Coming Home

“Nature is not a place to visit. It is home.” — Gary Snyder

In its simplest definition, forest therapy is nature connection.
But nature connection is more than a concept—it’s a familiarity. A felt sense of kinship with the Earth and with every living being. It’s the gentle shift from perceiving ourselves as separate from the natural world to remembering our place within it.

Nature connection is also a remembrance.
A remembering that we belong to the Earth. And when we remember, we come home—home to ourselves and to our original habitat.

Like many people, when I think about home, I think about where I grew up: Bradford. It was, in so many ways, the perfect place to have a childhood. Life happened outdoors. We wandered woods and creeks, flipping rocks to look for crayfish, riding bikes until dinner, inventing entire worlds under trees. My dad worked for the Forest Service, so the national forest wasn’t a destination—it was part of daily life.

Memory is funny that way.
I don’t just remember those places; I feel them. The cold water around my ankles. The rough wood of a bridge rail under my hands as my feet dangled over the edge. Ice skating outside in deep snow, wind stinging my cheeks. Little trails, quiet creeks, familiar paths that knew my footsteps as well as I knew theirs.

So when I say nature is home, I mean it quite literally.
It’s in my DNA. It’s friends and neighbors and family. It’s my dad. It’s the most soothing, grounded part of who I am—even now, when I’m feeling a bit cooped up during a dark, cold Ohio winter.

This coming week, I begin forest therapy training, and I feel a deep sense of gratitude and excitement. I’m stepping into a different kind of relationship with the natural world—one rooted in intention, slowness, and invitation. One that I hope to offer to others as a way back to themselves.

As you read this, I wonder what comes to mind for you when you think about nature as home.
Where does she sit in your own story?