Spending time in nature regulates the nervous system, according to Qing Li, the world’s leading forest medicine expert. For transgender individuals, who face higher rates of mental distress, outdoor experiences can be healing, but there’s often barriers they need addressed. LGBTQIA+ community members can find resources to connect with nature at Eugene Pride June 27 at Lane Events Center.
“The trees don’t care what gender you are,” says Marlie Yasuhara, development and outreach director for local trans resource nonprofit TransPonder. “Our relationship with nature can be a reminder that we have purpose in the world.”
Social barriers often inhibit trans peoples’ access to the outdoors. Showing up to generic outdoor educational workshops might expose a trans person to misgendering or harassment if the organizer isn’t queer-friendly or educated on inclusivity. Actually getting outdoors can also feel unsafe, especially when traveling alone and into rural, often conservative, wild areas that disagree with trans existence.
When organizations like Cascadia Wildlands, Cascades Raptor Center and Oregon Wild make efforts to include trans community members through events like Pride, they create a safe space for individuals to discuss identity-specific concerns and receive support so they can get outside. Trans Wild, a partnership between Cascadia Wildlands, Mount Pisgah Arboretum and TransPonder, holds a free Forest Frolic event annually in April to connect transgender people with resources supporting their access to the outdoors and engagement with nature.
Madeline Cowen, field and organizing manager for Cascadia Wildlands, brings all kinds of people — young and old, queer and cisgender-heterosexual — into public forests for field-checking excursions. Volunteers observe the environment to connect with the land and advocate for it to be protected against timber sales. Volunteers may go out for the day or camp overnight to conduct field-checks; this group element adds a level of safety many trans people need.
“We tend to go to areas where there’s concentrated folks who are more right-wing and more likely to be pretty antagonistic towards queer and trans people,” Cowen says. “My job is, when we’re going out to these places, is in part to keep everybody safe.”
In this political climate that increasingly targets and dehumanizes marginalized communities, trans people face higher rates of isolation and suicide risk compared to their cisgender counterparts, according to The Trevor Project. Intentionally connecting with nature is a simple way to improve mental health and feelings of connection.
“Anything that trans people do to be more visible in a very ‘We’re just humans’ kind of way is really important right now,” Yasuhara said. “A reminder to folks who maybe don’t have a lot of experience interacting with trans folks that transness is not the only thing that exists within us.”
For Bug Wages, a transsexual Eugenean, nature itself affirms their identity because it is “so gay.” Wages has a fond interest in queer ecology, an emerging field that recognizes humans as one part of an ecosystem.
Queer ecology highlights that many plants and animals have diverse sexual characteristics and behaviors that fall outside cisgender-heterosexism. Some plants, like Oregon goldthread, are able to change their gender year-to-year in response to their environment.
“It is really important for us to have this really nuanced, complex understanding of plants and other animals,” Wages says. “Because as humans, we are also just critters.”
Eugene Pride is from 11 am to 7 pm Saturday, June 27, at Lane Events Center. Tickets are sliding-scale from $1 to $20 on Eventeny. Pride is still looking for volunteers to run the event; sign up and learn more at EugenePride.org.