Spending time in nature is one of strongest ways people connect to their world and begin to care about the environment and other living things. Environmental education helps connect people to nature and facilitate learning in nature, about nature, and for nature. The nature-connection is especially important for young people and how they learn and develop.
Transcript:
My name is Marcos Trinidad. I'm Center Director at the Audubon Center at Debs Park.
The way I look at connecting with nature is it's definitely placed based. I think a lot of how we were raised with, depending on where we live, whether it's a city, the country, or more rural areas, we have a different interpretation of what nature is.
A lot of, I think what happens with us here at Debs Park, we're in a 282-acre open space area. And folks normally don't think of Los Angeles as having a lot of open space, especially, you know, two miles from downtown LA. So, when we do, say, habitat restoration, or restoration in general, a lot of that for us is actually restoring the connection from people to the land.
Being outdoors and you know, having that as the classroom stimulates so many different senses, in our body and just triggers so many different things within ourselves that I feel open us up to new experiences. We're so used to being indoors. We're so used to being in a car. We're so used to being in a house. We're so used to being in a building, that we often close the rest of the world off in a way and our senses are not as stimulated.
So I think when we're outdoors, we're able to get that. We're able to smell. We're able to listen to all the different sounds. We're able to touch the different textures, sometimes taste different, different food. And it pushes us sometimes out of our comfort zone. You know, we're out of that one room that was designed for us to just sit there and listen to what someone is saying or what someone is teaching us. And I feel when this happens, it opens us up in a way that is very conducive to learning.
Being outdoors. it leads to a lot of different activities. It works with health, mental health, physical health. It's healing. It's being able to go out outdoors, see that nature exists everywhere, and able to make that connection.