Author Sarah Vogel on a hike. Photo credit: Ben Sarten
“¿Cuál es tu trabajo?” Cocho asked me. What do you do for work?
It was a difficult question to answer, especially since my Spanish skills amounted to the capabilities of a toddler. Before I began traveling, I was a qualified mental health professional working as an intensive in-home clinician. My job was to help counsel families whose children were at risk of being removed from the home — for delinquency, truancy, substance abuse, self-harm, suicidal ideation, violence, and other challenges. This was well beyond my linguistic capacity to explain.
“Soy terapeuta.” I wasn’t satisfied with my imprecise vocabulary, but unable to do any better. I am a therapist. I shrugged, hoping this would suffice.
Before I could comprehend what was happening, Cocho was shirtless. He pointed to his back, looking at me expectantly.
Clearly, something had been lost in translation.
—
After two months of backpacking through Central America, my adventure had ended in a small town in Costa Rica called La Fortuna. Aptly named, it was a fortune of natural beauty teeming with aquamarine mountain rivers, thundering waterfalls, and vistas so green my eyes ached at the sight.
I spent the morning of my last day on the bank of a local swimming hole, watching people more intrepid than I launch themselves from a rope swing into the churning plunge pool of a waterfall. A sudden commotion of excited voices pulled my attention to its source. My gaze followed the direction of fingers pointed upstream, disbelieving when I realized what the fuss was about. A lone kayaker was paddling slowly towards the crest the waterfall.
Hushed anticipation fell over the crowd and my eyes narrowed in skepticism. As if to prove me wrong, the kayaker lowered his head in determination, tightened his grip on his paddle, and propelled himself toward to what I assumed was certain death. My jaw dropped as his kayak plummeted over the edge.
Though it seemed an eternity, merely a few seconds transpired before he broke the surface of the tumultuous swirl below. Shaking water from his helmet, he lifted his paddle in triumph. Applause and cheers erupted from his onlookers — myself included.
“Eres loco,” I told him when he pulled his kayak from the water. You are crazy.
He extended his hand. “Cocho Loco,” he introduced himself.
—
When Cocho discovered it was my last day in La Fortuna, he insisted that I see the places “not for tourists.” Places for ticos, or locals. When I learned that Cocho and his companion Luis were river guides I was eager to oblige. Who better suited to unveil the hidden gems of this already magical paradise?
Though communication was a painful struggle, Cocho and Luis were thrilled to share any information they were able about their beloved hometown. No translator was needed to feel their brimming sense of pride.
They took me to a local hot spring, insistent in its superiority to the one recommended by my hostel. They disparaged the other as an unnatural place, with spring water siphoned into manmade pools built specifically to attract tourists.
“Esto es real,” said Luis. This is real.
After a trek through squelching mud that nearly claimed one of my sandals, we approached a wide and shallow river with gentle water bubbling over a bed of smooth stones. Steam rolled off its surface, as if it couldn’t care less that it lived in the balmy tropics. And despite the Costa Rican heat and humidity, the warmth of the hot spring was rejuvenating. I marinated in its essence until my fingers were reduced to pale, little prunes.
The rest of the day revealed more treasures — a secret cave behind a waterfall, terrifyingly beautiful cliffside landscapes, winding pastoral roads. Every place was hedged with a canopy of lush rainforest, overhung with creeping vines and glossy leaves of prehistoric size. Every manmade edge was overflowing with nature’s defiance, as if the pavement could barely beat back the wild.
__
The evening found us sipping beer on Cocho’s porch, making the most of our collectively lackluster language skills. And so, that’s how I found myself face-to-face with a shirtless stranger and hopelessly confused.
“Ayudame,” Cocho said, pointing again to his back. Help me.
Eyes wide, I looked desperately to Luis for clarification. “He wants masaje.” Luis pantomimed massaging motions with his thumbs.
I laughed and tried to explain. “I’m not a massage therapist. Terapeuta psicológica,” I said, emphasizing the last word. Psychological therapist.
They were baffled. Cocho wordlessly pulled his tank top back over his head.
“I help people when they have problems,” I said, abandoning any further attempts at Spanish altogether. Their blank stares urged me to go on. “You know, when people are sad or angry.”
“Why are people in your country sad and angry?” asked Luis. Once again I found myself at a loss for an answer, but not for my failure as a translator. Even the English language lacked the words to express what seemed so obvious to me.
“You don’t get sad or angry?” I asked. Luis shrugged. Cocho was frowning now, his brow knit and eyes flitting between us as we spoke. Clearly, he too was struggling to understand.
Luis paused and looked at the sky, carefully choosing his words. “I love my job. I love my home and my country. I love my mother and my father. Why should I be sad?” There was a brief silence as the three of us sat with our confusion.
“Pura vida,” said Cocho, as if that would explain everything.
Though I had heard the phrase “pura vida” countless times since my arrival in Costa Rica, it was not an expression I had yet fully grasped. Literally translated, it means “pure life” — but it isn’t meant to be used literally. It can mean hello, goodbye, everything is good, everything is cool. Perhaps it is so difficult to translate because the literal meaning is less important than the spirit it conveys. Pura vida is an attitude, a way of life. It expresses optimism, gratitude, and respect for the wonders life has to offer.
“Sí!” said Luis, his eyes brightening with an idea. Abruptly, he took my hand and led me to the front of the house. “Mira!” He pointed at the horizon. Look!
In the distance loomed La Fortuna’s most renowned natural wonder — Volcán Arenal. Standing in Cocho’s driveway, I stood side-by-side with my new tico friends in quiet wonder. The sun had dipped behind the summit, illuminating the wispy clouds with a cerulean and lavender glow. A fragrant breeze filled my nose with the scent of wild orchids and my ears with the music of cicadas and birdsong.
Luis turned to me. “¿Pura vida?” he asked again, wondering if I now understood.
“Sí,” I nodded, “Pura vida.”
—
Now, I’m not naive enough to believe that the entire nation of Costa Rica is without need of mental health treatment. But this exchange was so perplexing to me that it lingered on my mind the next morning as I waited to board my flight back home. My struggle to communicate with Cocho and Luis had not been for lack of words. It was for lack of an entire concept.
In America, I see depression, anxiety, anger, and pain. Though often covert and buried, mental and emotional anguish seems a pervasive undercurrent in our collective culture. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), 44 million Americans (nearly a whopping 20% of the population), experience mental illness.
After my visit in Costa Rica, I researched the statistics. Costa Rica ranks number one in the world on the Happy Planet Index (HPI), a calculation based on resident self-reports of wellbeing, life expectancy, social inequality, and ecological footprint. According to HPI, with its top ranking, Costa Rica is the world leader in “achieving long, happy, sustainable lives.”
It’s worth noting that Costa Rica scores particularly high on the HPI due to its low ecological footprint, compared to the 2018 World Happiness Report (based solely on self-reports of well-being) where it takes 13th place. But it still ranks significantly higher than the United States, which has dropped to 18th place.
Costa Rica’s long-standing and progressive conservation efforts have earned global recognition. Over a quarter of its land is protected by national parks, wildlife refuges, marine sanctuaries, and reserves, making it the largest percentage of protected areas in the world. Home to thousands of species, Costa Rica contains 5% of the world’s biodiversity despite having only 0.03% of the world’s landmass.
To me, it is no coincidence that this tiny, green country has become famous for both its incredible natural resources and its happy residents. While I came away from Costa Rica with an appreciation for its transcendent beauty, I realized this nation offered something even more powerful: a glimpse into a world that refused to glorify consumerism, money, and industry at the expense of its natural treasures. And it seems that refusal has paid itself off in the health and happiness of its people.
Pura vida. Pure life. Gratitude for the wonders all around us. Undoubtedly, America has some of the most beautiful natural resources in the world, especially here in the heart of Appalachia. I wanted to know if we could tap into this powerful ethos. And I was going to find out.
As I sit here pecking at my keyboard in the darkness of my basement apartment, F.lux dims my computer monitor and transitions to a warm, yellowish glow. Every evening when the sun goes down, the app faithfully changes the color temperature of my display to reduce white-blue light, an all-too-common detractor of good sleep in a world full of screens. Though I admit it’s a clever piece of technology, it occurs to me that I’ve just been informed of the setting sun by a computer application.
It wasn’t always like this. In fact, it was almost always not like this. Back in Lucy’s time about three and half million years ago, our bipedal ancestors took great heed of the dark and the predators that came with it. The setting sun was final call to get to shelter, bed down, and conserve energy for a new day. Understanding this cue from nature was vital to the survival of our forebears, and they certainly didn’t need an app to send that message home.
—
Much has changed since Lucy, both for the world and for us. But one of these has changed much faster than the other. We stood on two legs four million years ago and the first homo sapiens walked the earth at least 300,000 years ago. 10,000 years ago we developed agriculture. And only 200 years ago did we have the first industrial machines. Digital technology emerged in the last 70 years, and it’s only been a decade since humans became predominantly urban rather than rural species.
Now that’s a lot of zeros flying around, and it’s hard for me to wrap my head around millions of years, so let’s scale it down. If the span of human history were only 400 years long rather than four million, we’ve spent 399 of those hunting and gathering. Agriculture came about within the last year, we’ve had machines for about a week, digital technology for two and a half days, and we’ve been city dwellers for nine minutes. In other words, 99% of our time on this earth has required a very different lifestyle than the one we live today.
For the vast majority of human history, we’ve been keenly aware that we are at nature’s mercy. Its bounty and destruction drew life’s boundaries and we had to color inside its lines. Violent storms, razor-toothed predators, pestilence, and drought were high stakes. Good harvest, dry shelter, plentiful game, and clean water were high stakes. While these facts remain true today and always will, it feels like our awareness isn’t quite as keen and the stakes aren’t quite as high.
Hell, I can order my groceries online. Not only is my food processed, packaged, and presented in a temperature-controlled, well-lit environment, I no longer need to bother with the saga of actually shopping for it. Okay, so we might not be hunter-gatherers anymore. But you can’t visit a Walmart on Black Friday or watch someone in the produce section thumping on a cantaloupe and tell me that humans don’t still scavenge, hunt, compete, and gather in our own weird ways. But that’s no longer any need either — an hour of scrolling from the comfort of your recliner will provide sustenance for a week. Truly amazing.
I don’t want to confuse my amusement for derision, however. Romanticizing the life of an Ice Age caveman would be an exercise in futility, besides a little silly. I am thankful for technology and the fact that it’s here to stay. It yields profound possibilities: food security, clean water, modern medicine, accessible information, civil engineering, global communication. The ability to poop while sitting on a ceramic chair. It’s probably fair to say that life is easier and more comfortable than it used to be. But the sword of human innovation has a sharp double-edge.
With globalization, outsourcing of labor, and changes in technology, the landscape of American life is pretty different that it used to be. In the 1800s, 90% of the U.S. population lived on farms. They made shelter from sod, rose with the sun, tilled soil, planted seeds, irrigated the land, and cultivated crops by way of literal horsepower and handheld tools. The harvest determined one’s financial and actual survival. Life was constant negotiation with nature.
Today only 2% of the population makes a living from farming, and they do it with a lot of help from powerful machines. Jobs and people have moved to cities, which generally discourage interaction with the natural world. According to the Pew Research Center, employment opportunities now require more social and analytical skills opposed to physical skills. That is, interpersonal skills, critical thinking, writing, and communication skills are in greatest demand. Of course, jobs that require these skills are mostly indoors.
When we’re not working or sleeping, most of the remaining time is spent on leisure — another fast-changing piece of American life. While recreation used to revolve around unstructured outdoor play, hunting, fishing, camping, and athletics, the popularity of these activities has either stagnated or declined. According to the Nielsen Company Audience report, Americans now spend more than 11 hours per day in front of a screen, a figure unsurprising when we consider how integral information technology has become. Whether it’s finding a place to eat, settling a debate, playing games, getting directions, taking photos, scheduling, setting alarms, listening to music, or finding your future spouse — there’s an app for that.
But these technological solutions bring about new problems, and our vocabulary has expanded to include phrases we never knew we’d need. Ever experienced separation anxiety from your phone? That’s nomophobia. If you’ve ever felt jilted by a partner and jealous of a screen, that’s technoference. Was the vibration from your pocket entirely a figment of your imagination? Phantom phone syndrome. If you’ve ever diagnosed a skin tag on WebMD and convinced yourself of imminent death, that’s cyberchondria. I’ve experienced all of these at least once, and I suspect I am not alone. And for all of you on WedMD right now, channel your inner Arnold and repeat after me: it’s NOT a tumor.
We’ve become so enmeshed with our technology we’d rather commit to a relationship with our devices over of a relationship with ourselves, other people, and nature. Communicating digitally can superficially satisfy the desire for social interaction without even needing to leave the house. Entertainment is available from the push of a button in your living room. And every product is designed to entice and to addict, making it difficult to peel away and do something else.
This changing world comes at a cost to our children as well. Nature has been shown to promote intellectual, emotional, and social development in children, but they are spending less time outside. Parents and schools have increasingly discouraged unstructured outdoor play, fearful of the dangers from traffic, malicious strangers, and from nature itself. Even children’s vocabulary has begun to change, with the most recent Oxford Junior Dictionary scrapping words like beaver, dandelion, otter, acorn, and ivy in favor of more modern words like blog, broadband, and voicemail. M stands for MP3, not magpie.
This is particularly problematic when you consider the fact that our climate is changing in dangerous ways — rising global temperature, warming oceans, melting glaciers, sea-level rise, extreme weather events, ocean acidification — and our children are the policy-makers of tomorrow. Canadian conservationist Robert Bateman remarked, “If you can’t name things, how can you love them? And if you don’t love them, then you’re not going to care a hoot about protecting them or voting for issues that would protect them.”
Combine these elements and it’s easy to see why nature has taken a backseat. The average American does not feed himself directly from the land, lives in a concrete jungle, works within the shelter of walls and cubicles, and decompresses by vegging out in front of the computer or television. Our children are learning from our example, and are beginning to see the natural world as a threatening place. Engagement with nature is now viewed as a dispensable recreational and aesthetic amenity. It’s nice, but it’s not at the top of most people’s priority list.
Unfortunately, the earth doesn’t give a damn about our priorities. Whether we like it or not, the health of the planet is directly tied to our own — air pollution causes respiratory disease, heavy metals cause neurotoxicity, global climate change is likely to fuel the spread of infectious diseases. A healthy planet makes for healthy humans. But beyond basic survival of the species, evidence shows that personal connection and engagement with nature is critical for individual wellbeing and happiness. Full consequences yet untold, the longstanding relationship between humans and the natural world has become heartbreakingly estranged. But let’s refuse to let that be the end of the story.
As I’ve illustrated, humans are prone to revolution. The Agricultural Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, the Digital Revolution, and the Information Revolution each catapulted humans to new heights of progress and change. This progress has come with its share of painful repercussions, but the fact remains: we are a revolutionary species. And while our penchant for aggressive problem-solving is partially to blame for why we’ve gotten into this mess, it’s also the way we will get out.
Thankfully, this problem isn’t as new as you might think. People have distrusted our increasing alienation from nature for a long time. Lord Byron wrote, “There is pleasure in the pathless woods, there is rapture in the lonely shore, there is society where none intrudes, by the deep sea, and music in its roar; I love not Man the less, but Nature more.”
Though the idea of reconnection to nature was originally championed by artists and writers, scientists eventually joined the bandwagon. In 1984, Roger Ulrich studied hospital patients after surgery and discovered that people assigned to rooms with a window view of a natural setting had shorter post-operative stays and requested fewer painkillers. That initial study gave a modicum of credence to what many people have intuitively known for years: nature is good for us.
From there, the field of ecopsychology truly took off. A cohesive definition of ecopsychology is a bit hard to pin down, since it is not only an academic discipline of study — it’s a little bit of biology, ecology, psychology, art, philosophy, environmentalism, and even a touch of the spiritual all mixed into one. Connecting them is the underlying desire to understand and revitalize the relationship between human beings and the natural world.
Ecotherapy is where theory meets application — communing with nature to heal. This covers a huge range of activities from listening to nature sounds on your headphones to volunteering and eco-activism to month-long wilderness therapy programs in the remote backcountry. Still a nascent field, it is unrestricted by official licensing boards and brings a diverse group of people with equally diverse practices. It can mean structured interventions with a therapist or activities practiced individually.
The field is beginning to gain traction and respect, particularly on the West Coast. Medical doctors have started prescribing time in the park, the Japanese practice of “forest-bathing” has entered the mainstream, and mental health practitioners are incorporating powerful therapeutic interventions to address depression, anxiety, ADHD, trauma and more. But perhaps most importantly, ecotherapy is challenging people to change their perspective about our relationship with nature — for ourselves, and for the good of the planet.
It can be depressing to think about the damage humans have done to the planet and to think about where we are headed. But in my search for knowledge, I found others who still believe that we can change. I found solidarity to push back against apathy. Humans are defiant, and that is where my hope lies. When our ancestors harnessed the power of fire over a million years ago, our collective credo was born: the dark may frighten us, but it will not win.
—
Living in the heart of Appalachia has been a blessing. Though I’ve climbed these old, blue hills again and again, I’ve never lost my reverence for their magic. They have granted me my best memories and carried some of my heaviest burdens. Though ecotherapy is less common on the East Coast, I knew there must be researchers and healers in the Blue Ridge who recognized the potential in channeling the beauty of this place we call home.
On my journey I met with some old colleagues, therapists, academic researchers, entrepreneurs, activists, artists, parents, and trauma survivors to learn more about this growing field. I wanted to know their experiences and thoughts about why nature is such a powerful healer and how we can use these concepts in our daily lives.
I’ve learned more than I can possibly cover in this short series, but most importantly that a stronger relationship with nature is good for everyone, everywhere. Regardless of how old you are, what you do for work, where you live, whether or not you have a disability, or your level of income — reconnecting to nature is healing and possible, the consequences of which have a ripple effect through our lives, the lives of others, and the living things on the earth.
Ecotherapy is one of those words that we didn’t know we’d need. It reminds us that we are not actually separate from nature, and that it’s time to check back in. Though I consider myself an avid lover of the outdoors, there are times when I forget that I haven’t gone outside for a few days. There are periods of my life that feel like everything else is just too important to bother with it. But neglecting my relationship with nature harms my wellbeing, and it’s nice to feel like it’s okay to prioritize it.
Changing the culture of a society to re-prioritize nature is a challenge that any conservationist would love to solve. But it begins with each individual caring enough about themselves to re-prioritize their own time to commune with nature, and to discover individually what that means. It takes caring enough to want to share that experience with others. It takes the curiosity and awe of children. It takes the curiosity and awe of your inner child.
Let’s figure out how to get that back.
When Plato looked at the night sky, his heart brimmed with optimism that human curiosity would “compel the soul to look upward and lead us from this world to another.” A lofty notion perhaps, but not inappropriate. The universe is indeed lofty and our desire to understand how it all works has set us apart as a unique species. From spears to aqueducts to the light bulb, innovation carved footholds into life’s learning curve with barely a look back. Implied, of course, is the proverbial peak of utopia.
On the heels of the Industrial Revolution, economist John Maynard Keynes predicted an idyllic future — within 100 years, the human race would no longer need to worry about bringing home the bacon, but instead on how to “pluck the hour and the day virtuously and well.” In 1965, TIME Magazine heralded the rise of computers as the dawn of a “modern Hellenic age.” Like the ancient Greeks, we would have time to “cultivate [our] minds and improve [our] environment while slaves did all the labor.” In this case, the slaves would be technology.
The Internet Age made a lot of shiny promises: accessible information would make us smarter, digital tools would make us more organized, online communication would keep us more connected. We certainly bought in to the hype. Americans now spend more than eleven hours per day staring at computers, phones, tablets, and televisions. So how is this working out? To put it short, it’s not.
Our physical health is abysmal compared to other industrialized nations. The stereotype of the fat American isn’t a stereotype at all. On average we’re sedentary for twelve hours per day and 40% of the population is obese, contributing to increasing diagnoses of diabetes, heart disease, and myriad other health concerns. But how can you blame anyone in a world where interstates have mile markers to the nearest Taco Bell? There is such an implication of urgency in every part of our lives that you can forget about cooking, exercising, or even sitting down for a meal. There’s so little time we actually have to abbreviate the word “drive-thru.”
Psychological well-being also appears to be suffering, with an estimated 1 in 4 adults affected by mental illness and 40% of Americans feeling more anxious than they did last year. Most of the population reports being lonely and isolated with only one friend on average, and one in four have none at all. Even with society’s tolerance of casual sex at an all-time high, young adults are actually having less sex than previous generations. “Netflix and chill” was once tongue-in-cheek and cheeky — now it’s just literal and sad.
But much more devastating is that today’s children, the first generation to grow up completely in the fluorescent glow of the ubiquitous smartphone, are paying the highest price. Even the youngest millennials remember a time when they’d be kicked off the computer and ushered into the backyard to play so Mom could get off dial-up and use the phone. But Gen Z (born mid-nineties to mid-2000s) don’t.
Researchers are concerned with how much of a nosedive this generation’s mental health has taken. Gen Z is most likely to report poor mental health and is the only generation with less than half of its population reporting excellent or very good mental health. Half of them will experience a diagnosable psychological disorder before age 18, the most common being anxiety, ADHD, bipolar disorder, and depression.
This is not a country of flourishing people.
Unfortunately, scientific research is much slower than the evolution of technology, and it’s hard to say exactly why these statistics look the way they do. And just like most human behavior, it’s highly unlikely that only one variable is at play. It is the curse of every social scientist. But the data are starting to suggest that increased screen-time may be linked to all of these problems. Americans are overstimulated, socially disconnected, and increasingly unhappy, with technology partially to blame. It’s a far cry from the hopes of Plato, Keynes, and TIME Magazine. Quite contrary to their predictions, it seems we have become slaves to technology rather than the other way around.
Though researchers still debate the inherent harm of screens, it’s impossible to get around the fact that so much time spent in front of them means that something else (or perhaps everything else) has got to give. What time do we have left to care for our children and homes, to get a good night’s sleep, to enjoy hobbies, to spend time with our friends, or to engage in more physical activity than the walk between the cubicle and the coffee maker?
Time available for life lived beyond pixels is diminishing. So much for “plucking the hour” — we don’t have any left to pluck.
Ever seen those flyers posted around college campuses recruiting experimental guinea pigs in exchange for cash or class credit? Well, once upon a time as a University of Virginia undergraduate, I was the one with the clipboard taking notes.
The tests and protocols were designed by PhD candidates under the mentorship of Dennis Proffitt — professor, researcher, and Director of the Undergraduate Degree Program in Cognitive Science. He and his graduate students were interested in how we perceive the world and ourselves within it. I learned that our reality is made of a whole lot more than the images that reach the retina. The motto of the Perception Lab probably should have been “there’s more than meets the eye,” because what meets the eye is the tip of a very large iceberg.
In the first experiment I ever ran, I asked students to estimate the angle of a hill while looking at it from its base. Unless they had prior experience in construction, I learned that humans are bad at this game. Participants consistently guessed angles more than three times as steep as reality. But what was more surprising was that I could make them believe the hill was even steeper without suggesting a thing. I just asked them to put on a backpack.
The backpacks were filled with weights — specifically 10% of each participant’s body weight. Participants in the experimental backpack group believed the hills to be significantly steeper than those in the control group. Why? Because with a heavy load on your shoulders, a hill looks like a real pain the ass to climb. Keep in mind I never told participants they would be expected to climb the hill. But that’s irrelevant. Even if your brain is not consciously aware of what’s going on, it’s constantly making its best educated guesses about the environment in anticipation of how you may need to interact with it.
But what happens when you have a limited experience of interacting with your environment? Say, perhaps because like the average American, you spend 90% of your time indoors? How does your brain deal with an atrophied understanding of what your body can and cannot accomplish?
—
“Remember the Kitten and Carousel experiment?” Professor Proffitt asked me.
When I began writing this article, my former psychology professor was one of the first people I sought out for perspective. There are few I respect more for their intelligence and scientific integrity, and this was an area of his expertise. Nature is our environment, after all. I’d asked if he’d answer some questions about nature and human perception and somehow we had gotten to talking about felines and amusement park rides.
“It’s been a few years,” I admitted. Professor Proffitt’s face is famously inscrutable, but I hoped I hadn’t disappointed him by forgetting one of his lectures back in his introductory college course.
“Well, there’s two kittens on a carousel,” he began without missing a beat, seamlessly transitioning into his natural teaching mode. He scratched a rough sketch on a notepad between us on the desk. “One has control over locomotion and can move around, and the other gets moved around and can only observe.”
Later I Googled this experiment for clarification to find it considerably less adorable than it sounds. In the 1960s, scientists chose pairs of newborn kittens from the same litter and raised them in darkness, only exposing them to light while inside this contraption.
The control group kitten is placed in a harness with the agency to walk around in a circle. The other kitten is yoked to him on the same turntable, spinning at the behest of his brother. The second kitten is unable to do anything other than observe the room go round and round. After a few weeks, they allowed the kittens to freely explore a lighted room. The two groups of kittens took to this test quite differently.
“Both can see just fine in terms of measuring their eyesight. But the cat that has had control behaves normally. The other cat that did not have control acts like it’s functionally blind. It walks off of tables, into walls. It doesn’t understand its experience,” Professor Proffitt explains. Because the kittens in the experimental group had no way to understand how their visual perceptions were related to their own actions, their brains could not correctly interpret what their bodies were able to do. “Action allows you to see the world in terms of what you can do. What we see in the world are opportunities for action.”
I was beginning to connect a few dots. The less we actively interact with the physical world and the more we passively observe, the closer we become to the kitten in the sidecar. With electronic media now dominating our lives, we have drifted far away from the lifestyle we evolved for. Living in the virtual world does not provide many opportunities for action. Maybe, in a way, we’ve become functionally blind.
If you’re still with me, I admire your patience because no one wants to hear how bleak and crappy and doomed things are. It’s not fun and it’s not a new idea. Even one of the ecotherapists I interviewed and came to deeply respect encouraged me not to focus on the negatives because scaring people is often counterproductive. I’m certainly not trying to fear-monger and I hope these articles bring more hope than fear.
However, I think it’s important to recognize that something is awry in our society, and the numbers are revealing. With how quickly technology has changed in recent decades, there are already many people on Earth who have absolutely zero memory of a time when the Internet and screens were not omnipresent. In the not-so-distant future, no one will have a basis of comparison in their own memory to conceive of a world without them. Even older adults who grew up with payphones are struggling to just remember what it used to be like.
Children of today negatively impacted by this culture may grow up to believe something is wrong with them, and not the social norms that they’ve known their entire lives. Spending half of waking life with your face in a screen is normal. Sitting and being inactive for literally half of an entire day is normal. With such significant consequences for well-being, it’s urgent we bring awareness to the fact that normal should not be conflated with good or even okay.
Consider Mr. Blobby. Voted the most hideous species and adopted as the mascot of the Ugly Animal Preservation Society, he (or she) looks like the love child of Nintendo’s Kirby, a fish, and “Kilroy was here.” Mr. Blobby was trawled from an ocean floor over 2000 feet below sea level. Because it evolved under so much (literal) pressure, it uses water as structural support. When pulled to the surface, the change in water pressure causes its body to become distorted, resulting in a photo that spawned the meme: “Go home evolution, you’re drunk.”
But evolution is not drunk. Evolution means adaptation through years of natural selection, something the blobfish obviously accomplished, or else it wouldn’t exist. But we pulled an animal literally half a mile in altitude from the habitat in which it evolved under thousands of pounds of pressure and millions of years. When your body is engineered to operate within a specific environment, things don’t always translate so well when you get yanked out of it. In the face of an unadaptable environmental change, it experienced a complete system failure. No wonder it looks so monumentally busted.
Would it be too ham-fisted to ask: Are we in danger of becoming Mr. Blobby?
Perhaps, but there it is.
—
Still, in the course of my interviews, I’ve been reminded more than once by people much smarter than I that technology is ultimately a good thing for humanity. I’ll admit that the above-mentioned statistics regarding the state of America didn’t exactly fill me with optimism, but my sources rightly called me out. Without information technology, you wouldn’t be reading this article right now. My voice (and everyone’s) would be limited to the people within earshot of a soapbox, and your knowledge would be limited by your proximity to one.
And perhaps most importantly, when it comes to technology, once you pop, the fun don’t stop. There are no take-backs for innovation, no putting the toothpaste back in the tube. The singular option is adaptation. One of the ecotherapists I interviewed, Beverley Ingram, insisted she wasn’t anti-technology because it’s here to stay. “Right now, technology is not being used well,” she admitted. “We have to get smart about how these things are taking advantage of our brain, dopamine, and serotonin. It’s like we’re a little kid in a candy shop, throwing up because we binged on all the sweets.”
Our brains reward us with hits of dopamine for every piece of information we consume, same as when we consume a piece of candy. Those hits of dopamine can become addictive and the desire for more can trump the desire to do anything else. Physical inactivity, social disconnection, and mental illness may all be symptoms of the same malady: a little bit too much time glued to a screen. “We can learn not to binge on sweets,” asserted Ingram. “And we can learn to find a balance.”
It seems we need a yin to the yang, something to bring equilibrium to a world increasingly dominated by the manmade, by the virtual, and by the left-brain. Returning to a state of balance could solve a whole host of problems, and it may be easier to achieve than one might think. There is a remedy that is both a powerful preventative and cure to the negative impacts of technology and urbanization. A healer and a protector.
It’s something that makes people more caring and reduces crime, something that decreases anxiety and promotes higher self-esteem, something that calms the nervous system and improves performance on cognitive tests. Something that relieves pain, improves immunity, and treats anxiety, depression, and ADHD with little risk of adverse side effects. Something that promotes exercise, mindfulness, play, and socialization. Something that kills a lot of birds with one stone.
And given the inaccessibility of quality healthcare in America, it’s crucially important for people to know about something so inexpensive, so accessible, so customizable, and so diverse in modalities. No matter who you are reading this article, it is something from which you can benefit.
That something is nature.
—
According to the research conducted by ecopsychologist Chad Chalquist, “disconnection from the natural world in which we evolved produces a variety of psychological symptoms that include anxiety, frustration, and depression” and contribute to a “pathological sense of inner deadness or alienation from self, others, and the world.”
Thankfully, it is never too late for reconnection. Science shows that reconnecting with nature (through gardens, animals, nature walks, nature brought indoors, and more) can improve health, self-esteem, foster social connection, and bring joy. Engaging nature gives us a second chance to see clearly. Taking those opportunities for action teaches us what it means to be a living thing on this Earth, giving confidence and clarity about who we are and our place among the chaos.
We may never realize the lessons we’ve internalized, and perception is kind of funny like that. But if something as simple and small as a backpack can change how steep you view the grade of a hill, then surely the act of actually climbing the hill could change your concept of yourself. And redeveloping a relationship with the natural world could change everything.
I dipped my paddle into the water. No rhythm — a couple of haphazard and lazy strokes every now and again was enough. Propel, drift, repeat. Occasionally, I made an effort to navigate my kayak when something interesting caught my eye: a blue heron stalking the water’s edge, an osprey eyeing me warily from behind her black mask. The river’s edges began to flank both sides as I approached a narrow bottleneck, Little Occoquan Run.
With the water so low, weaving between the massive boulders proved unsuccessful. Not quite ready for the end of the line, I pulled my kayak onto the rocks and abandoned it, hoping to return once I could chart a passage to open water. But the rocks were large and plentiful, trapping the water in stagnant pools. A shimmer of silver. I spotted a large carp floating belly up on the surface of one such puddle, unlucky to have been caught in this maze of rock and water.
Another reflection of sunlight caught my eye, and another. Not just one unlucky fish, I realized. This was a graveyard. I pondered the fate of these hundreds of carp, wondering if they had been trapped by the rocks or died upstream to be carried here by the river. Maybe they died after spawning, like salmon? I soothed myself with rational, detached speculation, ignoring the undercurrent of horror and unease bubbling in my psyche. Whistling in the dark.
By the time I noticed the absence of twittering birds and ambient river sounds, the stillness made my neck hairs prickle. The oily, standstill water, the buzz of flies, the stale smell hanging in the air — everything about this place was offensive.
Yet I still debated the merits of turning around. Not wanting to waste the money I had spent on renting the kayak, I resisted the urge. Surely, just over the next boulder the river would open again. The flies would clear, the water would flow, and I could continue on my journey. But instead, I hoisted myself over a rock to lock eyes with Death’s ugly-mugged, prehistoric companion — the vulture.
Surprised by the sudden appearance, I immediately backed off. He, on the other hand, looked permanently nonplussed, ignoring me entirely. He bent his mean hooked beak to tear another strip of flesh from the carp clutched in his talons, maintaining eye contact as he swallowed. Behind him, the rocks bobbed and bristled in a sea of movement. A hundred vultures crowded together, picking and tearing at the carcasses.
Though I’d seen a handful of them in my life, they had always been peripheral, keeping to the fringes where the road ended and the woods began. For the first time I felt like an intruder, a spectator to their show. And so they regarded me, without much attention or concern, while the mass of black feathers feasted in frenzy. The flutter of their massive wings was the only sound to cut the ominous silence, like the wind flapping through the Grim Reaper’s robe.
After watching them for some time, it was starting to feel a little bit like finding myself in the weird section of YouTube. Here were nature’s garbage men, creatures with stomachs of steel and acid, cleaning life’s messes where no other cared to venture. And it suddenly occurred to me that there was a reason for this.
This was a hostile place for humans. The pools of standing water festering with bacteria from decomposition, mosquito eggs, vulture shit. I tiptoed delicately, my hand hesitant to make contact with anything. While the vultures clearly had not yet had their fill, I most certainly had. My thinking brain finally caught up to what my gut had been saying the whole while: it’s time to go.
I trekked back to my kayak and fantasized a hot shower. As I pushed off the rocks and made my way back to the boat ramp, the clean, splashing water and cheerful bird chatter lifted my mood. Afternoon slipped into evening and fish began snapping at bugs on the surface of the river. I welcomed the ripples that marked their presence, somehow making me feel less lonely. A heron slinked along the bank, its pointed beak and serpentine neck poised like a spear. I wished it luck.
As Little Occoquan Run faded into the background, a feeling of kinship arose within me as I regarded every creature I passed. The osprey did not return the sentiment, her eyes still hard and suspicious. But I knew there was a sameness between us, a commonality that distinguished us from the vultures, creatures drawn to death. This place — one of splashing water, of chirping sparrows, of dark, wet dirt, of mushrooms and butterflies, of hungry trout, of everyone and everything so alive — it felt like home. We were compelled to share the same space, to be near one another, even if we did not share trust.
Despite the danger of sharing a place where the bug is eaten by the fish, and the fish is eaten by the bird, and the bird is eaten by the cat, and the cat enslaves the humans, we know it is a necessary risk. We know that a place where life thrives is a place where our own can thrive too. We know that our fates are bound to the fates of the living things around us. But we know this fact in a way that our brains can never appreciate, and in a way that logic may even impede.
This knowing isn’t taught in grade school. In fact, it comes pre-programmed. Our bodies reveal the truth — it’s the reason we feel with our hearts, in our guts, and down to our bones. It is the knowledge of hundreds of thousands of generations rolled into the shape of a double-helix. It’s a package deal with the bodies we’re born with, a part of the human condition, a part of us that we have no choice but to accept.
In 1984, biologist E.O. Wilson proposed a hypothesis he called biophilia, a word literally translated as “love of life.” According to Wilson, this is more than a feeling or a mood — humans are actually hardwired down to the nucleotides in our DNA, compelling us to affiliate with living things. Over millions of years living on the savannah, he argued, we evolved an ability to decode subtle signs from nature as a means of survival.
It is not, he argued, a single instinct, but rather “a complex set of learning rules” that fall along a spectrum of emotion: “from attraction to aversion, from awe to indifference, from peacefulness to fear-driven anxiety.” These rules do not need instruction and carry important lessons about life. Though this hypothesis is by no means considered a fact by the scientific community, it’s a popular idea that more people are beginning to explore.
Fear of spiders and snakes, for example, is demonstrated by infants long before they hear their first story about the boogeyman. This was likely an important lesson for hunter-gatherers in the brush to distinguish between edible vegetation and eight-legged foes. Alternately, consider the somewhat baffling human obsession with flowers. Flowers don’t provide any tangible benefits and yet, the floral industry has actually been growing since the 19th century. Maybe that’s because flowers equal fruit and at one point, fruit meant the gift of another tomorrow.
Dennis Proffitt, researcher at the University of Virginia and my former psychology professor, broke it down for me into very simple terms: “Emotions put value on everything. Emotion is basically telling us what is good or bad. It’s mostly controlled by that part of the brain that is reptilian, the oldest part of our brain. And it’s got a fundamental lesson of life. Approach those things that are good for you, and avoid the things that are bad.”
Science has figured out that nature can have a dramatically positive impact on countless components to your well-being: your immune system, how much you exercise, your physical abilities, cardio health, anxiety and depression, stress levels, self-esteem, self-control, confidence, mindfulness, mental acuity, memory, social skills, emotional regulation, creativity, empathy. The list goes on.
According to the theory of biophilia, we are drawn to the natural world because we evolved in its context. All of our mechanisms were engineered to operate best within nature (like the blobfish at the bottom of the ocean), and our brains give us cookies to let us know when we’re doing something right. The evidence is clear that engaging the natural world is indeed rewarding in significant ways.
In one study, prison inmates with window views of nature made significantly fewer sick call visits and were involved in fewer violent incidents, scoring yet another point for windows. But even pictures and simulations of nature can be similarly powerful, which is good news for office workers or high-rise dwellers who may not have access to natural views in everyday life. In another study, dental patients who looked at a landscape mural in the waiting room registered lower blood pressure and reported lower anxiety than those who did not. Nice to know a screensaver or a thrift store ocean painting can do in a pinch.
A walk in the woods can increase the activity of your “natural killer” (NK) cells — the ones that destroy cancerous or infected cells — for up to seven days. Even more shocking is that an oil diffuser can pull off the same trick. Hotel guests with cypress oil vaporized in their rooms were found to have lower cortisol (stress hormone) levels and higher NK cell activity. You can literally fight cancer by sniffing a tree.
In one study, researchers asked participants to undergo a series of cognitive tests before asking them to take a 50-minute walk either in the city, or in an arboretum. When the participants returned and took the cognitive tests again, the results showed the arboretum walkers had improved their memory span by 20%, but the city walkers showed no such gains. In another study, participants were asked to solve creative puzzles before and after a four-day backpacking trip. After the trip they were able to solve nearly 50% more. That’s some brain food to give Adderall a serious run for it’s money.
Brain imaging gives us another perspective of the brain on nature. When subjects are looking at pictures of an urban setting, fMRI scans show increased blood flow to the amygdala, the part of the brain responsible for fear and anxiety. Looking at natural scenes, on the other hand, activated the anterior cingulate and the insula, parts of the brain that handle empathy and regulation of emotion. When monitoring subjects with a mobile EEG machine as they walked outdoors, the readings indicated “lower frustration, engagement, and arousal, and higher meditation levels.” Less angry, less stimulated, less stressed, more zen.
Nature does great things for our bodies and brains. But why? Since my old professor specialized in perception and cognition, I thought I’d ask him to weigh in.
“One could argue the most valuable resource is cognitive attention.”
Cognition and perception were Professor Proffitt’s field of expertise, and while it may appear biased to claim cognitive attention as our most valuable resource, he’s not wrong.
Take a second right now to pay attention to all the stimuli around you. The smell of the air, the ambient noises, the feeling of your clothes against your skin. As for me, I’ve suddenly noticed the gentle clunking of an ice machine, the tension in the couch springs beneath me, and the imposing weight of an expectant dog planting his head on my shoulder in hopes of a scratch on the head. Actually, I noticed the dog about a minute ago and chose to ignore him to finish this paragraph, but my neglect is no longer tenable. Excuse me for a moment.
… And we’re back. All of this sensory information (including the burning eyes of Toby the yellow lab) is competing for our attention and we just can’t pay attention to all of it at once. The human brain is designed to process one thing at a time and tune out the rest, like a theatre technician with a spotlight trained on a dark stage. This can be more or less challenging depending on how invasive the distractions.
“Attention is limited,” continued Professor Proffitt. “If overused, it produces fatigue, and it takes a lot of effort when you have to control it, like reading a boring textbook.”
Reading a boring textbook is one of many activities in today’s world that demands directed attention, or the willpower to focus on something that you wouldn’t naturally focus on. Like using a muscle, too much exertion will deplete your stamina until you’re all tuckered out. This is called ‘directed attention fatigue,’ the symptoms of which include irritability, poor cognitive performance, lack of impulse control, increased accidents, and forgetfulness.
Every day, texts, calls, notifications, noise from the radio, nearby conversations, and bright advertisements are begging for our attention. Our brains are constantly working to maintain focus on the important stuff, but it’s hard when there’s so much information and it all seems important. So we try to our best to make the right choices and keep up with the frenzied mental juggling act of being alive in the 21st century.
This juggling act is called multitasking, something we consider so valuable it’s often listed as a job qualification. We try really hard to keep the balls in the air, but on average, people switch activities every three minutes. It doesn’t work well and is pretty unavoidable in a plugged-in world. Anyone who has cursed the invention of the pop-up ad, the paywall, and the push notification will understand all too well what I am talking about. (For a thought-provoking read, check out the guy who willingly endured the cruel punishment of turning on every single one of his phone notifications. Just try to avoid opening the tab to skim a quarter of the way down, find another interesting link, and leap-frog into the next virtual black hole.)
And while reading a boring textbook or multitasking on the job may seem particularly draining because it sucks, even fun and so-called passive activities like watching television will strain your cognitive faculties in order to keep up with things like plot and drama. I think most can relate to that general feeling of malaise, foggy-headedness and disassociation you start to feel after the 11th episode of whatever in a row. You’ve just got nothing left in the tank. And since paying attention is the first step to learning, planning, friendship, emotional processing (plus a whole host of other human experiences) an empty tank can be disabling.
Ecopsychologists Rachel and Stephen Kaplan suspected that nature’s positive impacts on memory, cognition, and stress may be explained by the way our brains pay attention and re-charge. Directed attention goes against the grain and requires hard work to maintain (like reading, texting, solving a math problem). Things that naturally grab our attention give our cognitive faculties a break to recover. Nature pulls attention in exactly the right way, they argue. This is called Attention Restoration Theory.
The honk of a horn could mean anything — a friendly “hello,” a nudging “not sure if you noticed the light is green,” or “this is my mating ritual, pay attention to me,” to “@#$% you.” It takes context to figure out exactly what it means, it’s confusing, and often a bit threatening. “In a city, attention is being yanked all over the place. There’s traffic, there’s horns, there’s lights, there’s people. And you’ve got to become very accustomed to it to be able to focus at all. That takes effort,” said Professor Proffitt. Walking in the city can feel like playing Frogger but with higher and more permanent stakes. Of course it’s draining.
On the other hand, “Nature is a sweet spot for our attentional resources,” Professor Proffitt continued. “It’s not drab because there’s always something to look at, but it’s not in your face. You have optimistic anticipation about what’s going to happen in the next few minutes on the trail. You wonder what that’s going to be like, maybe some flowers, something to look at. Your attention is being manipulated by the environment in just the way you want.”
The Kaplans called these types of stimuli “soft fascinations.” Sunsets, shadows of clouds across a valley, wildlife, and running water will all catch our involuntary attention, requiring no effort. They give our heavily fatigued minds a rest and give us an opportunity to reflect. Our brains return to baseline and our wires can untangle a bit. Our bodies and minds are calm, replenishing our stockpile of mental resources, similar to meditation.
Professor Proffitt said he couldn’t think of anything better than taking a walk in the woods. “When you walk into a place like that, you get the crud out of your head you don’t need. You look at lichen, look at rock textures. Every day and season is different. When the ground is frozen, you can look at the grass coated in ice. In the summer everything is green. In spring, flowers everywhere. Even food tastes better. You ask, ‘What does that all that other stuff matter?’ You know that you’re going to see things that you didn’t anticipate and they’re going to be beautiful.”
He pulled up a picture on his computer of his vacation in Ireland. He and his wife are smiling in front of a wave of green hills rolling along the top of a jagged, seaside crag. “Another hiker approached me on this trail and gave a card with a quote,” he said. He pulled up another tab and Googled Søren Kierkegaard.
Finding it, he adjusted his glasses and read aloud. “Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Everyday, I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it.”
He turned to me in his swivel chair. “I think that’s a motto to live by.”
“So they say you can’t run from your problems, ” I started.
He smiled, a rare sight on his usual poker face. “But out in the woods? You can walk.”
So as to why nature is good for us — it’s a bit of a backwards question. In urban life, we are juggling checklists, paperwork, car horns, taxes, pop-ups, deadlines, bureaucracy, playdates, clickbait, fake news, viral videos, breaking news, credit scores, phone scams, checkbooks, car maintenance, and the beeps, bloops, and buzzes from gadgets reminding us about everything our memory is out of space to hold. We are tired.
Nature, on the forgotten other hand, is what we were made for. A part of our prototype. Priorities are easier, clarity is sharper. Compared to the car horn which can mean anything, a loud snap in the woods means big animal. The setting sun means go to bed. The sound of running water means come hither. Sunshine feels good on the skin. No bears, no rain, no worries. Everything just makes more sense. And when our brains are clear about the important parts of being human, magic starts to happen.
Relationships run deep like life depends on it, because in nature it does. Self-esteem is built not on image, but on things that matter far more — perseverance, capability, kindness. Communication is intuitive, wordless. Wisdom is gleaned not from books or on screens, but through experience.
Our humanity does not separate us from nature. To the contrary, nature defines us. It shapes our relationships — to others, the universe, and ourselves. Without effort, it teaches us the most important things about being alive. To put it more eloquently than I can, I’ve leave you with a quote from ecotherapist Michele Zehr: “When we go outside, we are literally coming home to ourselves.”
—
Although scientists have a lot more questions to answer about ecopsychology, there are people who don’t want to wait around for science to figure it all out. Based on the evidence we’ve got, they are willing to take a bet that we can use the power of nature to promote health, happiness, and well-being. We know nature can reduce anxiety, improve depression, foster connection and empathy, improve cognition, increase creativity, and makes us feel more alive. With all this new-found information, I was ready to make the same bet. I just didn’t know what to do about it.
I wanted to hear stories from the mouths of actual people who had seen the magic for themselves. I wanted practical help for the rest of us to help ourselves. It was time to find the white witches and Granny women (and men) of the technological era — the modern-day Appalachian mountain healers.
The beeping of the EKG machines were testing the last remnants of my sanity. Chinese water torture in the form of sound, a shrill metronome marking the growing distance between myself and reality.
Forty-eight sleepless hours in the ICU. I was getting dizzy from scanning doctors’ faces as they passed, hoping for liberation from the purgatory of not knowing. The nurses were cheerful, but they always were. It was put on, of course. How could anyone be cheerful in this place straddled between life and death? Patients groaned in agony behind pink, plastic curtains, every room full of alien instruments, wires, and tubes.
They said he collapsed on his way out of the office to battle his way through rush hour. Some bystanders had given him CPR and used the defibrillator twice to get his heart started again. I hated thinking about him like that — surrounded by strangers from the vantage of the floor. Scared, confused. At least he wasn’t alone, I told myself.
I needed air, but I settled for nicotine. I stepped out for a punishing cigarette — smoked fast and burned hot. Maybe I needed it that way.
When I returned to the room, I found the curtains drawn. Sweeping them to the side, I was accosted by the sight of my father completely naked on the hospital gurney, sending me backpedaling to sit outside the door. The nurses emerged to explain he had vomited on himself and needed his gown changed. As the father of three girls, the man had been painstakingly modest about nudity, and somehow, after twenty-seven years of success, I bungled it on the last day. Small indignities of watching someone you love die.
The nurses left me again. I was determined this time to maintain my post, listening to the rhythmic click and sigh as the respirator filled his lungs with air. The balloon pump kept his heart beating. IV bags perched on shiny chrome racks dripped drugs into his bloodstream. So many damn machines — I wasn’t sure how much man remained.
At some point the beeping from the monitors indicated that his heart was racing. I looked over to the bed and his eyes met mine, opened for the first time since I arrived. He tried to speak, but the ventilation tube silenced his voice, his tongue swollen and purple from biting it when he hit the floor. His expression was one I’d never seen him wear: fear.
I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing. Mom was back — when did she get back? — and held his hand and told him that we were here and we loved him. The nurse told me to hold his leg so he wouldn’t rip out his catheter. He looked hazy and sedated but he saw me. We saw each other. And then he closed his eyes for the last time.
—
A year and a half later on a frigid February day, I braced myself against blustery gusts of air, kicking myself for forgetting my hat and scarf in my truck. A brutal windstorm had torn through the Shenandoah Valley the previous night, bowing the windows of my apartment to the point I thought they might crack. Though the storm had passed, today’s windchill made the 40 degree air feel closer to 25.
Stepping over newly fallen trees, I trekked through the Edith J. Carrier Arboretum until I reached a clearing hidden by pines and lined with rocks. Carefully arranged, they formed a winding labyrinth for walking meditation. At the entry stood ecotherapist Pat Cheeks, who had arrived an hour before to clear fallen brush, collect litter, and tidy stones. We greeted each other and made small talk about last night’s crazy storm, soon circling back to the reason we were both standing out here in the cold.
“So what do you want to let go of?” she asked.
Cheeks is a woman who has spent her entire life dedicated to helping relieve pain — first as a nurse at the burn center at UVA hospital, as a volunteer for the Sexual Assault Resource Agency (SARA), and later as a psychiatric clinical nurse specialist.
After her experiences with survivors of trauma, Cheeks found surprising solutions for pain management besides the use of medication. Asking burn patients to imagine their body covered with cool river water, for example, took away some of the heat and pain. Eventually, Cheeks opened her own small business, Natural Transitions, to help clients adjust to major life changes using nature as a healing tool.
When I agreed to try one of her therapeutic exercises, she asked me to think about what no longer serves me in my life. What is holding me back?
“My dad,” I told her.
For months after my father died, I buried myself in the busyness of death — making calls to relatives and the utility companies, negotiating with the funeral home, writing the obituary, designing memorial cards, transferring car titles at the DMV, yelling at the HOA for harassing me about mildew on the side of his house.
Eventually, my list of things to do ran out. By then, it felt too late to grieve, inappropriate. I’d missed my window. In the stillness of everyday life, inconvenient emotions loomed in the foreground: anger, regret, sadness, confusion, fear, disappointment, resentment. And now I was finding them harder to ignore.
Cheeks nodded and produced a box from which she retrieved a lighter and a bundle of dried sage. Despite five minutes of joint effort, we weren’t able to keep the lighter aflame against the wind. Undeterred, she held the sage to my nose and told me to inhale. It was a grounding exercise, she explained. An effort to engage my senses and prime my brain to be mindful and notice the sights, sounds, and smells of the forest. “Plus, it’s cleansing,” she added.
As a science geek I’ve always been skeptical of things I cannot explain, and I’d never really given much thought to the merits of sage smudging. Still, I was determined to take this exercise one hundred percent seriously and, truth be told, something about the whole affair felt ceremonial. Official. (And, with a quick Google search after the exercise, I learned she was right.) With bits of sage tickling my nostrils, I took a deep breath.
“Now,” Cheeks instructed with a gentle voice, “Look around and choose a rock that represents what you want to release from your life. There isn’t a right or wrong answer.”
Immediately, I was drawn to a small pebble of black granite with stripes of white quartz scored along the surface. Holding it between my fingers, I considered it, admiring the contrast of colors, the strangeness of minerals cracked and reformed over millions of years. I placed it back on the ground. “That’s not it,” I said. I liked it too much.
“Good,” Cheeks encouraged. “Trust your instinct, but think about it carefully.”
In that moment I felt awkward and stupid. To me, all the stones looked basically the same. What made one better than another? It wasn’t logical, half of my brain yelled at me. Who cares what rock? Would it really make a difference? The other half of my brain berated me for being such a rigid square. Suspend the disbelief a little, why don’t you? My competing halves squabbled while my eyes scanned.
And sitting in plain sight, there it was. The stone was large, asymmetrical, gray, and ugly. Squatting to lift it, I cradled it in my forearms like an infant. A fat one — somewhere around 15 pounds. With its shape so ungainly, I found it difficult to hold, resting it partially against my pelvis for stability. Something to represent all those icky emotions I’d been avoiding for over a year. This thing would be hell to carry — it was the one.
“We’re going to set an intention now,” Cheeks explained. “As you walk through the labyrinth, focus your mind on what you want to release and visualize pouring it into that rock. When you get to the center of the labyrinth, place it down and give yourself permission to let it go.”
She pointed to the pile in the center of the labyrinth. “Once you can leave that stone behind, choose another to represent what you’d like to fill the space you’ve created by letting go of what no longer serves you. Meditate on that as you walk the same path out of the labyrinth.”
I nodded. At the entrance of the maze, Cheeks had laid a thin pine branch along the ground. It was the “threshold,” she explained, a physical barrier to represent the beginning and end of this emotional ritual. “Begin when you’re ready,” she said.
And with the wind whipping hair against my face, I crossed the threshold.
—
In theory, it was a rather simple exercise. But I was out of my depth and pre-occupied with the execution. How fast should I walk? How does one walk and meditate at the same time? Should I close my eyes?
For a moment I stood still and silent, cradling the rock to my chest. Icy air leeched into my lungs as I steadied my breath. It smelled faintly like Christmas, splintered branches bleeding their sweet, piney scent into the atmosphere. The staccato thrum of a woodpecker echoed from the distance.
What did I want to release? No right or wrong answers, I reminded myself.
His tongue. The image of my father’s purple, swollen tongue came into my mind. Poking between his lips when they removed the ventilation tube, dark in contrast to his pallid, lifeless skin. My heart ached at the memory. I didn’t want to remember him that way. I pictured the image seeping like a toxin from my fingertips into the rock. One step forward.
But this didn’t take away all the horrible memories. Like cracking Pandora’s box, snippets of horror rushed to the forefront of my brain.
When the doctor told us he was braindead with no possibility of recovery, my sister had reached for my hand. I shook my head ‘no,’ recoiling from human touch. I didn’t want to carry anyone else’s pain, I could barely manage my own. ’Bad sister’ flashed across my mind, though I’d long since apologized and been forgiven. Into the rock and one step forward.
The sound of a jackhammer in the distance interrupted my thoughts, ricocheting inside my skull. Anger bubbled inside me. How unfair, I thought. How am I supposed to immerse myself in nature with all that damn noise? Life’s not fair, came my father’s voice. One of his favorite phrases.
One of my first memories was through the bars of my baby sister’s crib. My mother had placed the three of us there while the EMTs hauled my father out of our apartment on a stretcher after his first heart attack. I was 4, he was 53.
“My ticker’s just not very good,” he explained when I was older.
“Why not?” I demanded to know.
“When you get old, things just wear out,” he said with a sigh.
“It’s not fair.”
“Life’s not fair, kiddo.”
The jackhammer stopped, but my heart was racing. I was furious. What did the man think he was doing having kids at that age? Didn’t he realize he wouldn’t be there when I needed him? When my truck was making that clanking noise, when I’d had a bad day at work, when I was proud of myself for life’s small accomplishments. Didn’t he realize I’d have no one to call?
With gravel crunching beneath my feet, I let it all go. In the last few years of his life, we’d grown distant. I had become tired of his nagging, prodding, pushing me to get a career, make something more of myself. “What are you doing with your life, Sarah?” he’d asked me. “You can’t kick the can down the road forever.”
“Just watch me,” I’d snapped.
Regret. Regret that I didn’t come see him on Father’s Day, the week before he died. He said he wasn’t feeling well, and didn’t want me to bother with the trip. I should have gone. I’d bought him a card with a drawing of three kids in the backseat of a van, dad in the front with a speech bubble that read, “Kids, remember when someone cuts you off, it’s okay to use your special finger!” Inside the card: “Thank you for teaching me the important things in life, Dad.”
As a man with chronic road rage, he would have loved it. I’d planned to give it to him the next time I saw him, but I never got the chance. It burned with the rest of him at the crematorium.
The cold raked my knuckles, white from carrying the heavy stone. It stole the heat from my fingers until they were completely numb. He was right, I thought. Life isn’t fair. I didn’t need that resentment, guilt, anger, and regret anymore. I didn’t need it leeching my warmth. A gust of wind rustled the branches of the evergreens above like the swish of long, sweeping dress. I closed my eyes and felt tears and sun on my face.
By the time I reached the center of the labyrinth, my forearms and biceps were shaking from fatigue. I was ready to put it down. In a way, it felt more final than when they put my father’s remains in the ground. At the funeral, my mother had hired photographers who stalked in the background, shutters clicking in my ears while I tossed a rose on top of his urn. My rage trumped my grief, unable to feel anything in the spotlight of spectators.
Here, in the wind and quiet, I took a moment with that heavy rock and placed a hand over its surface. Cold, rough. “Goodbye,” I whispered.
—
At the center of the labyrinth, I searched for a stone to represent what I wanted to fill the void I’d created by leaving my pain behind. It wasn’t difficult. From the very top I plucked a smooth blue stone, clearly worn down after a millennia of water erosion. A river stone, like the ones my father and I would search for when we’d skip rocks on the lake.
I stood, straightening my back, feeling the relief in my muscles, the tension in my shoulders melting with my newfound lightness.
During my winding walk towards the center, I’d only heard the wind through dry branches and an occasional woodpecker. But now, the woods were alive with sounds of life that I’d been too preoccupied to notice — gentle chirps of female cardinals, returned by the more rambunctious twitter of the males. The rapid chip of the sparrow, the quick-fire, five-beat note of the Carolina wren. Squirrels skittered in helter skelter spirals around the trunks of oak trees, their barks and squeaks intermingling with birdsong. Even in winter when the world seemed shriveled and dead, life sprung from every tree hollow.
I held the blue pebble in my closed palm and pressed my fists into my pocket to warm my cracked, dry hands. Between my thumb and index finger, I rubbed its smooth surface like a prayer bead. And, in my own way, I prayed.
I didn’t know who I was praying to. Maybe the universe, maybe myself. It didn’t matter. I prayed for the strength to be a better sister, to take their hands the next time they needed me. I prayed for the patience to tackle my life’s problems even when I felt I had no one to call. I prayed for the wisdom to recognize I could be resourceful and perseverant, and that I did, in fact, have people who would pick up the phone when I needed someone. I prayed for forgiveness from myself.
I walked with shoulders back as I left that labyrinth behind, my dad’s voice still in my head. “Life’s not fair,” he’d said. And as I reached the end of the maze, I paused before crossing back over the threshold. The rest of our conversation flooded my mind.
At age six, the notion that life wasn’t fair didn’t seem good enough to me. “I think you should be here forever,” I told him, crossing my arms.
He chuckled but gave me a subdued smile. “Me too, but someday I won’t be around.”
My lip poked out in a pout, as though this fact were his fault. He nudged my chin with his knuckle, lifting my face to meet his gaze. “At the end of the day, we’re all worm food, and that’s the circle of life.”
I tried my best to understand. “Like the Lion King?” I asked.
He broke into a wide grin. “Yeah, just like that.”
And without warning, singing a barely recognizable rendition of The Circle of Life, he snatched me up by the armpits like Simba on Pride Rock. I’d laughed until I cried.
At the threshold, my hands now warm again, I felt the smooth stone in my pocket and filled it with the memory. With one last lungful of harsh but life-giving air, I stepped over that pine branch and back into the world.
No medicine, no hospitals, no doctors. That was life for early European settlers of the Appalachian mountains, and they preferred it that way. The fiercely independent Scotch-Irish immigrants wanted nothing to do with the ruling elite of the northern industrial cities and were willing to face off mountain lions to prove it. Isolated and self-reliant, the settlers had only one option in the face of medical emergency: go fetch Granny.
Granny Women (or Granny Witches) were tough by definition. Surviving until old age meant surviving childbirth, illness, and injury in the most unforgiving landscape of the New World. Safe to assume they knew a thing or two about a thing or two. With no medicine or libraries within reach, they relied on Old World folk wisdom, Cherokee tradition, and their knowledge of the plants and land to take care of their own.
In a way, Appalachia’s ecotherapists are kindred spirits. Though not out of necessity like their counterparts, and with more access to modern amenities, they still hold sacred the healing power that permeates these blue hills. After my experience in the labyrinth at the Edith J. Carrier Arboretum, I knew I needed more answers.
I met with Michele Zehr, formerly a U.S. Marine, M16 rifle instructor, automotive technology professor, and self-defense instructor. Despite the list of impressive accomplishments, however, I hadn’t arranged to interview her about any of that. Zehr left it all behind to pursue what she thinks may be her life-defining work. Founder and Executive Director of the Center for Earth-Based Healing (CEBH), Zehr now dedicates her life to helping trauma survivors. Twice a year, the CEBH hosts weekend ecotherapy retreats free-of-charge for survivors at Douthat State Park in Millboro, Virginia.
“A lot of people have no idea what ecotherapy means,” she said. “Once, someone asked if it involved doing psychedelics in the woods.” She let out a big, warm laugh. “The answer is no. A lot of people get ecotherapy from things they already do without even realizing it. It’s not a foreign thing, it’s just putting a name on something that has been healing us for thousands of years.”
During camp, survivors hike trails, cook, do yoga, make art, and participate in guided activities that heighten their senses. Survivors are invited to take off their shoes and put their feet in the dirt, listen to the sounds of the forest, or taste sassafras if they can find any. I was surprised to learn how simple it was, and how short in duration: only three days.
And yet, the results spoke for themselves, survivors lives permanently changed. One woman overcame injuries she believed were permanent, regaining the ability to hike and do yoga for the first time since leaving her violent marriage. Another woman, originally homeless and unemployed, found a job and her own apartment two months after completing camp.
“There’s magic that happens in those woods and it’s not something that I can truly take credit for,” Zehr said. “That’s Mother Nature.”
But participants do not process their trauma during camp — in fact, they are asked not to talk about it. Talk therapy, Zehr said, is extremely helpful and often necessary to conceptualize and understand traumatic experiences. “But, we are not cognitively processing past trauma at our programs. We create a space to remind survivors and their bodies that you are not there anymore, you are here, in the present moment.”
Healing injuries, solving homelessness? Without physical or talk therapy? I’ll admit it sounded like something you’d hear from a snake oil salesman or a faith healer’s tent. As a mental health professional, my primary goal was to get people to talk. But after my own ecotherapy experience processing the loss of my father without talk therapy, I was ready to believe.
So how does that work? I asked Zehr point-blank: “If participants aren’t processing or talking about the trauma, how do they heal?”
She smiled, surely having heard this question more than once.
“From the neck down.”
To understand how nature heals, Zehr explained, we had to first understand the meaning of trauma. “It means too much, too fast. Anything that overwhelms our nervous systems and our natural capacity to process something and stay regulated is a traumatic experience. Our body remembers those traumas and holds on to them if we are unable to fully process and integrate the traumatic experience in the moment that it happens.”
I’d heard of this notion at various workshops in the mental health field, of trauma trapped within the body. When a person experiences a threat (emotional or physical), the body revs its engines to prepare for fight, flight, or freeze. The heart races, muscles tense, adrenaline spikes, and breathing quickens. In the case of serious trauma, however, the body might remain caught in a state of arousal long after the threat is gone.
Needless to say, bodies are not meant to function in a highly aroused state for long periods of time. The consequences can manifest in headaches, earaches, insomnia, nightmares, itching and rashes, digestive problems, fatigue, hyperactive behavior, lower immune response, and much more. Trauma affects more than the mind, it can decimate the body.
And before you dismiss this entire section because you believe you’ve never personally experienced trauma, think again. According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), over half of all adults and over 60% of men have experienced trauma in their lives. Traumatic events can include rape, domestic abuse, terrorism, war, natural disasters, childhood abuse and neglect, and prison stays. But you may be surprised to find that common life experiences may also be traumatic, like the loss of a loved one (including pets), divorce, illness, and even moving to a new location.
Chronic stress impacts the body similarly to trauma: increased headaches, depression, heartburn, insomnia, rapid breathing, weakened immune system, risk of heart attack, high blood sugar, high blood pressure, gastrointestinal problems, and even fertility problems. If the stressors continue, says the American Institute of Stress: “just as any machine wears out… so do living organisms that sooner or later become the victim of this constant wear and tear.”
Watch an infant sleeping and observe how his belly naturally rises and falls. Most people don’t seem to do this anymore, holding their breath in their chest. When I mentioned this to Zehr, she nodded. “Shallow-breathing — that is, not belly-breathing — is a trauma response. A lot of people don’t realize that you won’t likely get through this life without experiencing trauma at some point, and no two people experience traumatic events in the same ways.”
It took Jae De La Mora three years to leave her abusive marriage. When she finally got out, her injuries were so severe she spent most of her time bedridden. “I loved the outdoors, hiking, yoga,” she said. “But I thought it was never gonna happen again.”
She left the state for protection, devastated by the ordeal and clueless about her next steps. A local women’s resource center suggested she apply for Camp Ostara, a retreat for survivors of domestic violence offered by the CEBH. “I really didn’t think it was going to help very much,” she said. “I thought I wasn’t capable — I had gained weight, I had injuries, I was out of shape. I figured, here goes nothing.”
Eden C. felt a similar sense of surrender by the time she was recommended to Camp Mabon, a retreat for survivors of sexual violence. After escaping her abusive marriage of ten years, she and her four year-old son moved across the country where they didn’t know a soul. She had always been the breadwinner, but holding down a job was out of the question now. Just the sound of the doorbell would set off a panic attack. “I wasn’t just homeless,” she said, “I was hopeless.”
Both Eden and De La Mora were apprehensive when they arrived at camp. Eden admits she almost canceled several times, unsure of what to expect, or how it could help. Confined to her home and addicted to social media, she was concerned when informed there would be no cell phone service at camp. When De La Mora arrived at Douthat State Park on a chilly April weekend, snow still coated the ground and the forecast called for freezing rain. Almost in tears, all she could think was, “I can’t do it.”
But at camp, both Eden and De La Mora found a supportive network of fellow survivors and trauma-informed staff. Before starting a long hike, survivors talked about their fears. What are you expecting from this walk, what are you thinking, what are you feeling, what animals are you afraid of? “Everyone came into the woods with some fear and some challenge,” said De La Mora. “I wasn’t alone by a long shot. Nature levels the playing field. It doesn’t matter if you’re rich, poor, disabled — everyone experiences warm, cold, and fear.”
In spite of not talking about her trauma, De La Mora discovered that she didn’t need to explain herself. “Trauma changes you,” she said. “Everywhere you go, you don’t fit. But in this place, you belong.” She learned about other women who had finished the camp with a variety of challenges — one morbidly obese, another woman blind in a leg brace. “If they could do it,” she thought, “I can too.”
Eden specifically remembered the blind woman in the leg brace. As fellow participants of Camp Mabon, they hiked the trails together while Eden served as her guide. She narrated the environment, helping sidestep stones and large roots. On one of the hikes, the woman’s brace broke, and Eden and the staff fashioned an improvised splint using a flannel shirt, duct tape, and trowel. “She wanted to do it,” said Eden. “She just needed a little bit of help.”
“How do you describe the power that is felt between a group of women who have all experienced trauma but never speak about it to each other?” asked Eden. “I’m not sure I can.”
Within two months of completing Camp Mabon, Eden had found an apartment and a new job. Now, she works as the Director of Social Media and Customer Service for a health and wellness company, living in her own home with her son and a loving, supportive partner. Eden still carries scars that remind her of the painful life she once thought she couldn’t escape. Now, she plans to cover each of them with a reminder of the strength she discovered in those woods, the first of which is the emblem for the Center for Earth-Based Healing.
Zehr explained the significance of the image: based on the autumn and spring equinoxes, the time of year with equal parts light and darkness, positive experiences can bring balance to the shadow parts of life.
“In that weekend,” said Eden, “I found the power buried deep inside me. The same power that allowed me to survive for years in a situation that was in all honesty un-survivable. The power that had been lost in pain, depression and hopelessness. I rediscovered the person I was supposed to be, the person I had lost. I found her and I won’t ever let her go.”
People have used drugs to cope with emotional problems since the dawn of drugs. But in the 21st century, one of the cheapest, most accessible drugs is information. And I don’t refer to information as a drug for the sake of hyperbole. Literally, our brains treat it the same as a bump of coke. Both give us a pleasant hit of dopamine, our brain’s way of saying “gimme more.”
From an evolutionary standpoint, it’s easy to see why information might be so addictive. More information meant a greater chance of making the right decisions, and thereby a greater chance at survival. But when information is infinite (as it is with the advent of the internet), it can be more of a hindrance than a help. I’m always impressed by the lexicon we’ve created to define our new world and this phenomenon is no different: information overload, infobesity, infoxication. Goofy terminology, but accurate — with the world at your fingertips, gorging on information is the new normal.
TMI is more than an acronym I use when my friends overshare about their sex lives — too much information is a serious problem in the digital age. Reading, talking about, and researching a problem can feel deceptively like doing something about it. In reality, we end up stuck in the purgatory of analysis paralysis, making no decisions at all. And if the problem is emotional trauma, searching for the “right” answer might be the worst mistake you can make.
“We are just animals,” said Zehr. “We are unique animals because we have the capacity to construct buildings, do complex math problems, and write articles. But the shadow side is that we can use these capacities to get around dealing with our stuff. We can disassociate, avoid, suppress. Sometimes we enable avoidance.”
Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), a form of talk therapy, is arguably the most popular form of mental health treatment available now. A therapist specializing in CBT may challenge a survivor’s negative thought patterns, encouraging them to recognize they are safe now, that the trauma was not their fault, and to process their emotions by recounting the experience in a safe environment. Though effective for many people, research is beginning to show that CBT may not be as effective for PTSD, and can even re-traumatize survivors by asking them to relive painful experiences.
As the name implies, CBT relies on cognitive analysis. We want to understand ourselves, to make sense of the world, and discover solutions to our problems. We want information. But when arousal is high, as with anxiety and trauma, logic and executive functioning collapse. From someone who has experienced more than a few panic attacks, telling myself that I wasn’t actually going to die wasn’t convincing because the logical part of my brain had left the building.
Perhaps in the case of treating emotional wounds, logic needs to go out the window. As useful as the human language can be, sometimes we have to stop talking, stop reading, and stop trying to make sense of painful things, because sometimes the answers will come in a form other than words. And in order to find them, we need to get out of our heads and into the real world.
New modalities have emerged in the last few decades to address the limitations of talk therapy. Somatic therapy is one such option, proven to be effective in treating anxiety, depression, chronic stress, addiction, and other mental disorders. The goal of a somatic therapist is to help the client identify and release physical tension stored in the body after a traumatic event.
At the Center for Earth-Based Healing, participants didn’t talk about their trauma. They hiked trails, did yoga, ate oranges in the forest, practiced breathing, put their feet in the water, hugged trees. They immersed themselves in sensory experiences. I noticed some overlap between somatic and ecotherapy, perhaps because they both demonstrate that you don’t always need to poke around in the mind in order to heal trauma.
“A lot of the magic of ecotherapy is nervous system regulation,” said Zehr, who has received training in Somatic Experiencing through Dr. Peter Levine’s SE Trauma Institute. “Our minds may not completely pick up on what’s going on. But our bodies do. When we go outside, our body is like, ‘Oh, there I am,’ because our bodies are made of the same elements from which the Earth is made. In a sense, the body calms because it recognizes itself in nature. And when the body is calm, it opens the mind to things that are often painful, things we avoid. Things like introspection and growth.”
After my father died, I remained trapped in a never-ending to-do list in my mind. The list was rigid, it had rules, it had deadlines, it made sense. But it kept me from feeling anything, probably as my subconscious had intended. In the labyrinth, I had no logic to fall back on, no rules to abide. But I felt the numbing cold in my fingertips, felt the vicious wind batter my face, felt the exhaustion in my arms as I carried that heavy stone. And I felt relief when I let it go.
Maybe it was the relief to finally feel what I had been avoiding for so long — the pain of knowing life sucks sometimes and there is absolutely nothing to be done about it. No amount of analysis or preparation would protect me. And yet, somehow, I would still be okay.
Maybe. But for once, I’m going to try to stop putting it into words.
Said Zehr, “Mother Nature is trying to show us all the time what we need to do to heal ourselves, but she doesn’t speak in our language. We have to learn how to listen with both our minds and our bodies.”
—
Since this article was written, the Center for Earth-Based Healing‘s primary source of funding (a federal grant) was discontinued due to a lack of available grant funds. If another reliable and sustainable funding source can not be found in 2020, the Center for Earth-Based Healing will be closing its doors.
Any good doctor, veterinarian, or mechanic understands that wellness isn’t just about fixing what’s already broken. Maintenance and preventative care are vital, if not the most important components of a healthy lifestyle.
My truck often gives me grief — unsurprising, considering its age and the odometer reading. Several months ago, I noticed my engine would shudder at low speeds, followed by a clunky cylinder misfire. Without the money to afford a repair, I hoped it would somehow magically straighten itself out, which cost me a new distributor cap, ignition module, rotor, spark plugs, and spark plug wires. The only thing that needed replacement in the first place were the spark plugs. But due to my willful ignorance, I paid four times the price for what should have been an easy fix.
It’s not necessary to wait until catastrophic failure before taking action. Take it from me and my old Chevy — that strategy is more expensive and harder to fix. An apple a day keeps the doctor away. But it’s easy to forget that what applies to your car and your physical health also applies to mental health, especially when there isn’t a clear answer to the question: What is the psychological apple-a-day?
Until only the last few decades, psychologists have been more interested in mental dysfunction than on what promotes flourishing and happiness. The DSM, often referred to as ‘the bible of psychiatry,’ stands for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Notice there is no secondary manual for mental wellbeing.
In 1998, psychologist Martin Seligman gave an inaugural address to the American Psychological Association, concerned about the ten-fold increase in depression diagnoses since the 1950s. Damage-control and treatment are important, he argued. But to improve the mental wellbeing of an entire nation, psychological professionals would need to start addressing problems before they became one.
Seligman wanted to shift focus from the failures of the human psyche instead to its triumphs. In spite of adversity, the human-animal has proven time and time again it can still thrive. Now he wanted to know how and why, thus beginning the scientific field of “positive psychology,” the study of what makes for a good life. And isn’t that what it’s really all about?
Said Seligman, “It is my belief that no medication or technique of therapy holds as much promise for serving as a buffer against mental illness as does human strength.”
Not Prozac, not Adderall, not Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Human strength. How do we find that strength? Perhaps we need to take a closer look at what it means to be human. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” they say. In the case of the human psyche, I’m with Seligman. I say we can do better.
If we want to get serious about the mental wellbeing of our country, it starts with children.
In the heart of the Blue Ridge mountains, spring is full of new life. Winding, backcountry roads give a glimpse of calves and foals frolicking in the morning dew, unsteady kittens stalking leaves in the wind, baby foxes tussling with their siblings. They play.
Play perplexes scientists. Since it serves no utilitarian purpose at the expense of depleted energy and potentially fatal danger, it does make one wonder where the evolutionary benefit lies. For a long time, scientists believed that play prepares young animals for adulthood — predators practice giving chase, prey practice being chased. But this explanation doesn’t always pan out.
There are some other theories. Play might help animals develop cognitive, motor, and social skills and greater understanding of abilities and limitations. Perhaps play helps animals learn to deal with stressful and new situations in their environments. Different animals play differently (even animals like crocodiles, turtles, and wasps) and it’s possible these are different means to different ends. No one really knows for sure.
But do animals need it? And specifically, do humans need it?
It’s hard to ethically study the neurological impacts of play since cutting into children’s brains is considered a little taboo. Much of the research is conducted on animals, often on rats. But since we are also animals (and like rats, a social, vertebrate species), scientists hope their findings can point us at least in the right direction.
Neuropsychologist Jaak Panksepp was interested in whether or not play was a primitive process, like the drives for food, sleep, and sex — “memories evolution built into the brain.” These drives reside deep within the ancient, inner brain, while the newly evolved outer cortex controls learned activity (e.g. stop on red, go on green). To study this further, Panksepp surgically removed the outer cortex of young rats and compared their behavior to that of normally developed rats. Both groups still tussled and played.
What does this mean? Well, for one, it means that the impulse for play is deeply ingrained, like our other primal instincts. Furthermore, scientists like Panksepp believe this finding indicates that play, though seemingly pointless, may actually be key to animal survival and evolution. So what benefits does play provide?
One study found that rats raised in a sterile, boring, isolated environment grew up very differently from rats raised with an interesting environment full of toys and other play companions. “Enriched” rats not only were more successful in attracting mates, they also developed larger cerebral cortices and larger brains. Further studies found that these rats were smarter, better able to complete mazes, and showed increased levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor, a protein necessary for the growth and maintenance of brain cells in both animals and humans.
When looking at humans, I think parents intuitively understand that play is good for children — at the very least, it tuckers them out enough to get a little peace and quiet from time to time. And while important in a world of increasing obesity, the benefits of play go beyond physical exercise. In children, scientists have determined positive effects of play on attention, creative problem solving, academic achievement, emotional regulation, empathy, reasoning, and language.
The problem is that play is dying.
Play has been declining steadily since the 1950s, a time that psychologist Peter Gray calls the “Golden Age” of play. With child labor laws in effect, children couldn’t work in the mines or the factory, and were left instead to their own devices and imaginations to fill the time. After school, neighborhoods were full of children roaming around on bicycles, climbing trees in the backyard, or catching tadpoles in the pond. But free time has dwindled, yards have signs that say “keep off the grass,” and latchkey kids are picked up by police.
More than once I’ve heard a parent say, “I can’t let my child play outside. Things aren’t like they used to be.” And you know what? They’re right. Children are safer now than ever — the mortality rate is lower, fewer children go missing, abduction rates are lower, kids aren’t getting hit by cars. Still, parents are petrified, and I don’t blame them. Who wouldn’t be in a world with toxic tap water, baby-eating dingos, school shootings, microplastics in the table salt, and Amber alerts on push notification?
The world is a scary place, news anchors tell us — because scary sells. I interned one summer for the local Fox station in Philly (please forgive me for my sins), where I spent hours calling dozens of hospitals during a heat wave to find someone who had died of heat stroke. Hurrah, cheered the news room when I finally found one. We were the first to report on this horrible “epidemic.” The news cycle is shorter than ever with clips cut to the most inflammatory nine-second sound bite possible. Because that’s as much attention the average viewer has to spare. Nuance can’t exist in nine seconds. Only fear, death, and violence splashed in bold, bright red.
Aside from abductions, accidents, and murder, parents have also begun to fear something perhaps more insidious — failure. In such an uncertain and scary world, it makes sense that parents want to shield their children from suffering. But at what cost?
In 1983, the Department of Education released a report “A Nation at Risk,” lamenting a “rising tide of mediocrity” in American children. “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war,” read the dramatic report. The same attitude led us to No Child Left Behind in 2002, shifting focus of education entirely to standardized test scores. The message received by educators, schoolchildren, and parents was that one thing mattered: producing results.
Today, many kids are enrolled in SAT-prep classes by middle school, pack their schedules full of AP classes, and choose their hobbies based on padding their resumés for college admissions rather than on things they enjoy. We expect a lot from kids: wake up before the sun, sit still and pay attention, get to seven classes with less than five minutes between bells, participate in an organized sport or work a job, go home and study, rinse and repeat.
And we never stopped to ask in what universe a child might need a resumé. Where does that leave us? With kids who are overworked, stressed, sleep-deprived, and more anxious and depressed than ever.
What is play exactly, and how do we get it back?
Play is, simply put, what we choose to do when we don’t need to, just because it’s fun. If we do something to reach an extrinsic goal, it’s probably not play. So for all the parents with their kids enrolled in after school soccer or chess club, that isn’t play. Directed activity with structure, rules, and rankings isn’t play. Play comes from freedom of choice.
In my research for this article, I reached out to ecotherapist Carolyn Schuyler, founder of Wildrock, a non-profit, natural playscape nestled in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Crozet, Virginia. Wildrock features mountain views, a wading stream, a walking labyrinth, educational center, and more. Though Wildrock is accessible to people of all ages, children are the most common visitors.
Visiting Wildrock on a field trip day is something to see. Kids are allowed to choose whatever they want to do, whether it’s splashing in the creek, building forts out of sticks, playing “wildlife rescue,” dressing up in costumes, climbing a giant wooden salamander, hiding in the Hobbit House, crawling through tunnels, or digging in sand. There is no limit to the games they invent.
With my previous job working with at-risk youth, most of my kids were diagnosed with ADHD. Many of them would get in trouble regularly at school for outbursts, leaving class, or failing to complete an assigned task. Even when given the opportunity to play, those children still managed to get in trouble after flitting from one toy to the next, quickly bored by the limitations of their gadgets. At Wildrock, I saw children with an infinite number of possible games, but most of them stuck to one activity for their entire visit. They were lost in the world of their imaginations, building castles and being superheroes. Why was a natural playscape so engaging?
“Playing in nature is so organic and human. That’s how people throughout history have connected, and how people begin their relationship with the world. Through playful exploration,” explained Schuyler. “Nature gives us all these materials and incredible resources to express ourselves, whether it’s a beautiful space that makes you want to dance, or dried leaves you want to pick up to make something with. Everywhere in nature there are invitations to express ourselves, and I think that’s hardwired. That’s been going on since ancient man.”
Play doesn’t need to be outdoors, but it certainly seems to help. Perhaps because indoor activities are limited, especially with toys designed not for child development, but to create greater market demand. Chintzy plastic characters from the latest hit movie and robotic dogs have no personal significance and leave little to the imagination. Parents with the best intentions might try to keep their children safe indoors, and entertain them with educational games or television programs. But when you put blinders on play, restricting it to narrow boundaries, inevitably you hit a ceiling. Nature, on the other hand, is limitless.
Schuyler sees the disconnection most people have from nature and the anxieties internalized in a frightening world. Even the bus ride to Wildrock is ecotherapy, she says. “There are adults from the city who don’t know what a mountain stream looks like. Some kids have never seen a cow, and I even had a child ask me if the grass was real.”
When she told me this, it lined up with my previous research about our increasing time spent in front of screens, living our lives indoors, and forgetting our connection to the earth. Truth be told, much of my research left me depressed and anxious about the future. But Schuyler reminded me that fear solves nothing.
Wildrock was founded in the hopes of providing a bridge into nature for people who either haven’t had the opportunity of nature connection in their youth, or live such fast-paced lives that they’ve lost touch. But she focuses on children in the hopes of shaping the adults of tomorrow. “All of us ecotherapists are conservationists, even though that’s not in the tagline. You allow people to be curious about nature, and with curiosity comes caring, and with caring comes conservation. You go from ‘What is this?’ to caring about it and wanting to protect it.”
It’s easy to lament how the world has changed and wish for a return to simpler times. But, as Schuyler gently pointed out, we can’t. “I don’t think there’s any going back. Yes, there are dangers about what urbanization and technology can do to the brain. Yes, there is an environmental crisis and we don’t want people to ignore that. But fear creates a bigger disconnection from nature. Scaring people doesn’t help make better stewards of the future. It’s falling in love with nature that does that.”
In a world run by advertisers and media, we are bombarded with messages every day that our lives are not enough — we need this product, we need to lose weight, we need a college degree, we need this car, we need a respectable career. The world is constantly telling us what we need.
But when we exercise to impress others, study to achieve a better letter grade, post on social media for the likes, and work for dollar signs, we prioritize outcome. The problem is that outcome is often out of our control. And even if we do reach that outcome, there is always something more to want.
Going back to positive psychology, research shows that goals based on external rewards (like money, fame, appearance, prestige, or power over others) lead to lower levels of happiness. In studies conducted by psychologist Edward Deci he found that “having an unusually strong aspiration for material success was associated with narcissism, anxiety, depression, and poorer social functioning.” Obviously, that’s not to say that money and material things don’t matter. We have to eat, after all. But if your motivations are founded on the desire to get rich, well… in the immortal words of the Notorious B.I.G., “mo’ money, mo’ problems.”
Intrinsic goals, on the other hand, give us autonomy and a sense of control. When we exercise to feel stronger, study to become more competent, post on social media to share joy, and act on the love of what we do, we embrace rather than fear failure. We learn and we grow, because the outcome doesn’t really matter. We prioritize the process. And the process tells us more about our authentic desires than anything anyone tells us we need.
Hypocritical though it may seem with me sitting here telling you that we need nature, we need to get our children back outside, and we need ecotherapy, I ask that you bear with me. Nature is everywhere. We all have a relationship to nature, no matter how removed it may seem. If you have a pet, if you grow houseplants, if you go fishing or hunting, if you listen to nature sounds on Spotify to fall asleep — that relationship already exists. I’m just asking for you to remember, in whatever form that takes for you. And to fall in love again.
“It’s reassuring to know that memory never goes away and you can always rekindle a relationship with nature. It’s like seeing an old friend — it could be ten years and it feels like nothing has changed,” said Schuyler. “Everyone’s got something, even if it’s just looking at the moon, or looking at snowflakes out the window of your apartment in New York City. Something that makes you go, ‘Wow.’”
A relationship with nature doesn’t need to be complex. You don’t need to hike the Appalachian Trail, be a master naturalist, or live off the land. My earliest memories of being in nature involved digging holes with a stick in the backyard. Ostensibly I was digging to China, but still, it was simple. Getting dirt under my fingernails, uncovering wiggly worms and beetles, picking up bits of quartz and pretending they were diamonds.
Connecting to nature meets a basic human need for play in both children and adults alike. And one reason it is so important is that play, by definition, is self-motivated. If it weren’t something we liked to do just for the sake of it, it wouldn’t be play. Like children, adults don’t need to go outside in order to play. But in nature, play seems almost inevitable. When I stand at the edge of the river, I skip rocks just to see how many jumps I can make. When I sit in the yard, I find myself absentmindedly braiding grass or linking daisy chains.
Nature doesn’t tell us what to do or who to be, it just waits for us to participate.
When I asked Schuyler for practical advice to people who want their own taste of ecotherapy at home, she suggested writing a park prescription. “How much do you need to be in nature to feel well? You might probably already know. And at what point are you not getting enough? You probably already know. What kind of nature do you need to feel your best self? Do you need to be in the woods, or at the beach, or near water? You already know these things because you have already been connected to nature your whole life.”
Schuyler’s own park prescription is to sit on a moss-covered hill in her backyard a few times a week. “I think it’s important to de-mystify this because, in a way, it is really simple,” she said. “The only reason there is a name for ecotherapy is that we’ve forgotten the simple things that matter.”
Remembering that childlike sense of wonder feeds something that many of us have neglected. Perhaps because play seems frivolous, and perhaps because it seems like there aren’t enough hours in the day. But if we spend every waking moment doing things we think we should do, we never learn what we want to do. And if we don’t know what we want to do, we can’t learn who we are.
Nature taps into a different way of knowing, a way that isn’t intellectual, perhaps in a way that can’t be verbalized. Build a bonfire and tell me it doesn’t feel like an accomplishment. Catch a fish and tell me it isn’t an adrenaline rush. Watch a sunset and tell me it isn’t beautiful. Or don’t. Only you know what makes your heart sing, but nature can help you figure it out.
So far in this series, I have talked about the benefits of nature connection and why it heals and enriches our lives. Perhaps, I hope, I’ve convinced you of the power of nature in healing and well-being, in helping us remember to play, in helping understand ourselves, and in helping us remember that a world also exists outside ourselves. I’ve thrown statistics and science at you, but at the end of the day, it’s all words on a screen. And if that is the only thing I leave you with, I’m afraid all I’ve done is kept you in front of that screen rather than in the real world, where all the magic happens.
The big question remains: What can you do about it?
First, let’s explore the most popular forms of ecotherapy. No one size fits all — we all have different lives, different commitments, and depending on where we live, different access to the natural world. But nature is all around us and I believe there is something for everyone. Note that many of these forms of therapy are available with the assistance of a professional, but can also be done independently.
Like with forming any new health regimen, the best activities are the ones you are most likely to continue doing. Some people will love gardening, but others may prefer the adrenaline rush of rock-climbing. If you’re a gym rat, outdoor exercise may be a simple transition to a routine you’ve already established. If you love yoga and meditation, you could try moving it outside or to a place with access to window views of nature. If you already walk your dog everyday, consider making the trip to a park with tree canopy or a body of water. Options are limitless, but give careful thought to which activity you’re most likely to maintain. Nature disconnection is a part of today’s culture, which means that habits may be hard to form. Make it easier on yourself by doing something you love.
With such busy lives, another important question to answer is: How much is enough? More is better, but scientific research has determined that 120 minutes per week of nature exposure is the threshold at which people report feeling improvements in health and well-being. This could be a two-hour hike on the weekend, or 20 minutes per day of sitting in the park. Quality does matter — spending time by the beach or on top of a mountain can have more profound effects, but sitting in an urban park is far better than sitting in front of Netflix. For people who want a full mental reboot, evidence suggests our cognitive abilities improve significantly after three days in the wilderness.
Although nature connection itself carries little risk of harm, nature can indeed be dangerous. Please be sure to understand and prepare for the risks before venturing into the wild. Furthermore, it is important to note that the field of ecotherapy is still relatively new, and not regulated by the American Psychological Association. Ecotherapists can gain training and certification through organizations such as the Earthbody Institute and other reputable organizations. Do not be afraid to ask ecotherapists about their qualifications and experience in order to get the highest quality of care. Finally, remember that ecotherapy is not a replacement for medical or mental health treatment by licensed professionals, but rather a supplement to a complete, holistic approach to well-being.
As we become an increasingly urban society, it’s important to ask: Where can we find green spaces and how can we protect them? As it turns out, ecotherapy may be the answer not only to our individual well-being, but also to well-being of our communities and our planet.
In my quest to find local green spaces, I reached out to Professor Emeritus of Landscape Architecture Reuben Rainey at the University of Virginia. Professor Rainey has dedicated much of his career to understanding how different environments can heal individuals and the community as a whole.
“Nature is not a frill,” Professor Rainey told me more than once. “It’s good medicine, and it’s one of the keys of dealing with urban issues. I’m not particularly upset that were are turning into an urban civilization because it could have great benefits as long as we design our cities so that we flourish.”
Although Professor Rainey has researched extensively about the design of hospitals to heal medical patients, he is particularly interested in salutogenic health, an approach that focuses not solely on the factors that cause disease, but also on the factors that generate well-being. “We are trying to create flourishing. If you design a place with a garden, for example, people will gravitate to that place, promoting socialization, exercise, and exposure to nature. We can design streetscapes with tree canopies. We can encourage building parks. Neighborhood parks, community parks, larger trail systems — these all contribute to a healthy community.”
Professor Rainey has seen success in retro-fitting industrialized cities to promote green space: the Atlanta BeltLine (formerly a railroad corridor), Seattle’s Gas Works Park (formerly a gasification plant), New York’s Brooklyn Bridge Park (formerly shipping docks) and High Line Park (formerly the NY Central Railroad). In Richmond, one of my favorite parks is the James River Park Pipeline Walkway, a riverfront trail along the pipes below the railroad. “You can reclaim major industrial areas,” explained Professor Rainey. “Extinct infrastructure can be transformed into green infrastructure.”
The impacts of these kinds of city improvements are profound, and go far beyond aesthetics. “For example, controlling for variables like ethnic background and economic status, a city with greater tree canopy has a considerable reduction in crime rate,” said Professor Rainey. Unfortunately, he explained, people don’t know about these studies and don’t recognize their importance. “In medical facilities one of the first things to go in a budget cut is the garden.”
“But don’t they see the long-term payoff?” I asked in frustration.
“Well, you just put your finger on it,” he replied. “In this culture, it’s very difficult to measure long-term benefits. Some people think it’s in our DNA as creatures. We have a hard time thinking beyond today, beyond the saber-tooth tiger that’s going to take a nibble out of us. The cost of some of these interventions could be recouped in two or three years, but you’re going to have a hard time getting people to see that.”
I asked Professor Rainey what we as individuals could to do protect and promote green spaces in our own communities, but was met with a disheartening answer: “The problem is always financial. Changes are not being done by the state or city, but by private-government partnerships. And that’s the way it’s going to be done.”
But, he assured me, that’s doesn’t leave us powerless. “As a nation, we are good at forming interest groups. Two impressive examples of private-public partnerships are the restoration of New York’s Central Park and the creation of the new Brooklyn Bridge Park. Citizens coming together can make a big difference.”
Professor Rainey has seen these kinds of changes in Charlottesville since he moved to the city in the 1970s. Ivy Creek Natural Area was founded thanks to the efforts of a lone kayaker, Babs Conant, who saw a strip of red surveyor tape along the shoreline of the Rivanna Reservoir and jumped into action. Conant rallied other citizens to enlist the help of The Nature Conservancy to transform the former farmland into a protected reserve. And in 2018, with the efforts of volunteers and envrio-activists, the city of Charlottesville signed off on the construction of an 8-acre botanical garden at McIntire Park.
“I’m an optimist,” said Professor Rainey. “Even the most modest thing can build into something bigger.”
—
Professor Rainey is not alone in the belief that we can make a difference. I made my way back across the mountain to Harrisonburg to meet with Jan Sievers Mahon, Director of the Edith J. Carrier Arboretum where I walked through the labyrinth in my exercise with ecotherapist Pat Cheeks.
Mahon and I strolled through the grounds, watching ducklings trail behind their mothers in the pond, listening to kids shrieking in delight in the nature family garden. Located on the grounds of James Madison University, the EJC Arboretum is the only arboretum on the campus of a Virginia state university, its 125 acres of mature Oak-Hickory forest home to hundreds of native plant species. JMU students often visit the arboretum for quiet solace or research, but the sanctuary remains open to the community and visitors year-round, dawn to dusk.
“The Arboretum serves as a bridge to the community,” said Mahon. “Here people have a way to get away from their busy lives and connect with the natural world. You don’t need to drive hours to be out in nature when it’s right in the middle of the city.”
Harrisonburg, a sprawling town stretching across the Shenandoah Valley, has expanded substantially over the years. But the EJC Arboretum has remained a peaceful, green haven for residents and out-of-town visitors to get away. For children, they offer story time in the understory of the forest, soil and water workshops, educational tours, art classes, planting ceremonies, bug hunts, and summer camp. Adults can enjoy sound bathing, forest bathing, outdoor yoga, tai chi, birding workshops, wildflower walks, butterfly tagging, and more.
“It’s important to remember that nature is all around us,” said Mahon. “There are parks and trails everywhere in this region of the state, and abundant opportunities to get back in touch with the natural world.”
As we walked the footpaths under the arboretum’s lush canopy, Mahon occasionally stooped to the forest floor, identifying plants in bloom. She squatted and caressed the speckled green leaf of a toadshade trillium, noting the recently budded wine-red flower at its center. “By the way, have you heard of fungal mycelium?” she asked, looking up at me.
I’d seen it before in search of firewood after turning over logs and large branches — pale, web-like networks of white fungus, spreading beneath the dark peat of the forest. It is the root system of mushrooms but plays a much larger part of our woodland ecosystems. Like an underground internet or ‘wood-wide web,’ as others have dubbed it, it connects hundreds of trees in a single ecosystem, helping them communicate and share resources.
For plants that are unable to gain enough sunlight beneath a thick forest canopy, excess nutrients from a large tree can be transferred through this underground network to help the survival of smaller seedlings. Mycelium will also transmit nitrogen and phosphorus from dying plants to healthy neighbors, and send warning to nearby trees of attacks from insects or pathogens. It is not yet fully understood by science, but has challenged the meaning of intelligence in living species and plant life.
“So science is beginning to realize that a tree doesn’t stand alone,” said Mahon. “The forest acts together as a single organism — trees communicate with each other, sending nutrients, water, and information to one another. Where one individual begins and ends becomes increasingly impossible to untangle. This interdependence is helping the whole to be stronger. Nature has figured it out. If we would go to nature to ask for guidance, we might realize how connected we as human beings also are.”
At that point, I was struck by how many connections I had noticed during my research for this article. Some people already knew each other through the mental health field and academic circles, but many other connections were unknown until I started putting the pieces together. Artist Ann Cheeks paints scenes from the Blue Ridge Mountains, paintings that have been used by her sister, Pat Cheeks, for ecotherapy interventions. These paintings have also made their way to the walls of UVA Hospital, selected by the Art Committee, on which Professors Dennis Proffitt and Reuben Rainey have both been long-standing members.
Years ago, Mahon watched Professor Rainey’s documentary series on PBS, Garden Story: Inspiring Spaces, Healing Places, doubtlessly impacting the operations of the EJC Arboretum. Mahon’s daughter worked at Wildrock, the natural playscape founded by Carolyn Schuyler. Schuyler is a board member of The Women’s Initiative (TWI), a counseling center in Charlottesville that offers ecotherapy workshops free of charge to the community. And counselors from TWI volunteer at the Center for Earth-Based Healing (CEBH) to facilitate ecotherapy camps.
Said Mahon, “Really, we all want the same things. We all want love, we all want to be loved, we all want to live a good life; to have control over our lives. And the truth is, beyond this human veil, we are all one as well. We just separately reflect a truth that is, underneath, shared by all.”
In my research for this article, I found a deeply interconnected web of people impacting each other in profound ways, some visible and intentional and others invisible and unforeseen. Health professionals, city planners, activists, parents, children, academics, law enforcement, legal entities, hospitals, schools — our society is its own circle of life, and one in which we all play a part. In a world so full of life dependent on each other, we never stand alone.
I took this picture in Seoul, South Korea.
I don’t want to live in a world where they sell Hello Kitty branded pollution masks at the local pharmacy. There’s a lot wrong with that — maybe it’s just me, but using the most commercial mascot of all time to market a product that filters toxic air to children feels wrong.
There is a humbling future ahead. The choice is ours whether we humble ourselves or nature does it for us. Already, glaciers are shrinking, sea ice is melting, summer heatwaves and natural disasters are sweeping the globe, and we’re facing the worst extinction crisis since the dinosaurs got wiped off the map. People are starting to experience emotional fatigue as the impacts of climate change become increasingly evident. They’re calling it enviro-depression. And unfortunately, depression gives way to apathy — it’s just easier not to care.
I can appreciate that these are big issues, and difficult to solve. I can appreciate it doesn’t seem productive to take a walk in the park, to go fishing, or to catch butterflies with your kid. I’ve heard people grow cynical about fixing the planet. What’s the point? The actions of one person don’t matter, they say.
Maybe. But I’ve got a wager.
I’m not a philosopher, but I’m going to borrow an idea from someone who was. In the 17th century, Blaise Pascal argued that our best bet is to believe in God because if God actually exists, the nonbelievers will suffer eternal hellfire, and the faithful will be rewarded with an eternity in heaven. If you don’t buy in and you are wrong, you have everything to lose. On the flip side, if you do buy in, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain. His argument has some logical fallacies which I won’t explore here. But let’s swap God for the belief that we can make a difference — and I think his argument holds water.
Giving in to apathy ensures that nothing changes. Believing change is possible, however, at least gives us a chance.
Where I live in Nelson County, you can’t get more than a few miles down Route 151 without seeing the same big, blue sign: “No Pipeline.” As many readers likely already know, if completed, the Atlantic Coast Pipeline will send fracked gas 600 miles across two national forests, the Appalachian Trail, Shenandoah National Park, and thousands of acres of private property in three states: West Virginia, Virginia, and North Carolina. Opponents argue that the pipeline will scar the natural environment, cutting through rivers, streams, and untouched forested areas, compromising the safety of drinking water and endangering sensitive native species.
Putting aside political differences, bipartisan collectives like “All Pain, No Gain” have come together to raise awareness about the pipeline by running opposition advertisements on radio and television. Friends of Wintergreen, Friends of Nelson County, the Sierra Club, the Southern Environmental Law Center, and Appalachian Voices have also expressed opposition, citing the infeasibility of construction and the dangers to the environment and residents. Private landowners have blocked surveyors from their property, even in the face of lawsuits from Dominion Energy.
Last year, the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down two vital permits for construction, indefinitely stalling development of the pipeline. The fight isn’t over, but it’s a win. I’m proud to say the people of Appalachia haven’t taken it lying down. At the end of the day, a handful of people from rural Appalachia threw a wrench into the money-making scheme of a 65 billion dollar company. So tell me again that we can’t make a difference.
Things are starting to change.
On the first Earth Day in 1970, millions of people mobilized across America, demanding legislative changes to protect the environment. Within the next five years, the government created the Environmental Protection Agency, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Safe Drinking Water Act. And that was only the beginning. In that same decade, scientists raised the alarm about our thinning ozone layer, prompting legislation to phase out certain aerosols and other chemicals responsible for the damage. In 2018, it was announced that the ozone layer was finally healing and could be repaired by 2060.
The fossil fuel industry is dying — oil and gas stocks are at their lowest since 1979, largely due to increased cost-effectiveness of renewable energy sources. Electric car-charging stations have popped up in parking lots, and in the last decade, solar power has experienced an average growth rate of 50% per year. Veganism, vegetarianism, and flexitarianism are becoming more widely accepted, with plant-based meat substitutes like Beyond Meat hitting major grocery stores this year. People are starting to get louder about protecting the environment, and politicians and investors are starting to listen.
Perhaps we need to stop looking at our personal impact in the form of numbers like kilowatt hours, pH levels, pounds of carbon emissions, or degrees Celsius. Because when we look at things that way, the impact of the individual seems insignificant. But movements aren’t built on numbers. They are built on the strength in numbers. And if nature reconnection gives us back our ability to care, I don’t see what we have to lose.
Humans have come a long way since we cropped up a few hundred thousand years ago, but one thing has always remained the same: from Clovis points to Clonazepam, we’re always searching for new solutions to our problems. Our love of tinkering took us to new heights of innovation our ancestors couldn’t have fathomed, setting us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. But pulling ahead of the pack made us forget we are still part of it, and in our search for answers, we may have lost ourselves.
Ecotherapy is something we never knew we’d need. Not that long ago, life was ecotherapy. We were intimately connected to the earth, aware of its blessings and dangers, dependent upon the literal fruits of our labor. Now we are an urban species sequestered indoors, our food packaged neatly in plastic containers so we never need to think about where it came from. As a species, we are not well. Mental illnesses plague a huge percentage of the population, particularly with ADHD, depression, and anxiety. Maybe, rather than searching for new solutions to our problems, we should look to the oldest medicine shaman of all time: Mother Nature.
Ecotherapy may be the cure for our ailments. For some people I met on my journey, it saved their lives. Nature can remind us of our strength and adaptability, to have gratitude for the little things, that it’s okay to play, and that none of us are ever truly alone. But most importantly, it may be a cure for our collective apathy, and subsequently a cure for the planet.
It’s easy to give up — on ourselves, on others, on the world. It’s easier not to care. It’s easier to blame our problems on technology and screens and the media. Our aggressive problem-solving has come to bite us in the ass, and created an entirely new problem of its own. Perhaps we deserve this fate we’ve brought upon ourselves.
But are we so far gone that we’ve also forgotten what makes us most human?
Even as cities and populations grow larger every year, the world grows smaller. Our propensity to innovate and problem-solve has given us the ability to communicate instantly across continents, to mobilize millions with a few clickity-clacks on the keyboard. And while all this new technology may dominate our lives, it is not what defines us as a species. I believe it is much simpler than that.
Standing at the bottom, a man doesn’t just see a hill. He sees what it takes to climb it. In that brief, unconscious moment he measures himself against the world, even if no one ever asked. Time and time again, we have risen to the challenges we assign ourselves because we’ve had no choice — we were never the fastest or the strongest. And yet, we’ve summited mountains, built pyramids, dove the oceans, and sent radio signals into space. What makes us most human is not the strength of our bodies, but the strength of our spirit.
Ecotherapists and Resources in Virginia
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