At Minnesota-based Nature Memories, those experiencing memory loss ‘reclaim some joy’

“It’s not that close to my memory right now.”

Kathy St. Peters had been trying to remember a word or an anecdote as the group worked on a collaborative poem. “That’s OK!” said Heidi Ricks, the dementia program coordinator at FamilyMeans, in the organization’s caregiving and aging section.

Community Connection: Nature Memories is a partnership between FamilyMeans, which is based in Stillwater, and the Belwin Conservancy. The two organizations join hands for the month of July in Afton. Each week, people with early-stage dementia gathered to reminisce and be immersed in the enigmas of nature.

The age of participants has ranged from 56 to 89 — a multigenerational community that laughs “about the fact that we can’t remember something,” Ricks said. “We’re like, ‘Well, I don’t remember it, either.’”

It’s a chance for the participants to “go back in their brains and grab hold of something that was really important to them. For the short time they’re with us, and depending on the stage of the disease they are at, they can hang onto that a little bit longer,” said Lynette Anderson, Belwin’s interpretive naturalist and restoration specialist.

Nature Memories fights the stigma that claims individuals with memory loss “can’t learn,” Ricks said. It also offers a weekly time of respite for caregivers, who can entrust their “care receivers” to the folks at FamilyMeans and Belwin.

On July 16, participants of Nature Memories enjoyed a ride on a tractor-pulled wagon dubbed the Bison Buggy. Anderson served as driver and guide. Everyone watched a herd of 27 female bison roaming the conservancy’s 150 acres of tallgrass prairie. Belwin partnered with Wisconsin-based Northstar Bison, which got the animals from Saskatchewan.

Anderson explained the bison’s Minnesota history and the traits of the prairie. (In the 19th century, the U.S. Army slaughtered bison to starve Native Americans.)

Anderson stopped and dismounted the tractor, plucked a few plants — big bluestem, coneflower and showy tick-trefoil — and passed them around the group. She also handed out pieces of bison pelt to activate participants’ curiosity. When people offered prefatory comments like “This may be a stupid question,” Anderson replied, “There is no such thing.”

Laughs were abundant, too. As the animals had fun at the scratching post and mud bath, Anderson told the group that some bison like to dominate the others. That prompted Pat Barrett, a volunteer with Nature Memories, to say, “I know some people like that.”

“Whether it’s a coyote jaw, an otter pelt, a bird study or a flower, that’s going to ping some of those memories in their brains,” Anderson said. Her strategy is to have “simple, tactile tools” that engage as many senses as possible — touch, hearing, smell and sight.

“They’re going to have a story and reclaim some of the joy of those things in the natural world,” she said. “They have joy in their bone marrow, in their muscle tissue, because they lived it.”

Such messages are important “when you might be frustrated with parts of your life, with how it’s changing,” Ricks said. Early-stage dementia varies from one person to the next.

“It’s a time when people can get depressed and isolated, because those changes make them feel like their self-esteem isn’t as strong. Word-finding might become harder,” she said.

When the participants finished their ride on the Bison Buggy, they returned to the classroom for some poetry. Zoë Bird, director of the Minnesota chapter of the Alzheimer’s Poetry Project, facilitated the lesson.

Bird passed out “sample poems” from Emily Dickinson and the Minnesota poet Diane Jarvenpa, and Barrett took that as “champagne poems,” which enticed people more. Bird then alluded to a famous line from poet Marianne Moore, who said that poetry makes “imaginary gardens with real toads in them.” Someone in the workshop heard “toes.”

When the day of nature immersion and storytelling ended, participants may not have been able to recite every activity done when their caretakers arrive to pick them up. “But we know all of that happened,” Ricks said. “Short-term memory is not very long, but that residual memory, hooking things we knew before, is still present.”

One of Ricks’ favorite memories from leading Nature Memories is of sitting on the benches at Belwin, talking with the participants, when someone said, “I’m so glad I’m here. I feel like myself here.”

On July 30, the program culminates in the Nature Memories Open House, a free event at Belwin to which all are invited. This will be its third annual in-person gathering. Designed for individuals with memory loss and their caregivers, there will be performances by Bird and harpist Andrea Stern, guided nature walks and painting.