The point of departure of this paper is an ethnographic fieldwork on two locations in Denmark about nature love and how it may connect to ethical awareness of the environment and political action. The first location is a popular beach an hour’s drive from capital Copenhagen. Conversations with people walking along the beach show that the beachscape works well as a heterotopia, an other place, another time, deviant from the ordinary, prompting experiences of freedom, playfulness and a connection with greater powers. As such it also appears, in many instances, to be a space ‘beyond the society’ and the ethics that belong to it.The second location is a meadow close to Central Copenhagen, Amager Fælled, and a locus for intense political debate and activism with references to both local and global ecological responsibilities. A pilot study - to be followed up in fieldwork in spring 2019 - indicates that this contested space is practiced by Copenhageners in a more varied way urging city dwellers to connect to nature in new ways in order to develop new sensibilities towards plants and animals locally, and beyond. Through a comparison between these two locations and the practices of nature love permeated by nature romanticism and eco- and climate activism the paper will address recent anthropological debates about ethical sensibilities and the experience of transcendence.
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