Give it to Nature, and let go.....
The healing power of time in the hills when the world is falling apart
I don’t think I’ve ever been so glad to see my son getting in that ridiculous big truck, with the inexplicable, never once used, surfboard and kayak on top.
Never been so glad for a weekend away from my little darling. Never so in need of the break from the increasingly unbearable burden of mothering, of adulting.
Never so in need of time that is just mine.
Four weeks we’ve been trapped here. Four weeks of fear. Isolation. Frustration. Stress that makes last month’s stress look like a relaxation retreat. Trying to manage a job I hate that was never meant to be done from my front room. Tempering my need to walk and be free with the rules, and a child that hates walking. Balancing my need to keep him with me, to keep him safe from the risks his father’s job could bring with my need to not lose my mind. Looking at social media and wondering when I will get the time everyone else now seems to have in abundance.
Now that his father has, like so many others (but not me!) been furloughed, he is no longer transporting people to and from the airport, and I can release some of my fear. And I can find a tiny pocket of time in a stressful week to breathe. Not too close to anyone else, of course, this is April 2020 after all.
I might not be able to go to see my friends, or go to dance to a band this evening.
But even before my son has got his seatbelt on and waved goodbye to me, I am putting my walking boots on. I am doing the one thing I know will restore me. John Muir’s words are singing in my ears, and I am answering their call…..
‘The mountains are calling and I must go’
3 hours, and 8 miles later and I am a new person. With every step, I left a little morsel of fear, anxiety and existential dread behind. Every time I said a socially distanced hello to someone I have never seen in these hills before, I felt a renewed optimism that our society would emerge from this with a love and appreciation of nature that has been lost over years and years of separation. Every bird song, every new bud, every emerging flower filled me with joy I didn’t think possible in these Covid-19 days.
I knew those things would happen. I understand how nature affects my wellbeing, how much we humans need it even if we have largely forgotten that we are part of it. I knew that a walk in the hills on a sunny day was bound to lift my fraught mood.
But I hadn’t expected to feel so grateful that I was trapped in this tiny valley.
Trapped. Stuck. Doomed.
These are words I’ve used many times to describe the fact that I live where I do.
I’m trapped here. Stuck here. Doomed to always live here.
It was never the plan. I never wanted to be here. Always imagined that my life would take me to exotic places where I’d have to learn new languages, and adapt to new cultures.
Life seemed to mock that plan from the start. The furthest I managed was university 40 miles away. And then I got so lonely, I wanted to come home to this tiny valley I never felt comfortable in. Home to the family and friends who spoke my language, and shared my culture. Home where I have a map of the streets and mountain paths etched into my brain. Home where everybody knows my name, even if that is one of the reasons I always wanted to leave.
When I started walking in the hills with my mother and son, I learned to see the beauty. In a small valley, the hills are all around, and they are very green. They weren’t always. My childhood memory is of the oppression of black and grey, left behind when the mine owners moved on from the community that had made them so wealthy, caring nothing for the debris their mines left to scar the landscape and the lives.
But nature does its thing, and now these hills are lush, green, watered by the rain we love to complain about, fed by the sun we claim we hardly ever see.
These hills, once so oppressive and depressing in their grey blackness had supported and soothed me for years. They had seen me through the agony of my brother’s death. They had helped me slowly walk to recovery from addiction. They held me as I stomped out stress, rage, insecurity, pain, and the many confusions life has to offer.
So in 2020, I knew that, despite the child who hated walking any distance at all, those hills were to be my salvation, my path through the devastation that Covid-19 was bringing to my life.
I still wanted to leave. To live in those exotic places. But right now, as I read about people in tower blocks in city centres, with virtually no access to nature, I realised I felt a new feeling about my home. Deep, profound gratitude.
Had I lived in one of those tower blocks, or in a city with little access to nature, I don’t know how I would have got through that awful time. I can honestly say, I think my recovery would have been in trouble. And I have often said that had I been drinking during lockdown, I would have almost certainly been one of the 18.9% of increased alcohol related deaths during that time1.
It wasn’t the first time nature, and being able to give my stress, my fears, my anxieties to the trees and the birds, had helped me through difficult times. It won’t be the last. Mother Nature has held me in her loving embrace over the past few months when depression has beaten me into submission, and is gently loving me back to wellbeing as my Winter starts to thaw, and the buds of Spring start to emerge.
There is an increasing body of work into the benefits that humans get from being in nature. There are countless reasons why we need to be connected to nature. We ARE nature, or part of it at least. We are one of 8.7 million species of life on this planet, and we are meant to live in harmony with them.
For me, the biggest benefit I have ever seen is related to my mental health2. Discovering the delights of walking in the mountains of South Wales set me on the path that lead me to recovery, not just from grief, but from alcohol addiction.
Whenever I feel down, exhausted, broken, lost, isolated and all the other pains that depression, stress, single parenthood and, let’s face it, life in the 21st Century can create, I know that if I can spend time with the trees, the birds, the flowers, the rivers and the air, I will feel better. I ‘Return to My Trees’, to that sense of peace, connection and belonging that is my birthright as a human being.
We are not meant to live in a world of concrete, connected to one another through WiFi and seeing the world through screens. Our nervous systems need the greens and blues, the light and dark, the waves and the shadows, the sounds and silences of nature for us to feel safe and well. Mark Zuckerberg can shove his Metaverse, I want my forests to be in 3 dimensions, with sounds, tastes, smells and textures I can fully experience, not in a VR headset.
Whether it’s walking in the hills, hugging a tree, tending the flowers in your garden, cuddling your pets, watering your houseplants, or listening to the birds as they greet the day, connection with the natural world will always feel good.
How do you connect with nature in your daily life? Let me know in the comments, photos very welcome!