Nature Snacking

“I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery — air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, ‘This is what it is to be happy.’ ” – Sylvia Plath

“I had an inheritance from my father. It was the moon and the sun. And though I roam all over the world, the spending of it’s never done.” -Ernest Hemingway

Science is now catching up with the great storyteller called nature…

• Leisurely forest walks, compared with urban walks, yield a 12.4 percent decrease in the stress hormone cortisol
• Humans concentrate better after spending time in nature: U of Michigan
• University of Kansas and Utah found that after three days of hiking and camping in the wilderness, participants improved test scores by 50 percent.”
• Soil on your skin boosts serotonin: U of Bristol
• Gardening and other outdoor activities influenced the behaviour of more than four hundred kids nationally, aged five to eighteen, diagnosed with ADHD: U of Chicago
• Qing Li from the Nippon Medical School in Tokyo found that time spent outdoors boosts the immune system.

“Great things are done when men and mountains meet.” -William Blake

“The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quite alone with the heavens, nature and God.

Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature.

As longs as this exists, and it certainly always will, I know that then there will always be comfort for every sorrow, whatever the circumstances may be.

And I firmly believe that nature brings solace in all troubles.” -Anne Frank

Research demonstrates that spending time in nature restores, heals, and fosters

connection in people.

“The trails are a reminder of our insignificance.

We come and go, but nature is forever. It puts us in our place, underscoring that we are not lords of the universe but components of it…

So when the world seems to be falling apart, when we humans seem to be creating messes everywhere we turn, maybe it’s time to rejuvenate in the cathedral of the wilderness —

and there, away from humanity, rediscover our own humanity.” -Nicholas Kristof

Six main spiritual themes emerged from thematic analysis: connection, vibrancy, awe/presence, joy, gratitude, and compassion.

Of these six themes, the findings reveal that immersion in nature impacts the human spirit most significantly by providing a sense of connection, vibrancy, and awe.

Regardless of the type of nature activity, the location, or the time of day, immersion in nature offered a sense of connection for everyone.

This in turn promotes a sense of spiritual well-being.

Spending time in nature offers a cost-free and accessible way to feel more energised, focused and relaxed.

“It had nothing to do with gear or footwear or the backpacking fads or philosophies of any particular era or even with getting from point A to point B. It had to do with how it felt to be in the wild. With what it was like to walk for miles with no reason other than to witness the accumulation of trees and meadows, mountains and deserts, streams and rocks, rivers and grasses, sunrises and sunsets. The experience was powerful and fundamental. It seemed to me that it had always felt like this to be a human in the wild, and as long as the wild existed it would always feel this way.” -Cheryl Strayed

David George Haskell is nothing if not a patient observer. In the course of one year, he stood watch over a single square meter of old-growth forest in Sewanee, Tennessee, where he teaches biology and environmental studies at the University of the South. Those observations resulted in Haskell’s first book, The Forest Unseen, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2013.

In his book, The Songs of Trees, Haskell takes those powers of observation and uses them to lyrically describe repeated visits to 12 trees around the world, including a ceibo in the Amazon rain forest in Ecuador, a pear tree on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and an olive tree in Jerusalem.

In an interview with Yale Environment 360, Haskell explains that, in writing the book, he wanted to explore not only individual trees, but their connections to the biological networks around them, including humans, and the often-unheard sounds that result from these interactions, from a beetle chewing the inside of a dead ash tree to waves washing over the roots of a palm tree.