Experiencing nature with sight impairment: seeking freedom from ableism

Abstract

The idea of nature as freedom has long captured the human imagination, particularly since the Romantic era when notions of escapism were underpinned by the idealisation and externalisation of nature. The drive for freedom persists in the findings of much contemporary research examining the contribution of nature to human health and wellbeing. Yet, this work tells us little about how cultural narratives of freedom play out in the lives of people living with impairment and disability, or the constraining ableist assumptions that often underpin popular discourses of nature. This paper aims to address this, drawing on the findings of an in-­‐depth qualitative study exploring how 31 people with varying forms and severities of sight impairment, living in rural and urban areas of England, describe their experiences with(in) diverse types of nature through the life course. Moving beyond the ‘wilderness ideal’ and sensationalised ‘supercrip’ stories that reproduce ableist ideas of bodies without limitation, this paper foregrounds the richly textured ways in which participants experienced feelings of freedom with nonhuman nature. These freedoms are characterised as social, mobile and exploratory. In doing so, it seeks to make room for a range of nature experiences, folding social justice into the growing momentum to connect people with nature in the name of health and wellbeing.