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 role do natural environments play in shaping human identity and sense of self?
Sam
I've been lucky enough to spend most of my life chasing flavour around the world. Somewhere along the way I realised I wasn't really chasing cheese. I was chasing people, places and stories.
One of the greatest things nature teaches you is that you're not in control. Spend enough time with farmers and cheesemakers and you quickly realise that no amount of experience can change the weather, make grass grow faster or convince a cow to produce better milk. Their job isn't to fight nature. It's to understand it, work with it and respond to it. That lesson has probably shaped me more than anything else.
One of the most influential people I've met is Andy Hatch from Uplands Cheese in Wisconsin. Andy makes Pleasant Ridge Reserve, one of the world's great cheeses, but what fascinated me wasn't the awards. It was the way he observed the world. Pleasant Ridge Reserve is only made while the cows are grazing fresh pasture because he's trying to capture a particular season. If the conditions aren't right, he simply won't make the cheese.
One afternoon he wandered over to a cow, smelt her breath and casually told us what he thought the cheese would taste like months later. I honestly thought he was taking the piss. Months later we tasted it together and every flavour he'd described was there. Rich broth-like notes, sweetness, balance and incredible depth. It wasn't magic. It was decades of paying attention.
I think we've become very good at looking, but not particularly good at noticing. Nature rewards people who pay attention, and that's a lesson I try to carry with me every day.
What’s your favourite thing to do in nature?
Ellie
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.
Sam
If I'm honest, my favourite thing to do in nature is spending time with people. The surfing, fishing and travelling are wonderful, but when I look back, it's never the activity I remember most. It's the people I shared it with.
I remember Andy Hatch smelling a cow's breath. I remember laughing until my stomach hurt in Josh's tinny. I remember sitting around kitchen tables in France drinking wine with cheesemakers who spoke almost no English, yet somehow we understood each other perfectly. I remember lying in paddocks with cows. Those are the moments that stay with you.
I've spent my career chasing flavour, but somewhere along the way I realised I wasn't really chasing cheese. I was chasing connection. Connection to people, to place and to stories.
If there's one thing I'd encourage people to do, it's to look up a little more often. Put your phone away for an afternoon. Read more books. Talk to strangers. Stop relying on Google Maps every now and then and allow yourself to get lost. Stay somewhere longer than you planned. Visit a farmer. Accept an invitation that makes you slightly uncomfortable. Ask one more question.
Some of the greatest experiences of my life happened because I took a wrong turn, missed a train or followed a recommendation from someone I'd only just met. That's where the stories live.
Curiosity has given me a career. It's introduced me to lifelong friends and taken me to places I never imagined I'd see. I hope I never lose it.
The world is still full of remarkable people and extraordinary places. You just have to look up long enough to notice them. Nature is a good compass for that.
What are your fondest memories of spending time in nature?
Sam
Without question, travelling through Europe with my dad.
Some of my favourite memories aren't standing in famous places. They're standing in muddy paddocks before sunrise, hearing cowbells echo across Alpine valleys or sitting around a kitchen table with families who've been making the same cheese for generations. Many of those traditions have survived wars, changing borders and countless generations. You realise pretty quickly that you're only passing through.
I've also spent an embarrassing amount of time lying in paddocks with cows. It sounds ridiculous until you try it. Cows are incredibly curious. Lie still for long enough and they'll slowly wander over, sniff your boots, give you a gentle nudge and quietly work out what you're doing there. They're far more intuitive than most people give them credit for.
People often assume I've spent my career travelling because of cheese. The truth is, cheese was simply the invitation. It opened doors into people's homes, introduced me to remarkable farmers, monks, scientists, cheesemakers and families, and gave me a reason to sit around kitchen tables all over the world. That's what I've really been collecting all these years. Not cheeses, but stories.
Do you believe nature has a consciousness or spirit?
How does that belief shape your interactions with the environment?
Ellie
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 does spending time in nature influence your mental health? Can you think of a specific experience where this effect was particularly strong?
Sam
Nature gives me perspective. It doesn't magically solve my problems, but it nearly always helps me see them more clearly. When life gets noisy, my instinct is to head outside. Sometimes that's a surf before work. Other times it's getting as far away from routine as I can, which is probably why I've always been drawn to the desert.
A few years ago a few mates and I rode motorbikes through Ladakh in northern India, the highest cold desert in the world. There was no reception, no GPS and no real plan. Just paper maps, borrowed advice from locals and far more confidence than experience. Looking back, we were laughably underprepared.
We got lost almost every day, but that's exactly why I loved it. We've become so obsessed with getting everywhere as efficiently as possible that we've forgotten the value of getting lost. Some of the greatest experiences of my life happened because we missed a turn, stopped to ask for directions and ended up drinking tea with people we'd never have met otherwise.
I try and have one proper adventure every year. Not because I'm chasing adrenaline, but because I want to remind myself how big the world really is. This year I'm hoping to explore Ethiopia.
Closer to home you'll usually find me on my mate Josh's tinny. For anyone outside Australia, a tinny is a small aluminium fishing boat, and Josh has turned his into the ultimate little fishing rig. We'll head out before sunrise to Windarra Reef chasing tuna and wahoo or dropping baits for snapper. Sometimes we catch fish. Sometimes we don't. It almost doesn't matter. Some of the best conversations of my life have happened sitting in that boat waiting for a reel to scream.
Nature has never solved my problems, but it has always helped me put them back into proportion.
How do you bring nature into your home?
Ellie
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?
Ellie
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?
Ellie
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.
What is your favourite natural scent, and why?
Sam
Without question, it's the smell of cooking curds when an Alpine-style cheese is being made.
It's warm, sweet, buttery and almost impossible to describe until you've experienced it. Walking into a make room while the curds are being cooked is one of my favourite moments because you know you're witnessing the beginning of something that could be enjoyed years later.
I also love arriving at a new farm and taking a deep breath. People often expect farms to smell unpleasant, but the good ones don't. They smell honest. Fresh grass, warm milk, earth after rain or wood smoke. Every farm has its own fingerprint.
A friend recently gave me Flavorama by Arielle Johnson, and it completely changed the way I think about smell. It explains why aroma has this extraordinary ability to transport us somewhere instantly.
Long after you've forgotten what something looked like, you'll remember how it smelt.
