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12 Sense of Place and the Physical Senses in Outdoor Environmental Learning
- Indiana University Press
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12 Sense of Place and the Physical Senses in Outdoor Environmental Learning Matthew R. Auer Public and Environmental Affairs and Hutton Honors College The expressions ‘‘five senses’’ and ‘‘sense of place’’ share a common noun and a comparable purpose in environmental studies. Both have to do with orientation, and both are about connecting people to proximate spaces and places. But sense of place, unlike physical, organ-mediated sensory perception, has normative dimensions (Feld and Basso 1997). Conscience, no less than cognition, is inherent in the sensing of place; we can literally feel things in physical spaces, but particular physical spaces also evince particular feelings. The two together—the physical senses and subjective sensibilities—can provide students with a more indelible learning experience than either type of ‘‘sense’’ can a√ord on its own. In this chapter, we consider a field exercise that animates and integrates both the physical senses and the sense of place. Sense of Place and the Physical Senses in Outdoor Environmental Learning ⭈ 143 Lessons from a Woodlot At many colleges and universities, campus environs o√er suitable laboratories to test the five senses approach to environmental awareness and to inculcate students ’ sense of place. By the five senses approach, we mean the strategy of using all five traditional, physical senses to help discover and understand the world around us. Consider wooded areas, including ‘‘pocket’’ woodlots that are too small to constitute forests but large enough to support di√erent layers of vegetation (herbs, shrubs, understory, and canopy trees), animals, and other living and nonliving matter. These sites are ideal for promoting environmental literacy through the physical senses and through contemplation. It helps for the instructor to provide a bit of local history so as to portray a dynamic landscape, over time. Sense of place at this site is mutable, depending on who lived there, when, doing what. Instructors should not give away the whole story, however. A key learning objective is to encourage students to discover, on their own, how the site may have been used in the recent and much more distant past. Below, we also consider how students might go about conceptualizing the site’s future. A variety of natural resource markers, as well as remnants of human activities, provide students with ample hints about site history. These (primarily) biotic hints about the past can be detected through all of the physical senses. For the purpose of doing plant identification or vegetation measurement, it would be enough to measure the trees’ diameters at breast height and toggle between di√erent field guides to inventory the shrub and herb layers. Among the five traditional, physical senses, this approach leans most heavily on sight, and to some extent, touch, as the students steady their calipers or rulers against the tree stems. But we can draw in the other senses, too. Manicured lawns that border many wooded areas are cornucopias of edible herbs. When properly washed, ground ivy (Glechoma hederacea) and wood sorrel (Oxalis corniculata) are nutritious and good tasting accompaniments to any salad, for example. The peppery tasting red clover (Trifolium pratense) is a key nitrogen-fixer in our fields and farms. It provides a good illustration of synergies between the natural economy and the market economy. Clover seed is deliberately mixed in with grass seed when pastureland is sown. English ivy (Hedera helix) and euonymus (Euonymus fortunei) are typical groundcovers on many college campuses. They frequently invade campus woodlots , too. These two non-native species can become invasive pests. Their presence in the woods, and the nuisance they cause for other organisms, animate abstract concepts like ecological footprint. English ivy illustrates the ecological tradeo√s that flow from seemingly benign landscaping decisions. [34.236.152.203] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 11:21 GMT) 144 ⭈ matthew r. auer Sights, textures, and tastes are part of the experience. But so is sound. The nasal ‘‘yank yank’’ call of the white-breasted nuthatch (Sitta carolinensis) is unmistakable and allows for positive identification even if visual confirmation is not possible. It is a means to tackle the topic of mutualism among birds, since nuthatches often flock with black-capped chickadees (Parus atricapillus) and tufted titmice (Parus bicolor). One theory has it that, by traveling as a flock, each bird is at less risk of predation. But the di√erent species do not compete intensely for the same food sources. Sometimes these birds zone in on nearby seed feeders, which summons a comment about mutualism between birds...