The Journeyman Season: Reconnecting To Nature Through Our 5 Daily Practices Applied to Last Weeks Episode With Ananda Fitzsimmons
Welcome to Forked. I’m Sean Lewis and today I wanted to share my insights from last weeks episode with Ananda Fitzsimmons and I hope they resonate with you and maybe we can have some quiet reflections together. As I shared in my 2 part series on the 5 practices, we heard those themes throughout the exchange with Ananda. The importance of being present and witnessing the natural world around us, action steps to be in service to the world under our feet and, not striving for perfection but just doing our own small part.
You know, when we talk about the environment, most of us feel two things at once: love… and helplessness.
We love the Earth — most of our fondest memories were born close to it. Hot summer days at the lake. Childhood vacations at the beach. Sledding down a snow-swept hillside narrowly escaping real connection with that big oak that sits in the middle of the hill. The first time probably around our late teen years of discovering the peace of sitting under an old tree after a heartbreak.
The Earth has been our quiet companion through it all — always there, always offering her gifts, never asking for anything in return.
And that’s why this week’s episode — the first in the Journeyman season — is about remembering that our connection to the Earth is essential to finding true peace and lasting meaning.
Meaning that carries us through our careers, through the noise of life, and into old age — when everything slows down, and we begin to see what’s always been constant.
People come and go. Chapters open and close. But you… and the Earth… are never broken companions.
Our conversation last week with Ananda Fitzsimmons brought to light the beautiful complexity of life and the interactions and cooperation that all living creatures provide in order for life to be sustained and well on our earth. The vast majority of people want to be loyal to the great memories nature has provided and want the next generation to share in those experiences of connecting with the earth.
And yet, even with all that love, many of us feel a quiet ache underneath it.We see what’s happening to the world — the headlines, the pollution, the garbage, the fires, the storms — and somewhere inside, we start to feel small. Helpless.
But maybe that’s where we’ve misunderstood our role.We’re not here to change the entire world — we’re here to connect with it again. Like we were when we were kids. Because the moment you reconnect, the helplessness begins to fade.
Let’s take a look together at our 5 daily practices and how they can be guiding points to help us reconnect with the natural world and remind us what it is to be human.
Part 1 — As you’ve learned, Breathing deeply brings The Power of Connection, breathing is a tool for feeling connected
When you connect — when you actually walk, breathe, and pay attention — something inside you reawakens. You stop standing on the outside looking in. You start to belong again.
And belonging is powerful. It dissolves helplessness.
I think a lot of the apathy we feel — the burnout, the guilt — comes from forgetting that we’re part of nature, not separate from it. We scroll through feeds and headlines that show destruction, and we start believing that the world is something happening to us.But it’s not. It’s still happening through us, every single day.
(pause)
Every morning I take my dog Jaybe for a walk. We often follow the same trail near my home — gravel path, tiny forested areas, and small lake. I’ve walked that route hundreds of times. But almost every time, I notice something new — a new resident muskrat, field mice living under last summers meadow grass. Some geese migrating later than others, calmly floating on a tiny circle of unfrozen lake. You see that at closer inspection, nothing is ever really the same in nature.
And sometimes, I’ll stop to pick up a piece of garbage — a coffee cup or a bit of plastic. I don’t do it out of duty or to feel like a hero. I just do it because, in that moment, it
