To the Women the Land Knows

As I approach my sixties, I find myself reflecting on a life lived as a woman in fields long dominated by men. For decades, I led in technology while, in parallel, cultivating another life rooted in learning from the natural world. Eventually, I left a corporate environment that clashed with my values and too often failed to recognize the contributions of women, and stepped more fully into the work that had been calling me all along.

Today, I am a woman naturalist with French and Breizh roots, spending nearly every day in the field, learning from the land, and sharing what years of attention have taught me.

I came to natural history through decades of attention. I was always a nature explorer in the truest sense of the word, not to conquer, not to collect trophies, but to be in relation. The formal naturalist work came later. The knowing had been accumulating all along.
  
The naturalist world is no different from many others. Women continue to navigate patterns of erasure and exclusion that are often subtle, yet deeply entrenched.

That experience is not mine alone. There has been some progress, and I can see it in the work of women who have reshaped parts of this field from within. Look at the legacy of primatologist Jane Goodall, the work of forest ecologist Suzanne Simard, and many others who have been steadily shifting what counts as knowledge and who gets to produce it.

But in everyday community life, the imbalance remains. Subtly yet persistently, women naturalists are still overlooked. We lead the walk, and someone else gets the microphone. We build the knowledge base, and someone else publishes the interpretation. We have been doing this work, patient, relational, reciprocal, for as long as there has been ground to tend and seasons to read. And still we are asked to justify our presence in the land we never left.

In our field, perhaps more than ever, the collectors of names are celebrated over the keepers of relationships, those who connect species to place, season, memory, and community. That too is a form of erasure.

We are keepers of time. We read the season before the calendar catches up. We know the first spring ephemerals, the first wood frog call, the first insect emergence, not as data points, but as obligations, as relationships, as the texture of a world we have committed ourselves to paying attention to, a language learned through years of observation and data that deepen attention rather than define it.

We are holders of knowledge, not the extracted, transactional kind, but the kind that accumulates through return, through presence, through caring about what happens to a place across years and decades.

We are guardians of reciprocal traditions, ways of being in relation to land and life that predate the institutions that have so often failed to see us.

This is not new. It carries the long shape of erasure.

Jeanne Baret from France, the first woman to circumnavigate the globe, disguised herself as a man just to board the ship and do the work. She collected thousands of botanical specimens along the way. The flowering vine she helped bring to scientific attention was named Bougainvillea, after the expedition leader, not after her.

Beatrix Potter from the United Kingdom brought rigorous scientific attention to mycology at a time when the Linnean Society would not admit her. Her research on fungal spore germination had to be read aloud by a man because she could not present it herself. She is remembered for her illustrations of rabbits, not her scientific work.

Rachel Carson from the United States spent her life studying marine ecosystems with patience and precision, then wrote a book that shifted the course of environmental policy. The response from industry was not to engage her science, but to dismantle her credibility as a woman, as an alarmist, as someone presumed to have no authority in the natural world.

Ynes Mexía from Mexico and the United States, a Mexican American botanist and field explorer, collected more than 150,000 plant specimens across the Americas, with major work throughout Mexico and South America. Her contributions to botanical knowledge remain far less visible than the scale of her work would suggest.

And in our own time, forest ecologist Suzanne Simard from Canada, whose research reshaped how we understand forests as interconnected living systems, continues to defend and reinforce the legitimacy of that work while still navigating resistance to its full acceptance.

These are not exceptions. They are the structure, repeating across places and ecosystems. From European forests to North American coasts, from Latin American mountains to global voyages shaped by colonial expeditions, the pattern holds. Different landscapes, same pattern of recognition and erasure.

And still the women go out. Still, they crouch at the edge of the vernal pool. Still, they photograph, record, annotate, remember. Still, they teach their children, their neighbors, their communities, outside the institutions that do not invite them in.

The land does not overlook them. The moths come to those who wait. The wood frogs call on the same March nights they have always called, and there are women who have been counting those nights for twenty, thirty, forty years, without grants, without titles, without anyone handing them the microphone.

I came to this field late by some measures. Not late by mine.

I have been exploring since I can remember, crouching beside things, staying still long enough for the world to forget I was there, learning names and, more importantly, their stories, not to own what I encountered but to be in better relation with it. The phenological work, the protocols, the careful recording of first emergence and last call, all of that came with time. The attention was always there.

And so I know something about what it means to carry knowledge that institutions often dismiss, to do work that does not always come with a title, to love a field that has not always made room for you, and to use the rigor of data and long-term observation to help widen what counts as ecological understanding.

I write this for the women who are still out there at first light, in the rain, on their knees beside something small and extraordinary. Named and unnamed. Credentialed and not. The ones the poster does not feature and the ones the land has always known.

You are not the assistant on this walk.

You are the ones who know.

© 2026 Claire O'Neill. Text and photographs by the author. All photographs feature friends from the Earthwise Aware (EwA) community.

Attract & Retain

Let's talk about work for a moment.

The current practice for many conservation citizen science organizations is to host a few training events and then essentially rely on volunteers to motivate themselves. I respect that approach, but we all know it isn't quite working. Interest and commitment just aren't growing fast enough. 

Lately, the biggest topic of conversation among citizen science organizations is our collective struggle to attract and retain people. It is hard to pin down a single reason, but we would be much better off if we actively invited people to join us in the field—making it a truly shared experience.

But we shouldn't stop there. We can motivate people simply by being out there with them as much as possible. It makes the work personal, and it illustrates our own genuineness and commitment firsthand.

Ultimately, it comes down to leading by example. If we walk the talk and do the work ourselves, people will get inspired. From there, our focus should be on empowering people and creating "doers." When you find a doer who wants to commit, delegate to them. At every step of the way, we must ensure we are empowering our community.

The truth is, there are always more followers than leaders, and today's world offers far too many distractions for people to stay focused easily. That is just the reality we have to work with. But by changing how we lead, we will get there eventually.

Conservation Doesn't Need More "Love"—It Needs Respect and Literacy

We have to acknowledge a harsh reality: we are operating in a world where deep ecological knowledge is virtually nonexistent. We aren't just teaching conservation; we are building ecological literacy from the ground up.

But how do we actually do that?

In the conservation world, the standard refrains are: "Inspire a love of nature," or "You only protect what you love."

I completely disagree.

It’s time to take that emotional pressure off our shoulders—and off the shoulders of the public. Loving something is hard, and loving it "right" is even harder. Furthermore, the idea that love is a prerequisite for protection is a fallacy.

Look at history: Do we really believe that every hero who hid Jewish families from the Nazis deeply loved the individuals they were sheltering? Of course not. They didn't risk their lives out of personal affection; they did it out of a fundamental sense of human decency, duty, and respect for human life.

Environmentalism is no different. Protection isn't born from sentimentality; it is born from understanding and respect.

If, during the process of understanding and respecting nature, a person happens to fall in love with it—that's wonderful. But we must ensure it never becomes a suffocating, selfish kind of love.

We must appreciate nature for what it actually is, never for what we want it to be.

The Takeover of our Imagined Reality

Homo Sapiens have been living in a dual reality ever since the Cognitive Revolution, which happened some 70000 years ago or so.

"On the one hand, the objective reality of rivers, trees, and lions; and on the other hand, the imagined reality of gods, nations, and corporations. As time went by, the imagined reality became ever more powerful, so that today the very survival of rivers, trees, and lions depends on the grace of imagined entities such as the United States and Google"... (in Sapiens by Yuval Harari)

Now, to be fair, our imagined reality also enabled the concept of Human rights (yes, as well as walking on the moon, fake the human heart, and so much more)... But going back to 'our' rights, in short, our ability to create and believe in myths fostered:
a. the cooperation between very large numbers of strangers. 
b. The rapid innovation of social behavior.

And wondering where all these myths will lead us down the road. Here in the U.S. we are living under the very destructive Trump alt-reality. Many of the current World myths are not that great or sustainable either... Time will tell I suppose.

Forest Immersion: Going Back Home

We have been developing a new EwA Nature Circle lesson, and it is almost ready for publication. A few impatient Friends asked for a preview, so here it is.

Forest Immersion: Going Back Home (▷ booklet)

We also call this circle lesson: Forest Attuning. 

This is a guided practice focused on attuning to forest environments. Variations of the same structure are also used in meadows and coastal settings. A full open-access version will be published soon.

At a high level, the session follows three phases: Before, During, and After. It is typically a long-form experience, lasting two to three hours or more.

▫ ▫ ▫

Before

Clarity of intention
We begin by articulating our intention and commitment for the session.

Safety and preparedness
We review relevant field considerations such as ticks and poison ivy and ensure appropriate preparation, including water, clothing, sun protection, and other basic needs for the habitat.

Entering a quiet state
Devices are turned off or placed in airplane mode. We transition into a reduced-distraction mode of attention.

Ethics of reciprocity
We discuss basic field ethics and our role as participants within ecological systems. This includes recognizing humans as part of the web of life, not external observers. We explore reciprocity by reflecting on what nature provides and what we intend to give in return through our presence and practice.

▫ ▫ ▫

During

Threshold and opening
The session begins with a simple embodied transition, often supported by breathing practice. A natural feature, such as a tree or landmark, may be used symbolically as a threshold before entering the space of attention.

Sensory exploration
We engage with the environment through expanded sensory awareness. This may include sound mapping or guided attention exercises that temporarily reduce visual dominance. Depending on the group, gentle movement practices may also be incorporated to support embodied awareness.

Attunement and integration
Participants move slowly through the landscape, alternating walking, pausing, and resting. Observation is intentionally open and non-analytical. Sitting moments are often used for drawing or quiet perception, which helps deepen temporal awareness.

Stillness and reflection
This phase emphasizes presence rather than interpretation. The focus is on reflective attention, a form of inward gathering and ecological listening. The aim is not to analyze nature but to be with it in a direct way.

Return and belonging
If anything has been collected, it is considered carefully and, where appropriate, returned to the environment, retaining only what is meaningful or necessary. This practice reinforces the distinction between need and desire and acknowledges relational responsibility. Personal stories are sometimes shared here to illustrate this principle.

Closing threshold
A symbolic closing marks the end of the immersive state, helping integrate the experience and support its continuity beyond the session.

▫ ▫ ▫

After

Sharing among participants
Participants share reflections, drawings, or observations from the experience. This reinforces collective learning and attentional diversity.

Closing gesture
The session ends with departure and, often, a simple intention to return.

▫ ▫ ▫

Background

I have been practicing forms of forest immersion for more than 40 years, rooted in my upbringing in Brittany in northwestern France. I hesitate to call it a “practice” in the formal sense because for much of that time it was simply a way of being in the landscape: listening, observing, and entering into relation with place.

Over the past few decades, I have also incorporated elements inspired by the Tao Te Ching and Tai Chi. The simplicity of breath and movement offered a useful complement to forest attunement, not as a technique in itself, but as a way of deepening attention.

Cultural and ecological grounding

My early experience is shaped by Brittany, historically Armorica, a region with deep Celtic and megalithic heritage and a strong cultural relationship to forest and sea landscapes. In this context, forests were not separate from life but integral to it. Certain sites, such as the forest of Brocéliande (often associated with Arthurian tradition), reflect the intertwining of ecology, myth, and cultural memory.

From an ecological perspective, the oak is particularly significant in these landscapes. It supports a high diversity of associated species, including Lepidoptera, making it a keystone genus in temperate forest ecosystems. This ecological richness aligns with its cultural symbolism in many European traditions.

Reflection

There is a tendency to treat forest attunement as culturally specific, but this overlooks a deeper evolutionary context. Humans have a long shared history with forested environments. In that sense, forests are not foreign spaces but ancestral ones, which may help explain their enduring effect on human cognition and wellbeing.

The Tao Te Ching offers another complementary lens through its emphasis on “the Way” as an ungraspable, ongoing process rather than a fixed object of knowledge. This perspective reinforces humility in the face of complexity.

Tai Chi contributes a related embodied dimension, where breath, movement, and attention are integrated. In this context, it is not used as formal training but as a way of supporting presence and sensory awareness.

Environmental Ethics (Excerpts)

Excerpts from ▹ Environmental Ethics 

By: John O'Neill, Andrew Light & Alan Holland © 2012 Nature Education Citation: O'Neill, J., Light, A. & Holland, A. (2012) Environmental
Ethics. Nature Education Knowledge 3(10):7 

What ethical perspective should inform environmental policymaking in areas such as climate change and biodiversity? Is an economic approach founded on utilitarianism ethically defensible?

The ethical framework that is being invoked here has its roots in utilitarianism. Classical Utilitarianism claims that the right action is the one that brings about the greatest total well-being of affected agents. We can understand the limitations of this view by breaking it down into its three independent components: 

1. Welfarism: The only thing that is good in itself and not just a means to another good is the well-being of individuals. 

2. Consequentialism: Whether an action is right or wrong is determined solely by its consequences. 

3. Maximising value: One should choose the action that produces the greatest total amount of good. 

All have problems. e.g., welfarism with its foundation where well-being is understood in terms of psychological states, or the absence of virtue ethics in consequentialism, etc.

Now about maximizing values… 

Excerpts about ‘Maximizing Values’:

➵ Environmental problems have a strong distributional dimension. For example, the negative effects of climate change will fall disproportionately on the poor in current generations and on future generations who are less responsible for greenhouse gas emissions as they accrue. Standard economic approaches to policy-making tend to exacerbate those problems. 

➵ (…) for the utilitarian, the distribution of goods has only instrumental value: we should choose that distribution of goods that maximises the total amount of well‐being. 

It is from this perspective that problems of justice arise. For example, displacing a population to build a dam might cause a great deal of misery for the worst off, but if it produces a marginal gain for a larger population who are already well off, then, on a utilitarian calculation, the policy is justified provided the population is great enough. 

➵ A second potential problem with the assumption of maximising aggregate value is that of value commensurability (O'Neill et al. 2008). Does there exist a common measure of value through which different options or states of affairs can be ordered? One answer that is assumed in standard cost-benefit analysis is that a person's willingness to pay at the margin for some good provides a measure of the expected improvement in well-being that she will gain from a good. The proper response to environmental problems on this view is to extend the measuring rod of money to include environmental goods that are currently unpriced. Thus, TEEB is attempting to put a price on ecosystem services and biodiversity. 

There are a number of objections to this approach. First, some affected parties — future generations and non‐human animals — cannot express a willingness to pay. Second, what a person prefers as a private consumer of goods can depart from the values they express as a citizen in public deliberations (Sagoff 1988). Finally, many ethical commitments are constituted by a refusal to put a price on them (Raz 1986, O'Neill 1993, Spash 2008). If I care about something, then one way of expressing that care is by refusing to put a price on it. 

—

Citations: 

Sagoff, M. The Economy of the Earth. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988. 

Raz, J. The Morality of Freedom. Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1986. 

O'Neill, J. Ecology, Policy and Politics: Human Well‐Being and the Natural World London, UK: Routledge, 1993. 

O'Neill, J., Holland, A. & Light, A. Environmental Values. London, UK: Routledge, 2008. 

Spash, C. L. How much is that ecosystem in the window? The one with the bio‐diverse trail. Environmental Values 17, 259‐284 (2008). 

TEEB (The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity). Mainstreaming the Economics of Nature: A Synthesis of the Approach, Conclusions and Recommendations of TEEB. Malta: Progress Press, 2010. 

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Ref: https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/environmental-ethics-91387464

Ecology: An Ethical Perspective (Excerpts)

Excerpts from ▹ Ecology: An Ethical Perspective 

By: J. B. Callicott (Uni. Distinguished Research Prof. Department of Philosophy and Religion Studies, Uni. of North Texas) © 2012 Nature Education 

➵ To realize the ethical perspective of ecology requires the universal adoption of the evolutionary‐ecological worldview through science education, followed by a translation of that worldview into policy and practice. 

➵ The sciences and the facts they disclose do inform our values and transform our ethics — and well they should. 

➵ Ecology is not only a science, it is also a worldview. Through the lens of ecology, we now view the components of the natural environment as internally related, whereas before the advent of ecology, we viewed the components of the natural environment as externally related. Ecology grew out of evolutionary biology and so viewing the environment through its lens also brings into focus an evolutionary as well as ecological ethical perspective. Not only does ecology inform our conception of the natural environment it reforms our conception of who we are as human beings. That, in turn, entails a reformed conception of the proper human relationship with the natural environment. Both the religious and philosophical legacies of Western civilization portrayed human beings as set apart from the rest of nature and licensed to treat the environment as a pool of "natural resources," valuable only to the extent that it satisfies vaunted human desires or preferences — whether impulsive desires or considered preferences. In other words, we have inherited a two-and-a-half-millennium tradition of narrow anthropocentrism from Western civilization. From an evolutionary point of view, however, Homo sapiens, is, like all others, an evolved species. Certainly, we have evolved some very special and unique abilities, but do they entitle us to consider ourselves as uniquely privileged in comparison with all other species? The evolutionary‐ecological worldview is humbling. 

➵ "If the land mechanism as a whole is good, then every part is good, whether we understand it or not. . . . To keep every cog and wheel is the first precaution of intelligent tinkering." 

➵ An ecological ethic, Leopold (1949) concludes, "changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for his fellow members and also respect for the community as such." (Leopold, A. Sand County). 

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Ref: https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/ecology-an-ethical-perspective-80059530