Forest Bathing with Tadpoles Outside of Copenhagen

On day five of our class journey in Copenhagen we had a beautiful excursion out of the city to a forest area on the outskirts of Skodsborg. For this experiential learning opportunity our class traveled about 30 minutes out of Copenhagen via train, but the atmosphere was so peaceful and different that we felt we were much farther from a big city. 

An overall theme to the course is for my classmates and I to understand food locality and seasonality, which are strong concepts in the New Nordic food movement. In this beautiful forest you can find several different plant herbs that are available for harvesting and eating; even the leaves of beech trees are safe and good for human consumption! We travelled along the forest paths, picking and trying local herbs that could be found growing here. Along the way of the path we took short meditations, a term for this is "forest bathing" where one can meditate in nature to soak up the experiences, sounds, smells, tastes, and sensations that the forest offers to calm out bodies. As someone who meditates regularly at home, the practice helped me to really connect with the environment and come to a spiritual, or deeper understanding, of what it means to eat locally and eat a diet that revolves around the natural seasons of the ingredients. It also gave me a stronger appreciation for how the forest, and other natural environments, protect and nourish our bodies everyday. We finished our forest walk with a fresh lunch of organic veggies and sandwich! We had great company from frog and salamander tadpoles at our lunch dock at the pond! 🐸  I found today’s experience to be especially meaningful due to the long time spent in nature and the meditation practices. I felt more impacted by these activities than I have had during our previous class experiences thus far.

 Dear reader, it is important to take the time to soak in the world that is immediately around you! Soak in the sun and sound of grass rushing and wind blowing. Appreciate the warm summer air and the wet raindrops. Eating is a mindful experience and every food we eat has been grown and harvested before reaching us. Food provides the sustenance that keeps us alive. It is a beautiful experience to feel how the world around us nurtures these things for us, and it is one of the reasons New Nordic is such a strong concept today. I really appreciated this day during our stay in Denmark and I hope to keep fostering this connection of land-food-body in our future experiences during this trip! :)