Tag: exploring

How to use your senses to experience nature at home

Today’s post comes from Rachel Gagnon, Ontario Parks’ Healthy Parks Healthy People Coordinator.

Did you know that nature can touch all our senses: sound, smell, sight, touch, and taste?

During these times when we can’t visit our favourite natural spaces, bringing pieces of nature home can help us experience some of its benefits.

So few things in the world stimulate our minds and bodies like nature does. It can soothe us, alleviate our stress, and put us in a better mood.

Here are some ways you can incorporate nature into your daily life through connecting to your five senses:

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The Ontario Parks Discovery Program: 75+ years in the making

In 1944, Algonquin Provincial Park decided to try something new.

They hired Professor J.R. Dymond, Director of the Royal Ontario Museum of Zoology, to deliver guided hikes for park visitors. Those first interpretive programs were a success and what would become the Ontario Parks Discovery Program was born.

More than seventy-five years later, roughly 300 Discovery staff in over 70 parks continue to engage visitors with stories of Ontario’s natural and cultural heritage and encourage them to explore further.

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Fushimi Lake backcountry

Set in the lush boreal forest with wide-open skies, there’s a definite “northern feel” to Fushimi Lake Provincial Park.

During the day, Fushimi Lake’s horizons look like prairie skies because they seem so wide. At night, the stars are so bright and so numerous that you feel like you’re in a snow globe.

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