Longing within a kingdom

Synchronicity is a word used by Carl Jung to describe the situation when some events that are not causally linked happen simultaneously, and this simultaneity is somehow significant, and meaningful (Jung, 1973). In more traditional academic spaces, synchronicity is perceived to reside in the realm of pseudoscience – after all, it will be said, it's just a chance event. But how accurately does it capture some lived experiences! I had a deep sense of synchronicity when a fellow human, our editor-in-chief Tom, sent me the list of articles in this issue of Environmental Values. In different ways, these articles contemplate the question of human-nature relationships. De Vroey and Obst (2025) examined the values that underpin rewilding. Morrow (2025) reflects on the intrinsic value of biodiversity. Vermeulen et al. (2025) dive into various approaches to conservation, and Zahn (2025) looks for solutions to the end of nature problem. To learn more about the end of nature, see McKibben (2022 [1989]), it's considered to be the first book about climate change speaking to a general audience. The wonderful articles in the current issue (I read them with great interest and would certainly recommend them to my fellow humans, no matter what discipline they see as their academic home) with intriguing titles that immediately caught my attention manifested in my life precisely at the time when another fellow human and I were working on a piece about human-nature relationships. Our piece is a collaborative autoethnographic exploration of being and relating with nature and non-humans while living in a large city, based on long walks around Copenhagen, the city where I live, noticing and noting what nature we see, feel, smell, taste, hear, and otherwise relate to and with around us.

Being with this issue's articles while writing about lived human-nature relationships made me curious about how we, humans living in cities, relate to, understand, and make use of, concepts such as wild(er)ness, biodiversity, conservation, and naturalness. Are they too abstract for those humans who don’t work with them directly? Fellow humans in my academic field often say that we need to preserve biodiversity, shield remaining wilderness from destruction, re-wild places, even rewild ourselves, and protect species (i.e. fellow beings) from going extinct. Are these just the values we hold, or do we say this out of deeply felt love towards, and connection with, nature, experienced somewhere as Pyle (2011) says, or both? Do these values stem from felt love towards concrete seas, rivers, lakes, trees, and animals; do they manifest spontaneously in a classroom while looking at the slides revealing statistics about climate change and biodiversity loss? Rewilding is an interesting example. Generally, rewilding discourse ‘seeks to erase human history and involvement with the land and flora and fauna’ (Jørgensen, 2015: 482). But it seems unlikely that humans alienated from nature, deprived of meaningful interactions with wild (or at least wilder, or semi-wild) areas would develop deep connections with them, be willing to pay higher taxes to support pro-environmental developments, support policies that defend nature and non-human beings. Alienation of humans from nature caused by a lack of contact with it has been termed by Robert M. Pyle extinction of experience (Soga and Gaston, 2016). It in particular applies to children (Soga and Gaston, 2016).

Sometime last autumn here in Copenhagen I saw a toddler playing with dry, copper-coloured fallen oak leaves. The child looked like he thought those leaves were the most magical thing in the world. He would step on them, listening to the lively, crunchy sound they made under his feet, run across the pile of those leaves, pick some of them up, and throw them into the air. It was a picture of pure joy and oneness with nature, no matter how sparse (those oaks are surrounded by concrete and metal benches). He didn’t seem to see those leaves as dirty, dangerous, or boring at all. There are human-made playgrounds nearby, a shopping centre with yet another playground with plastic trees, and toy stores. But he was so happy where he was, with those leaves. I could only imagine the broad range of positive and self-transcendent emotions he would experience in an ancient forest, the beautiful memories he would make, and the relationships he would have with diverse non-human beings. While looking at this child, I can’t help but think that views such as those equating humanity with cancer are mistaken (for different people-rewilding relationships, see Glentworth et al., 2024) – though certain economic systems might be.

I replay this event so often in my mind. Assuming that this child lives where I live, too, he is not exposed to much nature and her richness, not to mention wild(er)ness. His interactions with nature are probably similar to my own. They are fragmented, limited, and dominated by certain types such as interactions with carefully planned and maintained gardens, polished parks, ever-changing flower beds, trees trimmed into symmetrical shapes, the artificial Amager beach, almost tame animals (city squirrels, ducks, swans, and herons), pets, fellow beings in a zoo, and indoor plants. Perhaps at times, like myself, he has an opportunity to gather some delicious blackberries that grow in this place by roads and railways, but we don’t come across them very often (on urban foraging as an alternative mode of consumption and relating with food and nature, see e.g. Martin, 2018). When he attends school, he will learn about climate change, ecological degradation and biodiversity loss. But if he stays in the city, like so many fellow humans, he will probably not have a deep, personal relationship with nature, nor will he observe and interact with a diversity of fellow beings.

A five-year-old in my own life tries to avoid plastic and recycles together with us. She believes that climate change is bad, and that nature should be preserved. She says that she loves animals. At a café, while looking at and touching the leaves of a plastic tree, she asks me: is this tree real or not? Is the soil in which the tree is planted real? It breaks my heart to witness this. It takes me back to my own childhood, much of which I spent in and with nature, observing nervous mosquitos land on my arms while I was foraging mushrooms and blueberries. Feeling the movements of a cold, graceful worm swirling in a handful of moist, delicious soil. Wondering if there is a bottom to the luxurious moss into which my bare feet were sinking as I was walking through an old forest, trying to walk carefully as to avoid dry, fragile branches of fir and pine trees with long strands of blue-green lichen hanging from them like magical beards. In my own autoethnographic work, I trace many of my own pro-environmental attitudes and behaviours to these intimate experiences in and with nature. And it is true for fellow humans, too: connectedness to nature is a precursor for environmentally responsible behaviour (Church, 2018).

I’m reading one of these fascinating articles in this issue and sketching some notes. I asked my partner if he would have an AI lover (An AI lover? Are you intrigued? Take a look at Zahn (2025) in this Issue). A call interrupts my reading and my own contemplation of whether creating an AI lover has roots in a natural desire to love and be loved. ‘I’m worried about bringing a child into this world’, I say to a fellow human. Will they be disconnected from nature in the city? Will they advocate for fellow, non-human beings out of a philosophical or ideological conviction only, something that they might inherit from their parents? ‘Have you ever considered moving away from the city?’ asks the fellow human, my co-author. Yet, me moving away from Copenhagen and closer to a diversity of life (and thus further away from my university, NGOs, local alternative organisations, students and activists) to richer nature would not resolve the issue of disconnection of city dwellers from nature. And there are so many of us, city dwellers. Over half of the world's population (Noe and Stolte, 2023). Concerns about such disconnection are not new. They are often on the minds of planners (see e.g. Noe and Stolte, 2023).

Apparently, humans prefer biodiverse green spaces in cities (Fischer et al., 2018). Wilson (1984: 1) was right, and we do have ‘the innate tendency to focus on life’. We feel drawn to it, have a longing for it. ‘We learn to distinguish life from the inanimate and move toward it like moths to a porch light. Novelty and diversity are particularly esteemed […]’, he says (Wilson, 1984). Yet, what humans prefer and what we see unfold before our eyes are different things. I feel this longing and embark on a long walk through the city, trying to walk as much as possible either through or close to where trees are. I see residential areas and newly built residential areas, roads, offices, railways and train stations, shops, shopping centres, cafes, bars, and restaurants. There are parks, cemeteries, gardens, occasional trees and flower beds too, rose bushes growing in cages near entrances to residential buildings, tiny and rare patches of permaculture gardens and unkept lawns with ‘wildflowers’ to encourage biodiversity (insects, mainly). I feel as far from wild(er)ness as I can be. What do you expect, one might ask. It is a city. Just take a train or a ferry somewhere else. And this is what I do in summer, and many fellow humans do, too. We go to a Danish island (Bornholm). We take a train to Malmö, then another one to Ystad, a ferry to Rønne, and then we walk to the summerhouse. We do it to listen to the sea, to smell pines growing by the sea and seaweed, to taste feral plums, raspberries, and cherries, to gather wild mushrooms, to see the stars, be humbled by the vastness of nature, and observe the diversity of beings. Snakes, toads, lizards, woodpeckers, coots, pheasants, cormorants, hares, roe deer, hedgehogs and so many others. And while such interactions feel deep, intimate, meaningful, even formative, they do feel short, and insufficient. Am I simply consuming this place as a visitor and an observer, or am genuinely immersing myself in nature? Visiting these snakes’, pheasants’, hares’ and others’ homes also comes with a feeling of guilt and shame. It is, after all, my species, my fellow humans who built these roads and this airport (Bornholms Lufthavn) in the middle of their homes.

In my previous free reflection on Environmental Values (Nesterova, 2024), I contemplated a lack of slowness in academia. Yet, slowness is so rare not only in academia but in our society in general. So rarely do city dwellers have an opportunity to truly immerse themselves into nature without rushing this experience, to experience some degree of wild(er)ness like Thoreau, for example, has done (see Thoreau, 2016) – though I of course agree with De Vroey and Obst (2025) that the landscape he chose was half-wild/half-cultivated. Could policies, such as universal basic income, universal basic services, or paid long-term leave help? Perhaps. In my academic field, we advocate for change in education too – though unfortunately too often this change refers to content (e.g. ecological economics instead of the mainstream, neoclassical economics) rather than both the content and the mode of (un)learning (e.g. outside classrooms). But beyond learning more about ecological degradation and alternative economic systems, humans desperately need real, diverse, and plentiful opportunities to have direct, personal experiences with what we want them (and ourselves) to feel passionate about, and to feel love towards. Nature, diverse fellow beings, wild(er)ness.