This ethnographic study explores the educational practice of interpretive naturalists in a Midwestern US state park. The construction of affective memories and direct experiences is examined from the perspectives of a group of naturalists to understand how they teach about a specific place. Enlisting phenomenological insights of lived experience and embodied and emplaced awareness, a conceptualisation of "re-membering" is developed. This retooling of the concept of "re-membering" addresses the intersection of direct experience and embodied memories as central foci of naturalist practice. Further, this "re-membering" is a key way that naturalists teach about sustaining and preserving human experiences, memories and places. The findings highlight the important ways that naturalists perceive memory construction and how this is connected to place through direct experience and subsequently as a way to teach preservation.