The potential of animism: experiential outdoor education in the ecological education paradigm

Providing experiences that reconnect people with nature so as to help counter human-induced planetary degradation is increasingly becoming a priority of outdoor experiential educators. The popularity of place-based education literature and practice demonstrates a move towards authentic and connected experiences within both natural and not-so-natural settings. My intention with this article is to explore what the notion of reconnecting might mean for the philosophy that underpins our practice of outdoor experiential education. Philosophy (and maybe cosmology) is useful here, for if we aim to reestablish some lost connection we would do well to describe the nature of the “nature” we intend our participants to reach out to. For instance, I found myself wondering that if, as is often stated, we are a part of nature (and, ipso facto, we are nature, at least inasmuch as any other single element we might choose to pick out of the world), what might it mean for outdoor experiential education practice to say that we need to “reconnect with nature”? Further to this, what unexamined contradictions might exist within experiential education practice that currently seeks to reconnect with nature?