About Land Explained
After several years of exploration, this smallest of businesses is on the cusp. The knowledge, technology, and ideas are in place. What's needed now are partnerships with organizations that care and see opportunity, people with skills in Nature, communications, and coding, and resources to make it all happen.
Companies are out there shaping our cultural understanding of being outdoors. What if they got serious about connecting people and Nature? It might be what the earth needs right now.
%20(1).png)
Hello, my name is Amanda Clements, and I started Land Explained in 2017 after working as an ecologist for nearly 25 years at the Bureau of Land Management. That job afforded me opportunities to get to know a big landscape and influence land management, but I also had other ideas I hoped to explore. And we lived on a piece of scrub woodland that I wanted to know better.
​
After a lifetime of working and playing outdoors, it was dawning on me that most people—myself included—didn't know very much about Nature. Even the outdoorsy class didn't seem aware of its richness, or know the native plants, the habits of animals, or the nuances of soils and climate. And though I had some of the knowledge, I didn't have the mindset I needed to really connect with Nature on our land.
Getting to know the property was the perfect opportunity to fix this. The information was accessible, I just had to ferret it out, curate it, and then interpret it. And that last part was the real challenge because the science wasn't enough. I realized I had to answer the question "why should I care? in order to further the relationship.
Why wasn't an orientation like this already available for landowners like us? Why wasn't there a place to buy nature products that taught about land and growing a relationship with it? For that matter, where were the products that could show us how to love Earth? It made me wonder what's going on with our society, Earth, and Nature. People love them in an abstract way and buy nature-related things, but the market doesn't offer much that's in-depth or place-specific. Could it be because we don't see ourselves having a relationship with land, Earth, and Nature? And if so, in that vacuum could there be a business opportunity?
The past few years have been an odyssey of discovery. I've learned the sociology of the people-Nature relationship and the private sector emphasis on efficiency, style, and competition. I've found ways to tell the tale of Nature through the land, and turn it into consistent, marketable products. But the biggest discovery of all has been this piece of land, and my growing relationship with it. I now see that being here will never get old, but will always be a source of wonder and belonging.
​