Haptic Rapport: more-than-human movement, sensing, and communion in US forest service trails

ABSTRACT

This research explores how belonging and communion emerge from the human body engaging directly with more-than-human (MtH) during nature-based recreation. It asks: how are nature-based recreators experiencing relationships with more-than-human via their movement and sensing in US Forest Service trails? This research presents the conceptual tool haptic rapport to better explore and represent the intimate, sensory-based, meaningful, and embodied relationships that come about through haptic contact occurring specifically between human and MtH natures. Contact-based and flow-based haptic rapport are explored here. This data serve to contradict structurally presumed separations between humans and MtHs; between recreational mobilities and belonging; and between cutaneous touch and internalisation of that touch experience. This research highlights USFS land spaces as essential sites for nature-based recreation, belonging and sensing place, mobility, and the human-MtH relationships they make possible. Haptic rapport can be applied in all contexts and fields to better understand the intimacies and meaning-making associated with MtH-human engagements.

KEYWORDS:

• haptic
• sensing place
• nature-based recreation
• more-than-human
• US public lands
• belonging

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Working definition for more-than-human is any life and non-life, whether existing biological entities or human construction, whether in ‘natures’ or urban settings. MtH space is ‘constitutive’ not just ‘contextual’ (Howe, 2015, p. 206) in human experiences. More-than-human is termed, theorised, and defined in varied manners (ie. post-human, non-human, beyond human, other-than-human, etc.) (See Barlett, 2005; Basso, 1996; Bell et al., 2017; Bennett, 2001, 2010; Braun, 2006; Castree, 2012; Fishel, 2019; D. Haraway, 2008; D. J. Haraway, 2016; Howe, 2015; Kohn, 2013; Lowenhaupt Tsing, 2015; Lowenhaupt-Tsing, 2005; Raffles, 2002; Tsing et al., 2017; Wilkinson & Wilkinson, 2020).

2. Nature-based movement is the outdoor recreation taking place in nature settings where the recreator is in direct intimate contact with natural elements and surroundings (Humberstone, 2013, pp. 496–497), term employed directly by Barbara Humberstone (2011, 2013), stemming from leisure, sport and tourism sciences, term: nature-based recreation (NBR) (See Dorwart et al., 2009; Kil et al., 2011; Monz et al., 2021; Remacha et al., 2011; Rosa et al., 2019). This paper refers to the humans engaging in these activities as nature-based recreators.

3. Formatting reflects John’s original trail journal submission.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Solana Kline

Solana Kline is a critical human geographer and political ecologist. Her work focuses mainly within more-than-capitalist socio-economies, nature-based recreation, US public land spaces, more-than-human, and experimental methodologies. Her current research is exploring the positive holistic health impacts of US public land trail infrastructures for gateway communities/socioeconomies and the more-than-human lands. She is currently lecturer within the Geography, Planning, and Recreation Department at Northern Arizona University and has founded the non-profit, Recreation Econologies Community (REC) Cooperative, in Southwest Colorado, USA.