What Is Land Snorkeling? This Travel Trend Lets You See The World In A Totally New Way

Snorkeling in the ocean is truly a delight, allowing you to swim with turtles and safely explore coral reefs. As you dip below the surface of the water, you get an insight into a new, often colorful world, and you're often simply guided by whatever catches your interest. But you don't have to save your snorkeling for a visit to the Caribbean islands. Instead, you can do it closer to home, with no mask or fins required. "Land snorkeling" is a term that was coined by Montana-based artists Clyde Aspevig and Carol Guzman. On Landsnorkel.com, Aspevig writes about how it happened: "On one of our early hikes together near Sedona, Arizona, Carol made an observation about the flora and fauna underfoot with all its beauty and mystery. Her face lit up and she looked at me and said 'It's Land Snorkeling!'"

Somewhat akin to "forest bathing," where you slow down and immerse yourself in nature, land snorkeling is when you are more mindful of everything around you. Forget any ambitions of reaching a summit or logging a certain number of miles. When you land snorkel, you slow down and see what catches your attention. Whether it's the sound of birds singing, the color and texture of the rocks beneath your feet, or the smell of the vegetation along the trail, you stop and indulge in a deep dive into that experience.

Land snorkeling focuses on thinking about and looking for the connections in what you see. Why is that bird singing? Why do those rocks look and feel that way? What is attracted to those sweet-smelling flowers blooming next to the trail? It's returning to a childlike wonder of the natural world where there's nothing too small that doesn't deserve your attention.

To plan the perfect snorkeling vacation, you look for a place that has a high probability of having beautiful things to look at. The same holds true for land snorkeling. The activity is designed to help you recognize the subtle beauty within places; it's not necessarily about looking for the tallest waterfalls or grandest mountains. It's about looking at and appreciating the small things you might otherwise miss if you're just focused on finishing your hike.

It might be easier to do this in a place where there are fewer crowds, so you're not feeling rushed by those around you as you crouch to examine a caterpillar crawling along a leaf next to the trail. One particularly good spot to try land snorkeling is out on the prairie, like at one of the world's last remaining tallgrass prairies in the Kansas Flint Hills or the American Prairie in Montana. However, anywhere that you can let yourself relax and deeply consider the natural world around you would be a good place.

Land snorkeling involves following whatever in the natural world strikes your fancy, like you would when snorkeling in water. One thing to keep in mind is that in some environments, you still need to make sure you're staying on trail even as you explore. Only let your eyes do the wandering if you're in a place where going off-trail would negatively impact the ecosystem. With this consideration in mind, get out there and see what you can find, applying this new travel technique to fully connect with the natural world.