“One heavy day I ran away from the grim face of society and the dizzying clamour of the city and directed my weary step to the spacious alley. I pursued the beckoning course of the rivulet and the musical sounds of the birds until I reached a lonely spot where the flowing branches of the trees prevented the sun from touching the earth.
I stood there, and it was entertaining to my soul — my thirsty soul who had seen naught but the mirage of life instead of its sweetness.”
Khalil Gibran
It is a Sunday morning in early spring, and I am driving to my parents’ property in the Yarra Ranges.
I have bed hair, and have dressed for comfort and comfort alone.
I feel almost frantic. I must get going. I must get out. It’s been a tumultuous week, and my internal stress alarm is going off incessantly.
As I make my way through the urban sprawl, it all seems devoid of delicacy or wonder. Concrete everywhere.
I glare at a red light. The tragedies of life feel omnipresent.
It isn’t until I reach Lilydale, the halfway mark, that my mood begins to lift.
The greyness has made way to lush patches of grass, and eventually acres and acres of pasture and bush.
I click through my music play list hurriedly, searching for the right soundtrack. I’m all for the full sensory experience.
Moving past colonies of buttercups, grazing cattle and their willy wagtail passengers, the magnitude of the mountain range, the openness of the sky… the timbre of my thoughts takes a whole new direction.
Wide-eyed, like a child, everything is stimulating and interesting. I am lured to distraction by the beauty of the place.
Nearing the property, I drive over a quaint one-lane bridge. The Yarra River sparkles below, fresh and drinkable at this point in its passage.
The car conjures up billows of dust as it barrels down the last road of the journey. Bunnies dart down burrows in its wake.
I arrive at the front gate and get out to open it.
As I do, I take in my surroundings with my full sensoriam and commit myself to being present.
It’s not a hard thing to do here.
There’s something comforting about being in a place where you don’t have control over everything, and yet you feel a sense of belonging.
I stay at the property over night, and by the time I’m ready to leave, a deep calm and contentedness has come over me. My stresses have been purged, and I am ready to return to normality with a reignited sense of optimism.
Many people I know have struggled with mental illnesses.
We are sensitive creatures.
Many of us have harsh inner critics that can make life unbearable at times.
Despite this precipice we walk, our hereditary saving grace is our responsiveness to beauty.
In 1984, American biologist Edward O. Wilson published a book titled Biophilia in which he hypothesised that humans have an innate appreciation of “life and the life-like process”. Wilson believes that humans’ increasing dependency on technology has disrupted the ability to connect with nature.
31 years later, 50% of the world’s population is living in urban areas, and new research has indicated that a lack of interaction with nature is conducive to mental illness. Participants in the study were divided into two groups. The first took a 90-minute walk in a natural environment, and the second in an urban environment. The first group reported decreased feelings of negative rumination and showed “reduced neural activity in an area of the brain linked to risk for mental illness compared with those who walked through an urban environment”.
In 2010 Beyond Blue Australia conducted a literary review titled Beyond Blue to Green: The Health Benefits of Contact with Nature in a Park Context. Their findings too indicated that spending time in green, open spaces can improve mood, lower levels of anxiety, stress, and depression. The study stated that hiking, physical activities and gardening also have a range of benefits for health and well-being.
As to why urban environments tend to be so stressful, in 1995 Stephen Kaplan proposed that the constant high-level stimulation of cities described as “hard fascination” can result in cognitive fatigue.
When you walk the streets of a city, do you ever feel as if every screen and shop window is bidding for your attention? Employing more and more startling methods of doing so as technology advances.
“Nature is certainly well-endowed with fascinating objects, as well as offering processes that people find engrossing. Many of the fascinations afforded by the natural setting qualify as ‘soft’ fascinations: clouds, sunsets, snow patterns, the motion of the leaves in the breeze-these readily hold the attention, but in an undramatic fashion. Attending to these patterns is effortless, and they leave ample opportunity for thinking about things,” Kaplan wrote.
Drawing on Kaplan and Kaplan’s Attentional Restorative Theory (ART) framework, Pearson and Craig wrote an article for Frontiers in Psychology titled The great outdoors? Exploring the mental health benefits of natural environments. The article examined what makes an environment restorative. It highlighted the concept of ‘being away’: the feeling of escape from the daily stresses of life and the perception of vastness travel can evoke.
I think back to recent conversations I’ve had with friends I rarely see. My parents’ property often comes up, “it’s changed my life,” I hear myself say.
It’s changed the life of each of my immediate family members, and even my extended family and friends who visit often.
When we’re there there’s always soft fascinations to marvel at. A new buff-rumped thornbill nest by the cottage door. A network of wombat tunnels to investigate. Thousands of native shrubs, flowers and trees to learn about. A river to swim in. A water pump to fix. A bon fire to burn, and toast marshmallows by. A star-studded night sky to stare up at, uninterrupted by light pollution.
Plenty of time, space and inspiration to prepare us for our return to a relentless man-made world.
