An Hour in Nature with Sam and Ellie Studd
"Cheese is milk's leap toward immortality," wrote Clifton Fadiman. Sam and Ellie Studd grew up cheese connoisseurs. Their father is Will Studd, Australia's best-known cheese authority for more than forty years, and a decade ago the siblings joined the family business — selecting and maturing benchmark cheeses, teaching classes as The Studd Siblings, and writing a book called The Best Things in Life Are Cheese (which I highly recommend). Their days are spent thinking about pasture, seasons, and ripening rooms, which makes them, in their way, professional students of nature.
For An Hour in Nature, Sam and Ellie talk about the hours they spend outside — and why good cheese starts there.
What’s your favourite thing to do in nature?
For my everyday communion with nature, I visit an oak tree in Fitzroy North. I call her mine, although we both understand that she belongs only to herself, and to whoever else might arrive needing shade, stillness, or somewhere gentle to land.
She stands above the ‘green sea’, I lean into her trunk and watch the sun disappear to journal. Over the years, my body has learned the shape of hers. A hollow that cups my hips, a curve that meets my spine, and a small wooden ledge that fits my tea oh so perfectly.
She has seen me in all my seasons, as I have hers.
In love. In grief. With tears hot on my face. With friends. With no one. She has held each version of me without asking which one is true. Experiencing her seasons grounds me. Watching her leaves loosen then fall. Her branches become bare and bony. Then the first buds appear, slowly opening into a canopy of green and casting their soft, filtered light below. She is a small portal where time folds differently.
Do you believe nature has a consciousness or spirit?
How does that belief shape your interactions with the environment?
Of course.
Nature whispers, grounds and reveals herself through intricate patterns, textures and forms that stir wonder and awe. She reminds us of our oneness through both the vast and the minute.
From the tiny shell holding its Fibonacci spiral, to the fast-moving clouds reshaping the sky, to birdsong, to the brush of afternoon wind against the cheek, nature is always speaking. She asks us to notice. Listen. Soften. To return to the body. To be here now.
How do you bring nature into your home?
I collect tiny ceramic vessels from Japan that I fill with small flowers, succulents or grasses I gather and consciously fill and place around my home.
Above our dining table hangs a yellow light with a transparent belly beneath it. My daughter and I fill this little floating world with treasures that change with the seasons: leaves, gum nuts, acorns, feathers, beach pebbles and tiny creatures.
It is part nature altar, part cabinet of curiosities, glowing above the table and holding stories of the outside world and the adventures we have shared. Everything must be small enough to fit through the opening, which feels fitting. A quiet reminder that nature does not need to be grand to be felt.
Is there an animal or plant that you’ve always felt particularly drawn to,
and can you explain why?
Dolphins.
They have visited me in recurring dreams since childhood, inviting me to swim and dive.
Even now, I sometimes feel what I can only describe as dolphin energy before I see them, a knowingness that they are near. Then, sure enough, they appear, breaking the surface as though they have come to say hello.
I have seen many dolphins in my life, but watching them ride the bow through phosphorescent water is a memory and frequency I like to tune into when things are dark. Their powerful fluid movements illuminated beneath the oceans surface, wild, playful and so free.
Can you describe an experience when you’ve been made to feel fully —
and perhaps uncomfortably — aware of the power of nature?
Yes. When I was fourteen, I was struck by lightning alongside my father and four other crew members on a tall ship off the coast of Panama.
A storm was close and I had volunteered to furl the topgallant sail. The lightning struck the wooden yardarm. Much of what happened immediately afterwards is missing from my
memory, but I remember my mouth filled with the taste of coins and a wild current humming through every hair and nerve.
I had put my hand up for the job feeling brave, capable and somehow untouchable. Nature
corrected my ego in a single flash.
