About Tree Huggers and Co. or why hugging trees is cool actually. A guest article by Jeannine Brutschin (jb) from momo&ronja (First published in German on wildundverbunden.blog)
jb. On the cover photo of momo&ronja Kim and I hug a tree. My son is embarrassed. My husband is basically behind it, but is worried that it might scare certain people away. This leaves me with an inner conflict and a little bit perplexed. And it has motivated me to write about it and do research on where this embarrassment actually comes from. Why are you ashamed of hugging a tree?
Our social enterprise stands for closeness to nature. We support people and teams to feel the contact to nature (and thus to themselves) and to act more and more out of this solidarity. It is somehow logical. When I am in relationship with a person, I want him to be well. Why should it be different with the relationship to nature? Reforestation is good, eating less meat as well, shopping without plastics anyway. But it’s just one side of the coin.
But let’s first turn to the English term “Tree Hugger”. Some interesting connections become visible.
Tree Hugger – Origin of the term
In common (English) usage, Tree Hugger is a “doped-up, at best confused hippie who walks around and hugs trees to connect with nature. Or more generally, and according to Wikipedia, it’s a colloquial, pejorative term for environmental activists. Associated characteristics: emotional and irrational.
But actually the term goes back to a group of 350 brave men and women of a Hindu village community in India who literally protected the trees of their village with their own bodies and were killed in 1730 by forest workers in search of building material for a new royal palace. Their efforts were not in vain: A royal decree prohibited from now on the cutting of trees in the region around Bishnoi.
This heroic action inspired a similar movement in the 1970s in Uttar Pradesh, India, where a group of peasant women formed a barrier with their bodies and prevented the felling of trees. This practice became known as “Satyagraha” and spread as the “Chipko” movement (chipko = cling). throughout India. This forest conservation movement had a great impact throughout the Himalayan region and won the Right Livelihood Award in 1987 for its achievements in reforestation and natural resource management.
Insight #1: Tree Huggers are heroes and heroines and far ahead of their time.
Tree Hugger – A successful brand
TreeHugger.com is a successful, English-speaking online media company that aims to make sustainability issues popular in the mainstream. It is definitely a cool brand with many stories and facts about sustainability and lifestyle. In this video, founder Graham Hill talks about the art of reduction:
The website shows many inspiring activities in the outside world and Tree Hugger has a positive image as a brand. What these themes trigger inside us remains open and a “tree-hugging” feeling does not come up when I look at the site.
Finding #2: A cool brand does not make a real Tree Hugger.
Proud to be a Tree Hugger
To the question where our embarrassment actually comes from, I have only found partial answers:
Emotionality, or in a positive sense sensitivity, is often devalued in our society.
Just to stand up for the environment in concrete activities, and to admit this publicly, is already a giant step, depending on the circles in which one moves.
I found a more detailed answer in the blog article by Matthew Henson, who describes how he became a Tree Hugger and is proud of it. It’s about his very first visit to an ecopsychology seminar.
Ecopsychology explores the healing effects of nature experience and the pathogenic effects of destroyed nature.
From “The Earth within us” by Petra Steinberger
Matthew’s greatest fear at the beginning of the seminar: Being branded “Tree Hugger” Today Matthew is an eco-psychologist himself and accompanies people on their way to more closeness to nature and self-knowledge. He has overcome his fear and has become a confessing Tree Hugger.
Finding #3: Tree Hugging is embarrassing – until you just do it.
What does this mean for me?
In the story of Matthew I see some parallels to myself. I too grew up in an atheistic family. Our whole society is strongly influenced by this scientific, factual, material view. As a child I had a very strong perception of nature. I used to sit for hours in the garden under the St. John’s bushes. And was completely absorbed in this experience. In the course of growing up I lost this access. A seminar visit with an Indian teacher enabled me as an adult to pick up this experience again. It was something of the greatest thing I have ever experienced.
I can’t get out of my skin, Tree Hugging is in my blood!
(Of course there are many other ways to get in touch with nature).
I am looking forward to the moment when my son can be proud of it.
Jeannine Brutschin is a geographer and systemic nature therapist and offers individual accompaniment in nature on personal topics and in connection with the own heart project on request.
Would you like to experience the healing effects of nature experience yourself?
Get in contact with Jeannine…
Origin of the term:
https://greengroundsatuva.wordpress.com/2014/03/24/tree-hugger-origins-of-the-term/
How Environmentalism is Entwined with Racial
Justice: https://www.newamerica.org/millennials/dm/what-it-means-be-called-tree-hugger/
„I’m a tree hugger and I’m proud“:
https://iahip.org/inside-out/issue-87-spring-2019/on-becoming-a-tree-hugger
Jeannine Brutschin founded the organisation momo&ronja in 2017 together with Kim Jana Degen. “As social entrepreneurs we are committed to a sustainable society. Furthermore, with momo&ronja we can express our experience of a deep connection with nature in very concrete offers and projects.
