My woman’s studies class went to Tanglewood Nature Center again on Friday, however this time it was much different than the last time we were there. My instructor told the class that we would be hugging trees, and that this time we would be going to a different part of the nature center. The idea of hugging trees was really funny to me at first; images popped in my head of extreme naturalists tying themselves to trees.
The experience ended up being quite different than I imagined. We were in a more remote part of the park and the forest was very dense. The class split up into groups of two and were asked to put a blindfold on their head as their team mate would walk them hand in arm to the tree of their desire. The person walking you to a tree would try and disorient you to make it harder to later find your tree. I was paired up with one of the only other guys in the class, and this proved to be interesting. At first neither of us wanted to hold the other ones arm, however this luckily passed because walking without the aid of a partner would have been disastrous in this situation. It was really unnerving trying to move without the use of your eyes, but the interesting part was how much more in tuned you became with the environment around you. This came in handy when you were brought to your tree, because it helped you to feel features on the tree that you normally wouldn’t; this would eventually help you identify which tree was yours when the blindfold was taken off. The features of each tree were different from one another and it was interesting to see how unique each of them actually was.
I really liked this activity, and even though I was first filled with preconceived notions of tree hugging I was eventually able to see how it made me aware of the unique and special aspects that set each tree apart from one another.Check out this link for the benefits of tree hugging.
