Holistic Vacations - An Ecological Perspective

What is a holistic vacation?

For me, it begins with the adjective holistic.

Something is holistic if it is concerned with relationships and connections.

These relationships can be intrapersonal, interpersonal, or transpersonal.

That only helps a little, because I also need to understand what makes relationships work. Relationships are mutually beneficial exchanges. An exchange can take place on many levels but, to be sustained, it must have some dimension of reciprocity to nurture the elements in the relationship.

Thus a holistic vacation is taking a block of time to address one or more of these types of relationships by:

• Discovering/creating a new relationship
• Clarifying/deepening one’s understanding of an existing relationship
• Energizing/renewing a relationship
• Healing something amiss in a relationship

Our Relationship to the Environment

One of the transpersonal relationships we all share is our relationship to the environment. There is a lot of pessimism about the environment in the news and in popular culture. The prevailing mood is often one of guilt and apprehension. If you think of a similar relationship in your life where these feeling are present, chances are you feel de-energized and shut down about it. Furthermore, few people today can say they have an active mutually beneficial relationship with nature.

Most people who enjoy outdoor recreation have heard the motto: "Take nothing put pictures; leave nothing but footprints." Whilst an improvement over strewing trash, following this guidance engages only a small part of my interests and skills, encouraging me to be a visitor, not a participant. It is really a consumerist (one-sided) approach to the natural landscape.

"The real challenge of environmentalism is not to preserve nature by protecting it from human beings or rescuing it from their influence, but to provide the basis for a healthy relationship between nature and culture."

—William Jordan III,

Beyond Preservation: Restoring and Inventing Landscapes

Ecological Restoration as a Holistic Vacation

One way I have found to enhance my relationship to the environment is by participating in ecological restoration as a holistic vacation. I learn about a specify ecosystem and participate in monitoring its health and restoring habitat. In this way I bring my heart, my hands, and my thinking capacities to the relationship.

For example, helping build a new watering system in a semi-arid environment which both livestock and diverse wildlife species can share is both practical and symbolic of the kind of healing I want to foster.

Practical, because these efforts enable livestock to be used more constructively as a tool for restoration and double the benefit of this investment by improving the habitat for native species as well.

Symbolic, because the physical act of making a watering system both livestock and native species can share is a cultural acknowledgement of the value of both; and the possibility that creative solutions can be found to resolve the tensions from having both in one ecosystem.

While contributing my labor is often rewarding in itself, I usually have a more positive experience when several additional learning opportunities are present:

• Learning by doing
• Learning how to read what the environment is saying
• Learning how to guide choices/actions by both what the environment is saying and by human goals and values

I hear - I forget!

I see - I remember!

I do - I understand!

-- Chinese Proverb --

For example, learning how to collect biological monitoring data in grassland ecosystems is relatively easy with some simple instruction. I really got excited when I learned how to interpret the results we’d collected and to assess:

• How well are plants converting the available sunlight to energy?
• How well are minerals being recycled in the soil?
• How effectively is water being captured?
• And how the various plant species are sharing a particular piece of soil.

Then we decided on the appropriate next step to help move this area of the land toward the long-term goals of the stewards. Touching, seeing, evaluating, and doing - closing the loop in a way which benefits both the ecosystem and the people living in it.

"Ecological restoration provides a basis-actually a paradigm-for a healthy, mutually beneficial relationship between ourselves and the natural landscape."

—William Jordan III,

Beyond Preservation: Restoring and Inventing landscapes

Summary

Some ecological restoration trips can be multi-week adventures. While tremendously exciting and rewarding, I can rarely commit such a large a chunk of time from the rest of my life. Others provide a meaningful experience in a week or less. Find one which works for you, and create a mutually beneficial relationship with the environment.

By Larry Levine

- 13 - Edition 14, August 2003