and laughter. This excerpt suggests that even the most unadorned affection for nature, such as the simple feeling of “liking”, which is not grounded in scientific understanding, should be encouraged as a valuable entryway into human-nature connections, rather than overshadowed by the discourse of axiological scientism. I conclude this section with a quote from the American naturalist John Burroughs (as cited in Sobel, 1996, p.10):

Knowledge without love will not stick. But if love comes first, knowledge is sure to follow.

Hope as an Approach

During data collection, the participants’ positive vibes for nature impressed me. I frequently heard phrases such as “I enjoy it”, “it’s fun” and “I like (doing) it”, which have left me the impression that their experiences and viewpoints in relation to nature are underpinned by genuine enjoyment, satisfaction, curiosity and amazement. Meanwhile, I am not implying that my research participants hold a naïve view about human-nature relationships, or that they are ignorant of the environmental issues and the power inequalities that have caused and aggravated these problems. In contrast, they demonstrated a deep understanding of issues such as biodiversity loss, people’s disconnection from nature, the impacts of industrialisation, commercialisation and urbanisation on human-nature relationships and the appropriation of nature by capitalism. This, however, does not mean that they stick to disappointment, anger and desperation as a way of relating to or acting for nature. Instead, they value positive emotions as a meaningful approach to engaging with nature.

I previously analysed the following remark by Bob in the section “Harvesting Meaningful Connections with Nature through Embodied Experiences”. Here, I revisit this excerpt from a different perspective: positive emotion as a valued approach to connect with nature.

So, yeah, and during that time, we were discussing all kinds of environmental issues at home. I remember, I mean the 1970s and 80s there was the oil price shock. And this was when the environmental movement was really accelerated. So we were part of that. And I remember we had to be very careful with the children. We would have mealtimes and we were talking about environmental issues and problems. And at one stage we said, ‘No, we’ve got to be careful about this. We’re talking very negatively. I mean, the children have got to grow up thinking positive about the environment.’ So we made sure that they knew birds, they went on walks with us, they helped dig the ponds, sometimes willingly and sometimes reluctantly.

Bob’s remark draws a clear boundary between the “negative” and “positive” aspects of human-nature interactions: the anthropogenic environmental crisis versus the mutual flourishing engagements. On the one hand, he cautiously evaluates a mere focus on the negative aspect as potentially harmful for developing a reciprocal connection between children and nature. On the other hand, Bob values a positive construing of human-nature interaction and prioritises hope over pessimism, which is reflected in his deliberate effort to cultivate uplifting experiences with nature for his children by making nature part of family memories. Inherently encompassing positive emotions such as hope, optimism and joy, “thinking positively about the environment” is perceived to be a valued approach to nurture constructive connection with nature. This perspective aligns with Sobel’s (1996) argument that “[w]hat’s important is that children have an opportunity to bond with the natural world, to learn to love it, before being asked to heal its wounds” (p.10). Being merely exposed to environmental problems, as pointed out by Sobel, leads to ecophobia marked by hopelessness, powerlessness and a sense of lack of control, which impedes people’s motivation to build transformative connections with nature.

However, it must be acknowledged that in the context of environmental degradation, it is highly unlikely for those who are environmentally conscious to remain unaffected by the emotional burden of ecological problems, and sometimes, other people’s indifference, inaction and harmful behaviours towards nature. They have to navigate an emotional balance. During the interview, Birgit recounted a confrontation with a wooden furniture vendor at a spring fair in Luxembourg City. Concerned by the large-scale rainforest destruction in Southeast Asia resulting from the international timber trade, Birgit questioned the vendor if he was aware that his business led to deforestation and harm to indigenous communities who rely on the rainforest for their livelihood. To Birgit’s indignation, the vendor responded indifferently, saying that those impacts were not his concern and he only cared about the business’s profit. Taking this confrontation as an example, Birgit expressed her indignation over the environmental inequalities driven by the imbalanced power dynamics both among human beings and between humans and nature, and a sense of powerlessness. Yet, she still aligned with Maria, that despite these negative aspects, their seemingly mundane engagement with nature brings hope and joy, which has been sustaining their lasting motivation to act for nature.

Birgit: […] Und das deprimiert mich. Das deprimiert mich! Ich habe Depressionen deswegen, weil ich das einfach nicht verstehe.

Maria: Wenn man da machtlos ist, vielleicht…

Birgit: Ja, ja, ja. Also man, man, wenn auch auf der einen Stelle was Gutes passiert, kannst du sicher sein, 100 Kilometer daneben wird es zerstört.

Maria: Aber trotzdem um jetzt auf uns Aktivität zurück, das war ja Ihre Frage. [facing Yimin]

Birgit: Ah sicher, ja.

Maria: Auch wenn wir nicht jetzt die Welt damit retten, viel wir machen, wir sehen doch ein kleines Resultat. Nistkasten aufhängen, aufhängen, vielleicht ein paar Vögel retten, ein paar Blumen, das macht doch Freude. Also wir retten die Welt nicht dadurch. Das ist ein anderes Thema. Ja, da können wir nichts dagegen machen. Aber...

[…]

Maria: Wir machen es ja trotzdem, du auch, ne?

Birgit: Ja--!

Maria: Man darf nicht zu viel denken, die Welt, die Dunkel oder so, man muss eine kleine Arbeit da.

Birgit: Ja, auch wenn mal einer, grantig ist oder frech ist, dann ärgert man sich die erste Stunde drüber und denk aber dies und dessen, aber man vergiss sich schnell wieder und nee, man will, man macht weiter.

(Birgit: […] And that depresses me. It depresses me! I get depressed because I just don’t understand it.

Maria: When you’re powerless, maybe...

Birgit: Yes, yes, yes. I mean, even if something good happens in one place, you can be sure that 100 kilometres away it’s being destroyed.

Maria: But anyway, back to our activities, which was your question. [facing Yimin]

Birgit: Ah, sure, yes.

Maria: Even if we’re not saving the world by doing this now, we do a lot, we still see a small result. Putting up nesting boxes, maybe saving a few birds, a few flowers, that brings joy anyway. We’re not saving the world by doing this. That’s a different issue. Yes, there’s nothing we can do about that. But...

[…]

Maria: We’re doing it anyway, you too, aren’t we?

Birgit: Ye--s!

Maria: You can’t think too much, the world, the darkness or things like that, you have to [do] the little bit of work.

Birgit: Yes, even if one is grumpy or angry, you get annoyed about it for the first hour and think this and that, but you quickly forget about it and no, you want to, and you do keep doing.)

Regarding the human-nature relationship, Birgit and Maria share two opposing sets of emotions. In the face of the widespread anthropogenic environmental problems at a global scale, they both feel a sense of powerlessness, which is evident through their explicit expression, such as “when you’re powerless”, and figurative language use such as “100 kilometres away” and “we’re not saving the world”. At the same time, they do not dismiss the hope and joy that the “small results” of their mundane interactions with nature have generated. As the end of the cited excerpt suggests, what lasts and motivates is not the “darkness”, but such hope and joy. “Forgetting” about the anger and annoyance and turning to hope is not an act of avoidance, but an approach of continuing to fight for nature.

Michael’s remark resonates with this viewpoint:

It’s also important in all this work to see the positive points. Sometimes you see there are a kind of insect that was, we thought it was, it had disappeared, it is found again somewhere. So these examples are very positive. Or you see some birds begin again to nest here, so that is a positive sign. You do not have always to show the negative. That is depressing people and not going to make them stand up for more nature. If you just say we are just destroying everything and everything is going to die, people get depressed and don’t stand up to protect. Just being angry and doing nothing is not good.

In Michael’s argument, “hope” is embodied in the revival of species. A concrete example of such heartening results of conservation efforts can be found in the previous section Giving Nature a Voice, that the number of breeding Eagle Owl pairs in Luxembourg has increased from 15–20 to 22–25 from 2015 to 2020. Michael highly values the “important” role of feeling hopeful for the positive conservation outcomes in encouraging environmental behaviours, contrasting it with the negative impacts of solely addressing the environmental crisis as “depressing” and discouraging. He explicitly distanced himself from the approach of focusing exclusively on negative issues through the evaluation that “just being angry and doing nothing is not good”. This view resonates nuancedly with Moore’s (1992, as cited in Sobel, 1996, p.9) findings about the effects of West Germany’s curriculum implementation that intended to raise pupils’ awareness of the environmental crisis in the 1980s:

Concerned about acid rain effects on German forests, the ozone hole, heavy-metal pollution in European rivers, the aftermath of Chernobyl, and other environmental problems, the Germans implemented a conscientious national curriculum endeavor. […] As a result of the curriculum initiative, education officials found that students felt hopeless and disempowered. The problems were seemingly so widespread and beyond their control chat the students tended to turn away from, rather than face up to, participating in local attempts at problem solving.

As the above examples of how people negotiate their emotional perception of environmental issues suggest, positive emotion, especially hope, is perceived as an effective approach to encourage and shape constructive connection with nature. It is noteworthy that such hope is not random or naïve, but is based on practical engagement with nature and understanding of conservation endeavour. The hope grounded in practice and cognitive awareness offers emotional support for (re)connecting with nature.

Affective Response as a Gain

Finally, yet importantly, positive affective responses, such as fascination and relief, are perceived as a valued outcome of meaningful connection with nature. For example, Laura observed how her emotional intimacy and fascination toward birds have developed in the course of her engagement at the ringing station:

Das heißt, also, ich bin nicht so, extrem Vogel bezogen, ich merke jetzt mit der Zeit, weil ich jetzt schon so lange dahin gehe, dass ich mittlerweile so kann sagen, diese Vögel merke ich lieber als diese, und ich entwickle langsam, bin ich selbst, bin ich so mich beobachten selbst, es erstaunt mich so, immer mehr eine Faszination, entwickle.

(That means, well, I’m not extremely bird-oriented, [but] I’ve noticed over time, because I’ve been going there for so long now, that now I can say that I like these birds better than those, and I’m slowly developing, I’m observing myself, and I’m amazed at how a fascination is developing more and more.)

As elaborated in the section Interacting with Nature as Serious Leisure, Laura began participating in bird ringing not because she was a bird enthusiast, as she said, “extremely bird-oriented”. While her connection with birds was not kindled by a preceding intuitive attachment, a positive emotional resonance with birds has developed in the process of her practical interaction with the species. In this case, while emotional connection does not serve as a spark that explains how Laura started to engage with birds, as an appreciated outcome of the process, it articulates why she returned to the animal and the wetland reserve for a long-term attachment.

From Michael’s viewpoint, the amazement emerged from experiencing and learning about nature plays an essential role in forging a profound connection with nature:

Michael: […] wenn du, eine Schnecke nimmst du und du siehst wie die über also eine Klinge klettern kann, dann hast du Respekt vor der Schnecke. You, bestaund, ja? Staunen.

Yimin: Yes, it’s amazing.

Michael: Ah It’s amazing that! It’s not possible. I can’t do that. I will be cut, the blood will be shed when I touch it, but the Schnecke [snails], he can do it. So much like things. You must, so “Aha-Erlebnis”, “Oh-ha!”, ist fanstastisch. Sie ist dann, son-, wie eine Pusteblume so, Löwenzahn, da fliegen die Samen, dann, die haben hier Fallschirme dran. Die können überall hinfliegen, so, die lässt sich überall wieder und dann kommt eine neue. Auch das sind so Wunder, wie du sagst, „Oh-ha!“ Die muss man den Kindern und den Erwachsenen auch manchmal noch tragen.

(Michael: […] when you, you take a snail and see how it can climb over a blade, then you’ll have respect for the snail. You are amazed, yeah? Amazement. […So much like things.] You must, such an “Aha-moment”, “Oh-ha!”, is fantastic. It’s, like a blowball, dandelion, the seeds fly away, and they have parachutes. They can fly everywhere, and then they land anywhere and a new one comes. That’s also a wonder, like you say, “Oh-ha!” You must let children and also adults experience that.)

Michael highly values the sense of wonder and amazement as the emotional outcome from experiences with nature, as indicated by his repeated use of the modal verb “must”, which conveys a strong belief in necessity. His vivid emphasis on the “Aha-moment” points to how powerfully the feelings of surprise, wonder, joy and awe that are gained in direct experience with nature touch people, and therefore form a deep inner connection with nature.

In addition to amazement, Michael argues that relief holds significant emotional value in the connection with nature:

I think the world for kids is being concentrated in the cubic classroom, disconnected of the real nature. That’s the main problem, I think. Therefore kids are going to explode and. There are no more, nicht mehr geerdet [not grounded anymore]. So when we have here, this must be geerdet [grounded]. There must be contact with the soil, to get when there is too much Volt, it’s going through your body and it’s going in the soil. You don’t die from it. I think that we need also, we have to be in contact with nature and soil.

Through the metaphor of earthing wire, Michael powerfully expressed his belief that contact with nature provides stress relief and emotional comfort, thereby playing a crucial role in supporting well-being, much like a grounding wire channels high voltage safely into the ground in case of danger. While this metaphor vividly illustrates relief as one of the perceived emotional benefits of connecting with nature, Bob’s reflection on the human-nature relationship through the lens of mortality offers a clear and heartfelt expression of this perspective:

I’ve thought now twice about mortality and you just get used to the idea of, you know, we all die, we don’t have to die just yet, but still, I mean, that’s the way of life. And I think that’s one of the things that nature study has taught me as well. I mean, I have no religious beliefs. I observe how life starts and ends in nature. And we’re part of nature too. We’re just another animal, mammal species. And life starts. You lead your life, you reproduce and you die. Just like every other species. I find that very reassuring.

This excerpt essentially presents a critical reflection on human exceptionalism. From the perspective of the life cycle and mortality, human beings are simply living organisms and therefore are not more privileged than other mortal species in nature. In this sense, Bob blurred the boundary between human and nature in his discourse: nature is no longer an “other”, but an entity to which we belong; animals are not outsiders either, but our kin. In Bob’s case, this perception meaningfully extended beyond a pure rational cognition, but also held deep emotional significance. As someone living with terminal cancer, the insights he gained from nature brought him reassurance and peace. The relief that Bob found in nature at the end of his life made his lifelong connection with it profoundly moving.

The present section elaborates on the third dimension that participants value in their connection with nature: emotional resonance. My findings suggest that emotional experiences shape how people initiate, sustain, and construe the meanings of their connection with nature. The emotional experiences with nature closely interplay with the other two forms of interaction with nature: embodied experiences and intellectual engagement. Viewing the three perspectives comprehensively, I find that they mutually shape one another without being mutually exclusive, nor do they form any linear cause-and-effect relationships in which one serves as a prerequisite or consequence of the others.