I had always had this initial feeling that crafting is very important for human beings, but I could never define in which ways this happens. A master program in Outdoor Education gave me  the opportunity to look deep inside in this and search for more information about it.
Unexpectedely, I found out that there are people interested in crafting with natural materials outdoors! One of these people who has done very good work and research in this field is Elizabeth MacEachren. In her publication list someone can find really interesting articles.
Following this way, I also made a small-scale research for my thesis to find out why is important for people to work with natural materials collected on site. The results of this research showed that
a) this way of crafting is related with traditional practices coming from one generation to the other,
b) these materials have specific attributes that cannot be compared to them that are human made,
c) the crafter has an active role in the whole process of production,
d) he/she comes closer to nature and
e) gets more independent in an economic level.
This research can be found here.
As a part of this Program, we had to lead a group of other university students outdoors and organise a lesson for them. The team I participated in organised a crafting lesson. Here come some pictures from that day. It's amazing the amount of fields that someone can link to handicrafts! That was one of the most important realisations of that day.