Forest Therapy Guides often refer to the ‘more than human world’ and the phrasing is intentional. Terms like 'nature' and 'wilderness' provide a sense of separateness; that there are people and then there is everything else; as though humans fall into a special and separate category.
But this is a flawed understanding of the relationship homo sapiens has to the other species we share the planet with. The oxygen we need to survive is provided green plants. And the carbon dioxide they need to survive is provided by humans and other oxygen dependent species. Just one example of how we are co-dependent and cannot survive without each other.
I have a friend who has worked in evolutionary biology for decades and in a conversation a while back he shared how evolutionary scientists are now regretting the organization of intelligence that put people and primates at the top of a pyramid of intelligence. It’s incorrect and in many respects a barrier to a deeper understanding of life on earth. There are, in fact, many kinds of intelligence displayed by members of the more than human world.
For example, in 2010 a famous experiment showed that a slime mold, when given a petri dish with food sources arranged like the Tokyo subway system, naturally grew a network of pathways remarkably similar to the actual subway system, suggesting that the slime mold--a bunch of undifferentiated cells without anything remotely resembling a brain--could solve complex spatial problems and potentially design more efficient transportation networks than human engineers.
In another example, we now understand that trees are not collections of individuals competing for resources. They are in fact connected together through a complex network of communication and resource sharing often referred to as the Wood Wide Web.
In a sense humans are just catching up with other species we share the planet with and intelligence is more complex and more widely distributed throughout the species that inhabit the earth.
In many indigenous communities; the concept of wilderness is a source of considerable confusion. When asked which areas should be set aside as wilderness to protect; the idea of separateness just doesn’t exist. Humans are one among many, it’s just not conceivable to separate them from the more than human community—either wilderness is everywhere or it’s nowhere.
In sum, the more than human world is all around us all the time; available and ready for us to start noticing.
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