By Micah Mortali

We evolved in intimate contact with the land, the seasons, and nature. Rewilding re-acquaints us with our environment and ourselves. It draws us out to experience the sweetness of a freshly picked wild berry, the interspecies connection we make when we come eye to eye with a wild creature, and the fellowship of friends sitting on the earth sharing stories of their day.

Rewilding calls us from our indoor environments and virtual worlds and asks us to adapt to the real world, the natural world. It helps us recover and enliven our senses, which may have been dulled by staying largely indoors.

By stepping outdoors, lifting our noses to the sky, smelling the wind, taking a long view, and becoming students of nature, we can better discern the wisdom of nature and remain close to it. Here are a few ways we can connect more with nature, no matter where we live:

Take Off Your Shoes

Life-force deficit is a loss of sensory stimulation from the ecosystems and life-forms that our nervous system evolved with. Addressing this loss is part of the impetus for human rewilding.

Sitting at a desk, staring at a computer, being inside an office—cut off from sunlight, fresh air, and the sounds of nature—we live an indoor life. When rewilding, we come to the outdoors with no agenda. When I get home from a long day at work, I take off my shoes and walk barefoot on the grass, no matter the weather. Nature is the perfect balance to endless meetings, right angles, and stale office air. In nature, I don’t have to be someone; I can just be. 

The simple practice of walking barefoot on the earth and bringing awareness to the sensual experience of contact and connection can be life changing. It’s about so much more than just being barefoot. It’s about opening yourself to sensual contact and relationship with nature. Making physical contact with the earth through the senses is one of the pillars of human rewilding.

Give Thanks

The next time you experience a refreshing walk through new fallen snow, a perfect sunset, or the gift of seeing a wild animal, consider offering a gesture of gratitude to the living earth. Drawing your hands to prayer in front of the heart, you can simply say “thank you.” 

You might offer a small token, such as an acorn, a pine cone, or small pebble, to show your thanks. You could also make an earth mandala, drawing a circular symbol with natural objects you gather, and offer it with gratitude. As the days and months go by, the mandala will be received into the earth. 

You could also take a handful of water from a pond, lake, stream, bay, or ocean and speak your words of love and gratitude into the water, allowing your prayer to slip through your fingers and become one with the water.

Maybe you would like to burn a locally and sustainably harvested ceremonial incense such as cedar or mug wort, placing your intentions in the burning ember so that the rising smoke carries your prayer of gratitude and love to the heavens. These are small gestures, but they are powerful. These actions build a habit of focusing on the many ways we are in a deep state of inter-being with all of creation.

Forest Bathe 

Forest bathing in Japanese is shinrin yoku, a term coined by Tomohide Akiyama, director of the Japanese Forestry Agency. Shinrin means “forest,” and yoku means “to bathe.” The official definition of the practice is “taking in, in all of our senses, the forest atmosphere.”

Shinrin yoku is not about roughing it in the wilderness; in fact, forest bathing stations in Japan have bathrooms and concession stands. The idea is to make the forest accessible so that you can receive the therapeutic benefits of immersing all five senses in the forest’s embrace. 

In 1990, Yoshifumi Miyazaki, PhD, measured the effects of shinrin yoku and found these proven benefits: 

Reduces physiological stress, depressive symptoms, and hostility

Improves sleep, vigor, and feelings of aliveness

Lowers cortisol levels

Decreases blood pressure and pulse rate

Increases heart rate variability

Improves immune system functioning due to decrease in stress hormones

Forest bathing’s benefits go far beyond stress reduction and immune boosting. It also fosters a connection between human beings and nature, which contributes to human rewilding.

Walk with Awareness

The average modern human has no idea how to walk in the woods. Shoes turn most people’s feet into iron-clad tanks that crash and crush, so that they have no awareness of what is underfoot. The modern shoe is the house of the foot, creating a tight seal that separates our feeling and sensing feet from the textures and contours of the living earth. Perhaps it was reading about hobbits that first inspired me to want to walk through the woods quietly and with awareness.

Here is an awareness practice for walking in the woods that I call “Don’t Step on a Twig!” The goal with this walking meditation is to avoid stepping on twigs and making loud sounds that startle the forest. In order not to do this, though, there are a few things you need to do. The first is that you need to pay attention to how you are walking. 

Most of us walk heel to toe, which means that when we take a step, our heel lands first and then we roll onto the front of the foot. This way of walking came about when we started wearing shoes with heels and thick soles for walking in cities and on cobblestone streets. 

When our ancestors walked barefoot, however, they walked toe to heel. They explored the terrain with the ball of the big toe, rolled their weight out to the pinky toe side of the foot, and then gradually lowered the heel. When you walk this way, you have much more awareness of the terrain. 

Try to walk this way barefoot at home before trying it in a park or in the woods and notice the difference: Lift your foot slowly, place the ball of the big toe first, feeling to make sure that the surface below doesn’t make a sound. Then roll to the outer edge of your foot, still sensing the surface below, and adjusting accordingly. Slowly and mindfully, lower your heel down. 

If you sense something under your heel, do not lower it all the way down. Instead, keep the weight on the front of your foot as you lift the other foot to continue walking. You’ll need to keep your knees slightly bent, and you may even place your hands on your thighs just above your knees for support. You will also need to walk more slowly and mindfully than you normally do. 

If you do this while breathing consciously, the combination of breath awareness and slow, mindful steps will completely change your experience when you’re outdoors moving over land and through different ecosystems. You may also find yourself blending into the landscape. It is important to pause regularly when walking in this way and to pay attention to what is moving all around you. Over time you will find that your senses get stronger.

Forage and Eat with the Season 

To bring rewilding to food is to practice gratitude for the gifts of this earth that sustain us. Foraging is the practice of gathering up the food that grows wild on the land where we live.

Each season brings with it sights, smells, textures, sounds, and flavors. The circular rhythm of the seasons grounds us as we naturally attune to them in our daily habits, sleep, and diet. Today, eating with the seasons is coming back, and we know that eating locally is good for our health as well as the planet.

My favorite practice for attuning to the food cycles of my bioregion is to forage for food growing naturally on the land. Foraging brings the earth to our bodies in deep and nourishing ways. The physical nutrition energizes and sustains us, and we also receive something else, an embodied connection with the trees, soil, plants, and water that provide this food to us.

Spring Forage: Ramps (Allium tricocum)

From late winter into early spring, the ramp is one of the first green shoots to poke out of the melting snow. The first ramp shoots let me know spring has truly arrived. Like other onions, these wild ones grow from a bulb underground. 

The base of a ramp is white with a slight pink hue. The part you eat above the base forms into green, wide, spear-shaped leaves. I cut them off just above the ground—never pull them up by the roots—and fill up a small shopping bag. If you harvest ramps, be sure to leave the bulbs in the ground so they can keep growing and be found again next year. I make sure that I don’t overharvest and always leave about eighty percent of the ramps in any given patch. 

Ramps have a delicious, mild, onion-like flavor. You can sauté them on their own or with dandelion greens and flowers you harvested to enjoy a true foraged spring meal. You can also sauté them and fold them into an omelet, chop and add them to soups, sprinkle on pizza, and even make a pesto. Wild foods like ramps are healthful and precious.

Summer Forage: Staghorn Sumac (Rhus typhina)

Staghorn sumac is a shrub native to eastern north America that is found in sandy or rocky soil. It is not to be confused with poison sumac, which has greyish-white berries that grow and hang down in clusters. 

Staghorn sumac produces large, deep red berry clusters that point up to the sky, and its branches have a velvety surface, like that on newly grown deer antlers. Staghorn sumac often grows in disturbed areas, open lots, and along fences and the edges of open spaces. The red berry clusters can be picked in late summer and soaked in cool water to make a pink “sumac-ade,” a delicious tart beverage that tastes a lot like lemonade. 

The berry cones contain a lot of vitamin C. You only need to soak the berry clusters for five to fifteen minutes for the water to be infused by both the color and flavor of the berries. The longer the berries soak, the more sumac flavor. You can add your favorite sweetener to taste. I prefer maple syrup and like to drink my sumac-ade over ice. Because sumac is such an easy plant to identify, forage, and prepare, it is a great food to forage for beginners and children.

Fall Forage: Hickory Nuts

Hickory is a tough, strong tree. Its wood is very hard and dense, and it has long been used to make tool handles and baseball bats. Shagbark hickory bark peels off the tree trunks in long, vertical strips, giving the trees their shaggy appearance. 

Hickory trees produce nuts that fall to the ground in September and October. Of the different varieties of hickory trees, shagbark hickory nuts taste best. The nuts are oval, about an inch to two long and a little over a half inch to an inch wide. They’re covered in a green casing that is sectioned in four quarters. When the nuts are ripe, the outer casing comes off easily. Hickory nuts are edible directly out of the shell and taste similar to a pecan or a walnut. They have a slightly sweet nutty flavor and can be used in place of either pecans or walnuts in your favorite recipes. 

Before almonds and other nuts grown in California were transported nationwide, gathering hickory nuts in the fall was a classic pastime. Hickory-nut pie was a staple on the Thanksgiving table in the 1800s and early 1900s. Most people today have no idea that hickory nuts are an edible and abundant food source.

Winter Forage: Eastern White Pine (Pinus strobus)

In the depths of winter, the eastern white pine, like other evergreens, holds on to its green needles. Rich in vitamin C, the needles can be used to make a comforting tea. The eastern white pine needles grow in packets of five, which is an easy way to identify it. The five needles of the white pine are also symbolic of the five nations of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy, which chose the white pine to be the great “Tree of Peace.” 

The weapons of the warring tribes are said to have been buried under the Tree of Peace when they joined together as one. The Iroquois culture and form of governance are known to have inspired our founders and the representative democracy they established for the United States. 

To make a bright, citrus-pine-flavored tea from white pine needles, you will want to gather at least twenty packets of white pine needles. Rub a couple of the packets between your hands to release the pine resin, as you offer a gesture of thanks to the trees for this provision. You can drop the crushed needles into a pot of freshly boiled water and allow them to steep for five to fifteen minutes. I like to cut them up into smaller pieces to help release the oils before steeping them. 

Strain the needles from the boiling water and pour the tea into a mug. Before sipping, hold the cup up near your nose and take a few deep inhalations. Drink as is or sweeten with maple syrup or honey. Enjoy!

Search for Animal Tracks

Tracks tell us that even though we may not see animals moving on the land, they are out there, sharing this land. Paying attention to animal tracks, signs, and scat is another way to reconnect with the wild.

When tracking with mindfulness, practice the “Animal-Track Mandala Meditation.” When you find an animal’s tracks, get down low on the land so you can look at it closely. Kneel, squat, or lie down on your belly. Get close enough so that you can see all of the features of the track—the depressions from the individual toe pads or claws, the punches in the soil from the nails, and any variations in the depth of the tracks. Whether or not you can identify the animal who made this track, take time to study the track intently, as if it were a mandala designed to deepen meditation. 

As you gaze at the track, let go of whatever else you might be doing. Let your attention be single pointed, as you scan all the small features. Smell the earth and the air around you and notice if you can pick up any scents left behind by the creature. Some animals, like fox, leave a musky scent. 

Imagine the animal stepping on this exact piece of earth before you were here. Open your awareness to the presence of this animal, feel the animal here in this space with you. Stretch your mind with this awareness and sense where this animal might be at this moment. Then take a few breaths and feel how the earth underneath you and the air all around you is like an ocean that connects you with the spirit and presence of this wild being. Take a moment to express gratitude for the gift of this track and respect for the thread that connects you with this creature.

Urban Rewilding

Take some time right now to reflect on your connection with nonhuman life-forms on this earth. What would it look like and what would it feel like to invite a rekindling of your relationships with other species? What calls out to you? Are there small actions you can start with? No matter where you live, here are a few options to get started on rewilding:

Bird watching. In urban and suburban areas, bird watching is a great way to reconnect with the more-than-human world. As David Lindo, better known as the Urban Birder, reminds us, “Look up!” This gives you a broader perspective immediately, and you will be surprised by the birds that frequently appear in pocket parks, tree-lined streets, yards, and gardens. Today, birdwatchers are younger, more urban, and more diverse, and they’re also connecting with each other and advocating to protect the earth and its species.

Become an amateur naturalist. Learn about the trees, plants, animals, insects, and other features of the land where you live. Use field guides to learn what trees grow near your home. Learn about the wild edibles that grow near you. Pay attention to the birds. Are there watersheds nearby? Where does the water flow from? Where does it flow to?

Nature meditation. There is no substitute for sitting outside every day and getting to know the creatures you share the land with around your home. After sitting quietly for a few minutes, birds and other animals may appear and go about their business around you. Some people have actually befriended chickadees and hummingbirds, who eat or drink from their hands.

Cat or dog rescue. Adopting a pet allows you to have a relationship with another species that can be profound. Animals experience the world differently. Observing them and interacting with them, we broaden our senses and awareness.

Join local organizations that support the land. Make friends with local conservation, land management, and other environmental organizations that are active in your area. Perhaps there are walking or hiking groups, foraging clubs, craftspeople, or other groups you can learn and explore with.

Final Thoughts

In rewilding we awaken to the miracle of life, give thanks for every breath, and assume our role as caretakers of this precious and sacred living earth. We remove the shoes that insulate us from the energy flowing in the grass and through the earth and stones. We open our windows and listen to the language of birds, wind, and clouds; the voices of thunder, rain, and space; and the sounds of the moon and the stars. In the words of the poet Walt Whitman, “After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, and so on…what remains? Nature remains.”

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Micah Mortali, MA, is the founder of the Kripalu School of Mindful Outdoor Leadership, one of the largest and most established centers for yoga-based education in the world. An avid outdoorsman, Mindful Outdoor guide, and popular meditation teacher, Mortali has been leading groups in wilderness and retreat settings for twenty years. He holds an MA in health arts and sciences from Goddard College.

Well Being Journal adapted the above excerpt from Rewilding: Meditations, Practices, and Skills for Awakening in Nature by Micah Mortali. Sounds True, December 2019. Reprinted with permission.