Unit 10: My Experience in Nature Interpretation
As the semester and our blog posts come to an end, Iām left feeling very reminiscent after reading the introduction to everyoneās blog posts this week! When I first decided to take this course, it was at the recommendation of one of my roommates who had taken it last year. I needed an elective to add onto my course load and she described her experience in the course and how much she enjoyed it as an Ecology major. I will admit, I was skeptic at first as she explained the weekly blog posts on Tumblr but to my delight, they ended up being a nice way to reflect on my relationship with nature. As I learned over the course of the last 10 weeks what is considered a nature interpreter, I realized that Iāve indirectly been one for a while now. From simpler ways when I was younger such as relaying a fun fact about an animal I had learned at school to my parents, to being the person communicating interesting animal facts to kids of the same age! It took me a few weeks in this course to realize that I had spent an entire summer working as a nature interpreter at the Toronto Zoo through the role of a camp counsellor. My job was to interpret facts about the animals living at the zoo to expand the knowledge of my campers, and also include some environmental concepts as well. This taught me so much about nature interpretation firsthand, and I didnāt even know until 2 years later that this is considered a form of interpretation!
After reading the questions within the prompt this week, I decided to first reflect on my time as an unknown interpreter to see what beliefs, responsibilities and approaches I had used before this course. I found that honesty was an extremely important factor that I tried to incorporate with my audience, especially with a young audience as kids can be very curious. I find this is an extremely important quality for an interpreter of any kind to possess, as honesty leads to further education and interest. Although with kids this can be tricky as sometimes they arenāt ready for the full truth of some topics, it is still important to understand what truth they can handle. An example of this from my time working at the zoo revolves around ecophobia. Ecophobia is essentially the worry over environmental degradation or destruction and can be extremely taxing on oneās mental health. While it is important to educate an audience on the effect of humans or climate change on an area, species, or the planet in general, ecophobia is something to consider when deciding what information to relay to kids. If the conversation becomes too gloomy or depressing for a group of 5-year-olds, this in my opinion is an unsuccessful interpretation. The experience should be informative and honest, but not lead to feelings of helplessness or depression. This leads to my next biggest responsibility of a nature interpreter which is having an overall message or purpose to your interpretation.
As this is nature interpretation, Iāll be talking about interpretating biological concepts specifically, although this responsibility still applies in general. When I think of interpreters of nature, I envision anyone who discusses a natural phenomenon, landscape, species of animal or plant or even an interaction that occurs in the wild. While these can all be explained to an audience for the simple purpose of being entertaining, I think there has to be a reason as to why the interpreter is educating others on these themes. Education is typically one of the most common reasons, although there are many other reasons as well. My personal time at the zoo also had a reasoning, and it was to educate the kids on amazing animal species and the things they do. It was an important responsibility to me that I often tied together any fun facts with some kind of educational factor, such as conservation for example. Having an underlying message like this can help the interpreter tie their conversation together towards the end, and can help them be better in general as they understand the importance of their job.
The approach that I found the most suitable was through having a solid understanding of your information and also being passionate or enthusiastic about it. These two factors go hand in hand and while an individual can be one without being the other, a good interpreter ensures they are both. Being knowledgeable about the topic you are discussing may seem like an obvious responsibility, but it was something that always stuck out to me on days where I felt like I wasnāt being the best interpreter I could be. There were days at the zoo when a member of the public would see me with my campers, wearing a staff uniform and approached me with a question about one of the species. While I was taught a great deal of information on the animals residing at the zoo, it was all at the level of my audience and therefore not always suitable for an adult. There was one day when a parent had approached me while I was working and asked how much an adult orangutan weighs. This was not something I knew off the top of my head, as 5-year-olds wouldnāt typically remember or care about this type of information, I told them I honestly wasnāt sure. They were understanding, thanked me anyways, and moved on with their day but I remember feeling annoyed at myself as an interpreter for not knowing the answer. While this is something that often is inevitable as no one knows the answer to every question that could be asked of them, as an interpreter it can be frustrating. Ensuring that I know as much information about the topic as possible was my best approach to avoid this as well as understanding that there will always be questions that you might not know the answer to! Lastly, being passionate is one of my best approaches to nature interpretation and something that benefitted me greatly. Audiences can tell when someone is actually interested and enthusiastic about something, and it makes it much easier to enjoy and pay attention to. Personally this came very easy to me as I have always loved talking about things Iām interested in and animals happen to be one of my biggest passions! I found this made it more enjoyable for my audience as well as myself and is definitely something I would suggest to future nature interpreters.
Thank you all for reading my posts, I hope you enjoyed it just as much as I did reading yours! Good luck to everyone with the rest of their courses this semester!
























