Researcher Terry Louise Terhaar has conducted in-depth interviews with close to one hundred people about their spiritual experiences in nature. (She notes that while her interviewees declare that what they experienced was indescribable in words, “their command of descriptive adjectives and adverbs often rivals that of the world’s great poets”—something author Michael Pollan also noticed about people’s attempts to describe their spiritual experiences while under the influence of entheogens.) Terhaar believes that these elevated states of mind confer a survival advantage outdoors. In such a state, she argues, we are more likely to overcome physical pain, fear, or despair. Faced with threats in the natural world, we will find ourselves able to perform heroic feats. The examples Terhaar cites include moving heavy rocks, lifting fallen trees, and escaping unsafe conditions, even if injured. These are all acts that would help us survive the wilderness. According to this logic, modern humans have inherited the ability to be deeply moved while in nature because transcendent states helped our ancestors carry on. Yet it’s not hard to imagine that uplifting experiences in nature can be a resource in modern times as well.
Natural environments have the ability to instill feelings of what researchers call prospect—an elevated perspective and hopefulness, often triggered by natural beauty or awe-inspiring views—and refuge, the sense of being sheltered or protected. Analyses of journal entries written by people during park visits show that the most commonly used words include love, life, time, world, and God. Reflecting on the psychological benefits of spending time outdoors, psychologists Holli-Anne Passmore and Andrew Howell write: “Connecting with nature embeds us more deeply into the existence of life beyond the course of our single lifetime.” This broader point of view can inspire optimism. In one study, walking in a nature reserve for fifteen minutes helped people feel better equipped to handle the challenges in their lives. The more the walk inspired sentiments such as “I can imagine myself as part of the larger cyclical process of living” and “I feel embedded within the broader natural world, like a tree in a forest,” the more confident people became that they could resolve their problems.
Several years ago, my husband and I were caring for a terminally ill cat we had rescued twelve years earlier. He had kidney disease, and the medical treatments—daily IV drips, a drug to stimulate his appetite, emergency trips to the vet to remove fluid from his lungs—were distressing and confusing. He would eat only when I fed him by finger, and a successful mealtime might be less than one spoonful over the course of half an hour. A formerly talkative companion, he had stopped meowing altogether. We sometimes found him in the bedroom closet, staring blankly. And yet he still greeted me every morning, sitting on my chest until I woke. He continued to seek our affection and purred when we petted him. Several times a day, he stood by the door to our deck to let me know that he wanted to sunbathe. But he also struggled to sleep, and his breathing was labored. We didn’t know if through heroic medical actions, we were extending a life he wanted or just prolonging his misery. The responsibility of having to make this decision for our cat, when he couldn’t tell us what he wanted, was overwhelming. We worried both about prematurely ending the life we had vowed to protect and about waiting too long to end his suffering.
My husband and I lived in New York City at the time, and one day, when we were both feeling especially demoralized by the situation, we took a walk in Riverside Park. We passed the fenced play area where off-leash dogs romped and continued through the tunnel that leads to the Hudson River. We walked along the riverfront, taking in the fresh air, blue sky, and lapping of the water. We sat down in a part of the park shaded by trees. It was early autumn, and the leaves had started to change color and drop from the branches. We watched squirrels and sparrows looking for food on the ground. I remember feeling for the first time a sense of perspective on what we were going through. It sounds clichéd, but I recognized that our drama was just one more iteration of a cycle of life that had been playing out for eternity. I realized, with relief, how little control we actually had. I also sensed that our stubborn, steadfast refusal to stop taking care of our cat was a natural instinct to protect, a final burst of fierce, determined love. Our torment was itself part of the caregiving cycle that keeps us alive until it cannot. We returned home that day with a sense that we could handle both the decisions that lay ahead of us and the loss that would soon follow.
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In 2013, the city of Melbourne, Australia, gave the 70,000 trees under its care identification numbers and email addresses. City officials thought they were creating a system for citizens to alert them to maintenance needs, like you might report a pothole, graffiti, or a broken streetlight. They expected residents to inform them of fallen branches or fungal damage. Instead, they were inundated with messages to the trees. The golden elms and weeping myrtles of Melbourne have received thousands of emails expressing affection, kind wishes, and concern for their well-being. When given the chance to communicate with trees, people around the world composed love letters.
The human longing to connect with nature is called biophilia, which literally means love of life. According to biologist E. O. Wilson, biophilia is a hardwired instinct that is key to human happiness. The human brain evolved in an environment that was defined by constant contact with and reliance on the natural world. The emotions that modern humans tend to feel in nature—awe, contentment, curiosity, wanderlust—contributed to early humans’ ability to thrive as a species that had to find its place in a complex and constantly changing landscape. These emotional responses to nature are still deeply ingrained in us, and the more frequently we experience them, the more fulfilled we are. Across the planet, individuals who feel a stronger connection to nature report greater life satisfaction, vitality, purpose, and happiness. People who make more frequent visits to natural spaces are also more likely to feel that their lives are worthwhile. This effect is even stronger than the benefits of being in good health, and equal to being happily married or living with a partner. One study tracked the daily movements and mood of over 20,000 adults, using the GPS on their smartphones. After collecting over a million data points, the researchers concluded that people are happier in natural environments. And yet typical Americans spend 93 percent of their time indoors, creating what some call a nature deficit.
The need to connect with nature is most evident when humans leave familiar landscapes. Crew members living on the International Space Station, which orbits our planet at 17,000 miles per hour 248 miles above Earth, experience an extreme nature deficit. On board the space station, everything humans take for granted about the natural world is different. The astronauts float weightless, the speed of their vessel untethering them from gravity, our most basic connection to Earth. They go to sleep and wake on a schedule no longer linked to sunrise and sunset. For one week during the space station’s orbit, if you turn your head to the right, it is day; look left, and you will see night. The light is unnatural and the air artificial. Astronauts catch a whiff of fresh “space” only when operating the air lock for crewmates returning from spacewalks. They describe the smell of space, which lingers on spacesuits, as metallic, sweet, and reminiscent of welding fumes.
So far from the rhythms, smells, and sounds of their home planet, the crew craves signs of natural life. Many listen to recordings of wind, rain, birds, and even insects. On one expedition, American astronaut and flight engineer Don Pettit decided to try growing a personal garden on the space station. He brought on board packets of seeds from his local corner store in Houston. To make a planter, he stitched together a pair of soiled underwear and sturdy Russian toilet paper, and sewed in a drinking straw connected to a water drip. Pettit wasn’t sure the seeds would sprout. After all, there was no sun to stretch toward, no gravity for the first roots to push against. But as he continued his experiments, Pettit’s garden began to grow. One of the first seedlings to survive was a zucchini plant, and caring for it—brushing its l
eaves with a toothbrush, feeding it compost tea brewed from vegetable scraps and orange peels—became the bright spot in Pettit’s daily routine. He even took the plant with him when he worked out on the space station’s weight-lifting equipment, a makeshift version of green exercise.
The plant became a delight for the entire crew. One fellow astronaut offered to vacuum the station’s HEPA filters for Pettit if he could have five minutes with his nose close to the zucchini. The crew became so attached to the plant, they honored it with a call sign—the nickname that fighter pilots are given by their squadron. Space Zucchini, as Pettit had taken to calling it, became Rose, a testimony to how beautiful a vegetable sprout appears in such a sterile environment. NASA’s Behavioral Health and Performance team now recommends gardening as a way to protect crew members’ psychological health on long missions. As Pettit wrote on NASA’s Space Chronicles blog, “When you live inside of a metal can filled with machines and electronics, a small splash of growing green is a pleasant reminder from where we came; we all have our roots.”
In his 1953 book Man’s Search for Himself, psychologist Rollo May wrote: “When we relate to nature we are but putting our roots back into their native soil.” Although May meant this figuratively, there is evidence that humans need contact with the earth, with dirt itself, to thrive. The bacteria found in ordinary soil can reduce inflammation in the brain, making dirt an antidepressant. When soil gets under your nails in a garden or you breathe deeply in a place where earth is being turned, you expose yourself to these helpful bacteria. The biologists who discovered the benefits of contact with soil named their insight the old friends hypothesis. According to this theory, we evolved alongside these microorganisms, and they are vital companions to the human immune system and brain. Just as flowers and bees coevolved and rely on each other, we humans need these bacteria to flourish.
In scientific papers published in microbiology and medical journals, the lack of exposure to dirt in modern society is described as “the loss of old friends”—a loss that is linked in humans to an increased risk of mental suffering, including depression. When you, as psychologist Rollo May describes it, put your roots back into their native soil, it is a cheering reunion. Every time you place your hands in a garden plot, kick up dirt on a running trail, or simply take a deep breath in nature, you harness a biological codependence that has helped humans survive since the earliest days that we lived in groups and learned to depend on one another.
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When thirty-one-year-old Pete Hutchings first started volunteering at a park in North London six years ago, it was neglected and overgrown. Volunteers would arrive to find drug paraphernalia and empty laptop cases, backpacks, and purses abandoned after robberies. Week after week, they cleared the debris, rooted out invasive species, and tended to the trees. They created pathways for visitors to explore their park and built bug hotels where aphids and butterflies could hibernate. School groups now visit the park every day to learn more about nature. “It’s amazing to think how these spaces can transform in a short amount of time,” Hutchings says.
Hutchings now manages the park for Green Gym, an initiative in the UK that engages volunteers in conservation-based green exercise. Tasks can include gardening, sowing a meadow, or diggings steps into a clay bank. (“Try digging for twenty minutes, and you’ll appreciate the workout this gives,” says managing director Craig Lister.) There are local Green Gym teams across England, Scotland, and Ireland, and in the last year alone, volunteers planted over a quarter of a million trees. Each season provides its own satisfying labor. In the summer, volunteers focus on construction, building raised beds for gardening and bird boxes for the coming year. In fall, as nature starts to hibernate, volunteers plant bulbs and make the spaces more accessible to visitors, repairing stairs and building handrails. In winter, they plant young trees that look like dead sticks. Volunteers often ask, “Are you sure these are going to grow?” But then spring arrives, and with it, green buds. Flowers emerge from the bulbs buried in the fall. “It smells new and fresh. Insects are buzzing, and there’s the sweet scent of pollen and flowers,” Hutchings told me. “It’s kind of like the scent of hope after a long dark cold wet winter.” Seeing the work come alive months or even years later is one of the most satisfying parts of volunteering with Green Gym. It is the joy of reaping what you sow.
It’s not uncommon for volunteers to sign up at a difficult time in their lives. They might be unemployed, be on disability, or have mental health challenges. Green Gym makes it easy to join in. As one volunteer says, “You can just be yourself and are completely accepted.” New volunteers get Green Gym T-shirts, a tangible sign that they belong. “We’re all pretty scruffy when we’re out in the fields. It’s okay if you can’t afford the latest Nikes,” Lister said. “If you show up, you will be welcomed. If you’re having a bad day, that’s fine, even if you don’t want to do much. You can make the tea.” The labor of joint tasks allows for a natural companionship, conversations alternating with a comfortable silence that is punctuated by the sounds of wildlife and tools striking earth. The quality of conversation also changes. Being outdoors invites reflection and self-disclosure. In one study, women with breast cancer reported experiencing a “shoulder-to-shoulder support” during green exercise that made talking about difficult topics easier. “What you’re saying is almost going into the air, rather than specifically at somebody,” one woman observed. “I think that’s quite good because you can say things that you might not want to say if you were looking at somebody.”
A couple of years ago, Green Gym volunteers put down a piece of lining and some rainwater in a park not far from the central Green Gym office in London. “If you have a small body of water, the wildlife will find it,” Hutchings explained. Within a few months, a couple of frogs appeared. Two years later, it is a fully populated pond, with amphibians, dragonflies, tadpoles, and aquatic plants that somehow had all found their way, and, together, turned a puddle of rainwater into a thriving ecosystem. As Hutchings described this to me, I realized that human communities are like this, too. Given a bit of structure—a reason to show up, a place to care for, and time to connect—we build ecosystems of mutual support. The communities that form around movement practices, such as CrossFit, running, group exercise, and recreational sports, are perfect examples of this. And yet collectively cared-for green spaces are especially effective at giving rise to supportive networks. A 2017 analysis of urban community gardens in cities as far-flung as Zagreb, Croatia, Flint, Michigan, and Melbourne, Australia, found that green spaces build social capital. They increase both bonding capital—a sense of belonging, trust, and friendship—and bridging capital, the broad social network you can draw on when you need help. As one member of the North Central Community Gardens in Regina, Canada, explained, maintaining a garden plot opened the doors to becoming much more involved with the neighborhood. “Whereas before it was just my home . . . now this is my community.”
The social capital built through gardening can become a shared resource during times of crisis. When Hurricane Sandy struck the Northeastern U.S. in 2012, many parts of New York City were flooded and lost power, including Rockaway Beach, Queens. The Beach 91st Street Community Garden became a central site for distributing food and clothing and sharing news. They kept a fire going so people could stay warm and cook. As one gardener, who described the community garden as “a blanket of support between neighbors,” said, “Look at the fifty people eating homemade chili over an open fire two days after one of the most devastating hurricanes in the East Coast. Standing around joking, having hot chocolate . . . when the National Guard can’t even get through yet. . . . That is the best defense we have against fear.”
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E. O. Wilson, the biologist who argued that humans have a hardwired need to connect with nature, also observed, “People must belong to a tribe. They yearn to have a purpose larger than themselves.�
� Green Gym’s unofficial tag line is “physical activity with a purpose,” and this is how managing director Craig Lister typically pitches the program. “Rather than go to the gym to lift things that don’t need to be lifted, give us three hours of the week. At the end of each session, you can stand back, and as a group, you’ve achieved things.” A 2016 National Evaluation of Green Gym found that regular volunteers reported an increase in optimism and feeling useful. They also felt more connected to others and better able to handle the problems in their lives. Spending time in nature and getting more exercise contribute to these benefits, but Lister believes it’s the satisfaction of being able to step back and see trees where there weren’t any before that does the most good. “We are pack animals who became the world’s dominant species, despite all of our frailties, through collaborative effort,” he says. “We like to achieve things, particularly as a group, and we love to be valued by the group. We especially love to deliver things as a group when our community values what we have done.”
In 2017, researchers at the University of Westminster examined how volunteering for Green Gym affects a physiological index of purpose in life, the cortisol awakening response. Although cortisol is best known as a stress hormone, it’s also what gets you out of bed in the morning. The cortisol awakening response—measured by the amount of cortisol in your saliva first thing in the morning—helps your body mobilize energy. A sunrise jolt of cortisol brings you out of hibernation and tells you to rejoin the world. People who are depressed or who feel hopeless about the future commonly have a low cortisol awakening response, as if their bodies don’t see the point in getting up. Green Gym changes this. After eight weeks of volunteering, Green Gym participants showed a 20 percent increase in their cortisol awakening response, along with a reduction in anxiety and depression. It’s as if the experience of tending the green spaces pushed them back out into life.
The Joy of Movement Page 16