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Nature and Wildlife Experiences:Feelings of Well-being and Restoration

Susanna Curtin, PhD13th November 2008

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Aims of the research

Brief introduction to the study group

Methodological approach

Emotional responses to nature

Stop all the clocks: temporality and

transcendence

Well-being and spiritual fulfilment

Overview

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A wide spectrum of tourist-wildlife opportunities exist (Orams 1996)

An assumed growing demand met by a burgeoning supply of opportunities (UNEP 2006).

Not an homogeneous market.

There are various typologies of wildlife tourist from the ‘serious’ to the ‘casual’ and from the ‘generalist’ to the ‘specialist’

However, it is distinct from other nature-based tourism insofar as the main aim is to visit a destination in order to see and gain an understanding of the local fauna and/or flora.

Introducing the context

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Typical companies

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The experiential and the psychological benefits of wildlife tourism have not been adequately explored.

Therefore the intention of this research was to provide a deeper understanding of what it means to enjoy wildlife experiences, namely:

the content of what is enjoyed, the process through which people attend to and

perceive wildlife and the emotional responses it provokes.

Aims of the research

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It follows that exploration of emotions and connectivity to nature be in a qualitative subjective manner which is grounded in language and experience (Jardine 1998)

The philosophy behind the research is that: there are multiple realities of an experience yet within these are commonalities which may be exposed and extrapolated and potentially quantified at a later date.

Choosing the approach

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Allows an emic (inside) perspective – i.e. experiencing the

phenomenon first hand.

Enquiring(Interviewing)

Experiencing (Participant Observation)

Examining(Analysis)

The three stages of ethnography

(Wolcott 1992)

Implies a strategy of immersion in the research setting with the objective of sharing in people’s lives while attempting to learn

about their symbolic world

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Data collection

Involved the participation in two organised wildlife holidays:

1. The Autumn migration in Andalucia (which also included moths, plants and butterflies as well as birds) and,

2. A bird and whale-watching expedition in Baja California, Sea of Cortez (also included other land and marine mammals)

Enabled insight across the dedicated wildlife-tourism product spectrum from birding to general naturalist holidays (Curtin and Wilkes 2005).

Both observations were overt. Data represents two field journals (observations + reflections), photographs and 20 in-depth narrative interviews with participants.

The Migration in Andalucia, Southern

Spain

On tour with

‘The Travelling Naturalist’

Baja California (Little Galapagos)

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Baja California

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• Aged 35+, high proportion of retired or older participants with post–secondary education and higher than average incomes.

• Also fit the notion of serious leisure participants (Stebbins 1992) in that they display:

1. perseverance in the activity;

2. ‘career’ or experience development;

3. evidence of knowledge, training and development of skills;

4. durable benefits such as a sense of accomplishment, enhancing social image and facilitating social interaction;

5. a unique ‘ethos’ or social world and idioculture, and finally,

6. a tendency to identify with the chosen pursuit (social identification).

Participant profile

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Human- animal affiliations

Throughout history man has co-existed with animal populations and has formed different relationships with them (Ingold 1988)

Urbanisation and industrialisation has had a profound affect on our relationship with nature (Gossling 2002; Urry 1990; McCannell 1976)

Urban theory is anthropocentric as opposed to eco-centric: development is based upon the conquest of nature by culture to satisfy utilitarian market values.

Paradoxically, this decontextualisation from nature has fuelled a resurgent interest in biophilia (Wilson 1984) – an inherent biological desire to reconnect.

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Nature and human well-being

Wildlife and nature tourism arguably has extrinsic (monetary) values.

But more importantly has intrinsic ones which are in danger of being overlooked in the quest for economic and social development.

Logic would suggest that after 10,000 generations having to survive in a natural environment, human evolution would have programmed our genes to perform best in this setting.

By the same logic, it would be surprising if the rapid disconnection from nature in just a few generations did not cause us some difficulty to adapt to a new environment (i.e. ‘affluenza’, depression / mental disorders).

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The importance of the natural world

• The shared instincts, behaviours and spaces of humans and animals position nature and animality as an important part of human culture and development (Ingold 1988).

• There is a whole body of literature which investigates the psychology of the human need to commune with animals, plants, landscapes and wilderness.

• The fields of eco-psychology, socio-biology, environmental psychology and deep ecology reveal interesting findings with regards to the relationship between human health and the natural world; asserting as it does that being able to experience nature is an important component of human well-being (Bird 2007)

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The human relationship with nature is one of individual, intimate communication, often beyond accurate articulation.

A sense of wonderment and awe is a principal theme.

Wonderment is an aroused state of cognition. There are three perspectives to this state of wonderment, namely: its beauty, nature’s design and a feeling of being somehow connected.

The importance of the natural world

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Beyond words…….

Spontaneous, awe-inspiring and thought provoking wildlife experiences remain on the edge of speech.

Thrift (2000:36) reminds us that “95 per cent of embodied thought is non-cognitive, yet academic attention merely concentrates on the cognitive dimension of the conscious ‘I’” which ignores the embodied dispositions, or instinctive responses, which are biologically wired. Therefore much of human-life is lived in a non-cognitive world.

Therefore words often can fall short when describing human experiences.

In the existential, humanistic school of psychology Chawla (2002) would argue that there is a ‘silent intuition’ of the union of self and other, individual and world: an at-one-ness with nature.

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Beyond words…..

“It’s that precious moment and I know that people go ‘oh

wow - isn’t it fantastic’ and we all do that and we did that

yesterday but it doesn’t describe it, I mean words just….like

when I get home and email my friends and my family about

the trip there is no way that I can explain so I just say that

there are no words to describe what the whales were

like……..

It is sort of a feeling that you have…. a kind of real sense

of wellbeing and positive rush of being really really happy

(Tanya, Baja).

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Emotional response:awe, wonder and beauty

“I loved watching the hundreds of seabirds which would

follow the boat in the Antarctic, there were albatross, skuas,

gulls, petrels, hundreds of them and I used to stand at the

back of the boat, I could watch them for hours it was like a

ballet. So beautiful” (Sophie, Baja).

“It’s like those Frigate Birds, they were so graceful and such

beautiful movements and everything You look at them and

you think isn’t that clever, isn’t that wonderful what they do”

(Dawn, Baja).

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Transcendency is a state of being or existence above and beyond the limits of material experience

A depth of concentration that prevents the intrusion of unwanted thoughts into consciousness

Transcendence of the self

A loss of time perception

Deep contemplation,temporality and transcendence

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• ‘How many times in a lifetime does one experience nature at work like this? There are blows all in front of the bow, right out to mid-horizon. A rough estimate is 30-35 Grey whales. We could hear and smell their breaths. The synchronicity of the whales is beyond all comprehension. One minute we are looking at all the blows, the next flukes, and the next they are all gone as they dive and surface in time with each other despite the fact that they are spread over such a large area (Journal, Baja)

• “I feel very relaxed and at awe with everything: one of those truly happy moments when you are totally unconcerned with the trivia” (Dawn, Baja).

Stop all the clocks: temporality and transcendence

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“What is this world if full of care I have no time to stand and stare’”….

Price (1999:252) suggests that “nature is a ‘refuge from modern life; a reprieve from irony and self-awareness”.

It is a stepping outside of everyday trivia and into a different world, a more real world where there is a natural rhythm to events rather than a rhythm dictated by artificial time constraints and socialisation (Durkheim 1968).

Modern, fast time dissipates and is replaced by nature’s ‘glacial’ rhythms: real time as opposed to clock time

Cyclical as opposed to linear time.

Temporality

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Wildlife watching can fill in time;

Wildlife and nature mark the passing of time: the first swallow, the last swift, the changing colours;

It allows the creation of time: “Just stepping out of the rat race for a few moments to watch the birds on the feeder”;

Time is reflected in the length of the sighting

Wildlife watching can render one suspended in time – reliving the moment

Time stops: : “You are so absorbed in what you are doing” (Penny, DWT).

Wildlife experiences and the dimensions of time

Wildlife Watching and the Multiple Dimensions of Time

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Peak experiences and animal encounters

Peak experience is described as “moments of highest happiness and fulfilment" Maslow (1964:73) in which an individual might feel:

“disorientation in space and time, ego transcendence and self-forgetfulness and a perception that the world is good, beautiful and desirable: feeling passive, receptive and humble and a sense that polarities and dichotomies have been transcended or resolved: and feelings of being lucky, fortunate or graced” (Keltner and Haidt 2003:302).

All these feelings are explicitly represented in the in vivo responses from participants on tour.

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The animal or nature-inspired ‘peak’

“Seeing a beautiful bird or animal is a moment of beauty, a moment of insight, a moment of revelation and inspiration, whatever and its gone sometimes in a flash, like a moment of music which makes you shudder and then its over” (James, DWT).

“I will remember the feeling of swimming with these sea lions for ever; I feel very privileged” (Dawn, Baja).

“the humpback whale who breached no less than thirteen times right next to the boat, the grey whales in courtship, the close proximity of the humming bird feeding from the cactus flower and seeing the tracks of the Iberian lynx and her cubs in Andalusia” (Travel diary - Baja).

These are indeed extraordinary and deeply fulfilling experiences.

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“Not in the sense that you become euphoric and kind of go

round with a smile on your face all the time but nature gives

you that sort of contentedness ….. it is like it’s sustaining

you in a sense…(Peter, Andalucía)

I mean I like going away but also I like home but I think the

reason I want to go home is because you have been

nourished. I know it sounds corny but it is like nourishment

for me. Something to sustain me for when I go home and

until my next trip” (Tanya, Baja).

Wider benefitsNature as sustenance

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Conclusions

This research suggests that experiences in nature, whether on holiday (or at home), has the potential to:

Provide fulfilment, a heightened sense of wonder and awe

Can allow participants time to reconnect with themselves and the world around them.

Allows time for contemplation, can halt time and sustain them beyond the immediate experience of hum drum life.

And is important for sustenance, mental health and well-being.

Thus fitting Kaplan and Kaplan’s (1989) Attention Restoration theory

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ART says there are four components present in a restorative environment:

1. Being away (Escape) - a psychological distance from routine mental contents

2. Extent - Orderly and understandable components

3. Fascination - Effortless attention, absorption

4. Compatibility - Person's inclinations match demands of environment

Restoration is something which lets you reframe the situation causing stress, with absorbing stimuli, giving a feeling of escape, and that watching wildlife / nature tends to offer all of these things.

Conclusions