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The Amazing Benefits of Being in Nature
Better health. Lower stress. Enhanced creativity. Sheer joy. It’s all out there, and it doesn’t take long.
When my son recently announced he wanted to try fishing, I jumped all over it, dug out my old fly rod, and we headed out beyond the city and suburbs to a stretch of river reputed to have some nice trout. We didn’t catch a thing, and we’ve had little luck on multiple, marvelous return trips.
See, it’s not just about the fish.
At our favorite little stretch of river, red rock walls rise gloriously from the surprisingly verdant desert canyon, poking into predawn clouds one morning, glowing like fire one evening. The flutter of water lapping over rocks is interrupted by the sharp squawk of a heron. A bald eagle swoops down to outfish us in a real live David Attenborough moment. There’s no cell reception. The mind drifts like the laziest sections of river. Thoughts come unexpectedly, or not at all. The next riffle beckons. We breathe deep and move on.
“Nature holds the key to our aesthetic, intellectual, cognitive and even spiritual satisfaction,” said E.O. Wilson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Harvard biologist.
That’s what I mean to say. And after decades of accumulating evidence, science suggests he’s onto something.
From hiking in the wilderness to living near urban green spaces, experiences with nature are linked to everything from better physical health and longer life to improved creativity, lower stress levels and outright happiness. One new study even suggests brief interludes in natural green spaces should be prescribed, like a nature pill, for people who are stressed. With the number of people around the globe living in urban areas expected to grow from 54 percent in 2015 to 66 percent by 2050, preserving or creating green space will be a key to overall human well-being.
We know all this intuitively. It’s why so many vacations center around camping, hiking or putting toes in the sand. We crave a connection with nature from deep in our primordial beings. And for good reason.
