Podcast

Spending a lot of time outdoors? You might find that you’ve started caring about the environment more than you used to. While Amy was a kid, “environmentalism” was seen by her family as a bad thing. But today she knows loving nature means taking care of it. And so she’s started doing some simple tasks to put those feelings into action.

As so many faith traditions celebrate holy days in the spring, Amy has been thinking about the spirituality of heading outside and the ways her faith background misses the boat on understanding and appreciating spirituality in nature.

The great thing about nature is that it will always have what you need. But how do you know what that is? In this episode, Amy talks about a little bit of her journey to understand how to get what she needs from heading outside.

If you love spending time in nature like it’s your job, you might start looking for ways to make that literally true. If that’s you, you’re not alone — it’s the inspiration behind the careers of many members of the outdoor industry. But how do you make the jump from one industry to another? And is making nature your job a good idea?

Those are just some of the questions Jenna Celmer helps address through the outdoor industry job company Basecamp Outdoor and its Facebook-based networking group. In this episode Jenna talks through the why and how of making the jump into the outdoor industry.

What are your expectations for yourself? For how you get outside? For what you find there? For what you do there?

As the weathers changes into spring and summer, it’s easy to look outside and expect yourself to want to be there more or experience certain things when you get out there. But what would happen if you simply listened to yourself instead?

In this Outdoor Diary episode, Amy talks about getting outside without self-judgment and how hard it is for her to do so.

Spend enough time outside and you’ll start to notice all of the things growing around you — and that some of those things look delicious. From greens to berries, to gardening, fishing and evening raising chickens, nature in your backyard can be full of food.

For today’s guest Tamar Haspel, the possibilities of gathering or growing at least a portion of her own meals, an experience she calls “first-hand food,” became the spark for a personal challenge to eat at least one thing she sourced herself each day for a year. In this episode Tamar talks about first-hand food, how growing and sourcing it connected her with spending time outside and how you can get started on a first-hand food journey, too.