What is your definition of gratitude? While each answer is deeply personal and unique, there is a universal thread that connects us all – humans, animals, plants, flowers, and let us not forget fungi and the mycelium network beneath our feet.

-- Cinematographer Louie Schwartzberg, director of “Fantastic Fungi” and other films on nature, connection, and gratitude

Gratitude is the art of giving thanks. It’s the process of receiving and being thankful for the people, experiences, animals, and places that make our lives beautiful. Celebrating gratitude has been part of the human experience for as long as we know: a reminder of the importance of seeing the positives. Making an effort to practice gratitude helps us offset the negative energy, events, and information around us that at times can seem overwhelming. Gratefulness trains our minds and spirits to seek patterns of joy, connection, and resilience.

I’m excited about our American Thanksgiving and the feelings of kinship and thankfulness that it prompts. It’s not surprising to know that celebrations of gratitude rooted in the abundance of the fall harvest go back much further in time. The German festival of Thanksgiving is Erntedankfest and it’s usually on the first Sunday in October. In the early 1880s, the government of Liberia – an African country founded by formerly enslaved people -- declared the first Thursday of November as National Thanksgiving Day. Finally, in Japan, Kinro Kansha no Hi (Labor Thanksgiving Day) evolved from a rice harvest festival, Niinamesai, dating to the seventh century A.D. 

There’s something deep in our nature that transcends borders and time. It inspires us to celebrate abundance together, and that’s a pretty magnificent idea.



I love celebrating the good fortune in life with my family and friends, but also look to solitary time spent in nature to practice gratitude. Some mornings on the way to the office, I head down the Ohio River Greenway to Origin Park, where I sit among the tall trees along Silver Creek. I’m grateful for their gifts of shade, shelter from the rain, cleaner air, bird habitat, and protection from flood and storm damage. I’m grateful, too, for the people who stewarded and protected them over generations. And I give silent thanks for the loving home and family I left this morning, the health that allows me to bike here, and the opportunity to be part of making and stewarding this great new park.

Giving time to gratitude prepares me to be a force for good in a world that really needs it. And so, back to the quote that began this post. If you’d like to know more about filmmaker Louie Schwartzberg’s work translating nature into gratitude and connection, you can check out: https://gratituderevealed.com/. It was what inspired me to write this post and it was definitely the grace note to my week.

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody. See you in the park.

--Kristin Faurest

Photo of tree in Origin Park on Silver Creek by Doug Scott