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Humor can facilitate relationship-building and comfort in new experiences, essential elements for nature education programs prioritizing inclusive practices. This article presents insights on using humor in outdoor educational settings from a qualitative case study of an equity-driven nature education program. I present four key elements of instructors’ uses of humor. The program instructors used humor to (1) foster students’ emotional safety and comfort with novelty or physical risk; (2) subvert students’ expectations of “normal” behavior (for students and adults alike) and of possible program experiences; and (3) bond among themselves and mitigate tensions between their and visiting teachers’ practices. Additionally, (4) the instructors consciously discussed and set positionally-aware norms for their most common uses of and responses to humor. Through these four elements, I suggest that the program instructors used humor to create  provisional safe spaces  for themselves and their students—spaces that normalize engaging with novelty, discomfort, and continuous learning. To close, I offer suggestions for nature educators wishing to facilitate cross-cultural inclusivity through humor in their programs.

Humor and humility for inclusive nature education