Yesterday I received Maria Popova’s weekly newsletter “Brain Pickings” and I enjoyed it so much I read it to my wife before bed. You can read the newsletter here and I encourage you to subscribe. The reason I enjoyed last night’s newsletter so much was that it described the sense of joy and healing I sometimes feel when I’m outdoors. She writes about this in the context of Oliver Sacks new book. Here’s a great quote:
As a writer, I find gardens essential to the creative process; as a physician, I take my patients to gardens whenever possible. All of us have had the experience of wandering through a lush garden or a timeless desert, walking by a river or an ocean, or climbing a mountain and finding ourselves simultaneously calmed and reinvigorated, engaged in mind, refreshed in body and spirit. The importance of these physiological states on individual and community health is fundamental and wide-ranging. In forty years of medical practice, I have found only two types of non-pharmaceutical “therapy” to be vitally important for patients with chronic neurological diseases: music and gardens.
– Oliver Sacks
This struck a chord with me. I grew up in Zimbabwe, spending large amounts of my childhood outdoors. One of my brothers is studying conservation and my mother spends long hours in her garden after the long hours as a teacher in public schools. Simply put, my family believes there’s something special in the outdoors. This week I head out on a five day unguided hike of Fish River Canyon. I’m looking forward to being away from it all. Maybe there’ll be some healing and regeneration out there in the wild. I sure expect it.