Walk with Jen Roberts: Seeing Nature, Place, and Belonging Through a Wider Lens
Rooted: A Podcast About Nature & Wellbeing
Release Date: 05/13/2026
Walk With SMB: More Good Days, Small Doses of Nature
Rooted: A Podcast About Nature & Wellbeing
In this WALK episode of ROOTED: A Podcast About Nature & Wellbeing, Susan Morgan Bailey reflects on her personal experience with stress, burnout, anxiety, and the role nature has played in helping her reconnect with herself. Inspired by Mental Health Awareness Month and this year’s theme — More Good Days, Together — Susan explores how chronic stress can quietly become normalized, especially for high-functioning people who are used to pushing through. In this episode: Susan shares her journey through near burnout, physical stress symptoms, and anxiety awareness explores how modern...
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Walk with Jen Roberts: Seeing Nature, Place, and Belonging Through a Wider Lens
Rooted: A Podcast About Nature & Wellbeing
Modern life makes it easy to assume that access to nature is simply about proximity. A nearby park. A trail down the road. A place to go. But what if access is more complicated than that? In this conversation, I sit down with public health researcher Jen Roberts to explore the intersection of nature, equity, and belonging. Together, we look at how our environments—both built and natural—shape not only our ability to be outside, but whether we feel like those spaces are actually for us. Jen shares how her work in active living and public health led her into the nature space, and how that...
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Walk with SMB: Awe, Wonder, and the Things We Almost Miss
Rooted: A Podcast About Nature & Wellbeing
A ten-minute break outside turns into a reflection on awe, wonder, and the quiet intelligence of the natural world. In this solo Walk with SMB episode, Susan shares how spotting a perfectly camouflaged sphinx moth on a tree outside her home shifted her attention completely away from work, stress, and mental noise — and back into observation, curiosity, and presence. Through stories of a robin building a nest, maple seeds emerging in spring, and a green turtle gliding through the ocean, this episode explores how nature invites us to slow down enough to notice what we often overlook....
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Walk with Ryan Conklin: Grief, Initiation, and Being With What Is
Rooted: A Podcast About Nature & Wellbeing
I expected this conversation to be about coaching and vision quests. It became something else entirely. Early on, Ryan said something I couldn’t move past: There is grief in the gap between who we say we want to be and who we are becoming. What followed was a grounded, honest exploration of grief—not as something to fix or move past, but as something to be with. Ryan is a transformational coach and wilderness guide who leads vision quest experiences—modern rites of passage that invite people to step away from their daily lives and listen more deeply. In this conversation, we explore: ...
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Sit with SMB: Coming Home to Earth (An Earth Day Meditation for Any Day)
Rooted: A Podcast About Nature & Wellbeing
Today is Earth Day. And while this practice is offered in honor of this moment, it’s not limited to it. This is something you can return to any day you feel the need to slow down… to reconnect… to remember that you are part of the living world. This guided walking meditation is an invitation to pause and remember something easy to lose in the rhythm of modern life — that we are not separate from the earth. We are part of it. Through breath, imagery, and sensory awareness, you’re invited to feel the ground beneath you, reconnect with your body, and experience the quiet steadiness of...
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Walk With Cory McGowan: Nature as a mirror for leadership and self
Rooted: A Podcast About Nature & Wellbeing
What happens when you step out of the environment that shaped you — and into one that reveals you? In this conversation, I sit down with Cory, a leadership coach based in rural Japan, whose work brings individuals and teams into nature not as an escape, but as a catalyst for clarity. After years in Tokyo’s corporate world, Cory found himself living and working in the mountains of Minakami — a place of shifting rivers, deep seasonal rhythms, and what he describes as a quiet “homecoming.” What emerged wasn’t just a lifestyle change, but a different way of working with leaders. We...
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Walk with SMB: Conditions Shape Everything
Rooted: A Podcast About Nature & Wellbeing
As the seasons begin to shift, it’s a reminder that change doesn’t always come from trying harder — sometimes it comes from changing conditions. In this solo walk episode, Susan reflects on how much our wellbeing is shaped not just by what we do, but by the environments we’re part of. Drawing on both nature and her experience in organizational wellbeing, she explores a different lens: what if feeling “off” isn’t something to fix within ourselves, but a signal about the conditions we’re operating in? This episode invites a simple but powerful question — what are the...
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Walk With Jessica DeAngelo: Finding Clarity, Creativity and Yourself Outside
Rooted: A Podcast About Nature & Wellbeing
Jessica DeAngelo joins me for a conversation about what happens when we step outside, move our bodies, and give ourselves space to think differently. After a pivotal moment with her young daughter, Jessica began a simple experiment: 30 minutes a day in nature, without technology. What followed wasn’t a quick fix, but a shift — from scattered attention to clearer thinking, from constant input to something more grounded. In this episode, we explore how movement and time outdoors support creativity, why stepping away from screens can help us refocus on what actually matters, and how a...
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Walk with SMB: Imaginal Cells & the Messy Middle
Rooted: A Podcast About Nature & Wellbeing
On a morning walk, three blue jay feathers stop Susan in her tracks — a small moment that opens into a deeper reflection on change and possibility. In this solo episode, she shares the story of imaginal cells — the cells inside a caterpillar that carry the blueprint for a butterfly. During transformation, the caterpillar doesn’t simply change form. It dissolves completely before something new begins to organize. Through this lens, Susan explores how periods of uncertainty in our own lives may not be signs that something is wrong, but part of a natural process of reorganization. She...
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Walk With Jay Maddock | The Science Behind Time in Nature
Rooted: A Podcast About Nature & Wellbeing
Nature is often treated as a luxury — something we visit when we have time. But public health researcher Jay Maddock has spent years studying something different: what actually happens in the body when we spend time outside. In this conversation, Jay shares the research behind what many of us intuitively feel. Within minutes of stepping outside, blood pressure drops, mood improves, and our nervous system begins to reset. Over longer periods, time in nature may even strengthen immune function. Jay’s work sits at the intersection of public health, behavioral science, and environmental...
info_outlineModern life makes it easy to assume that access to nature is simply about proximity. A nearby park. A trail down the road. A place to go.
But what if access is more complicated than that?
In this conversation, I sit down with public health researcher Jen Roberts to explore the intersection of nature, equity, and belonging. Together, we look at how our environments—both built and natural—shape not only our ability to be outside, but whether we feel like those spaces are actually for us.
Jen shares how her work in active living and public health led her into the nature space, and how that work expanded to include a deeper question: who has access to nature, and who feels welcome once they get there?
We also explore the story of Buffalo’s historic parkways—once designed for connection and movement—and how their removal reshaped both land and community.
This conversation invites a wider lens.
Because access to nature isn’t always as simple as it seems—and sometimes, the deeper question is whether we feel like we belong there at all.
Walk with us.
This conversation is part of Rooted: A Podcast About Nature & Wellbeing — an exploration of how connecting with nature helps us feel more whole in the lives we’re actually living.
For episode transcripts, resources, and additional reflections, visit the ROOTED podcast blog at www.rootedsoulliving.com.