Nature trail walks/hikes have been a life saver for me.
During the Covid lockdowns in America, I was blessed to live five minutes by car from a nature trail. I went there early and often during those dark days.
Sometimes I go on walks with my earbuds in, sometimes not. Sometimes I stay for hours, sometimes just an abbreviated loop that amounts to the traditional coffee break. But every time I go, I feel at least a little better than I did before being in nature.
It’s called forest bathing. What a blessing.
I can’t recommend it enough. I live in the midwestern area of the United States. It is currently too cold and too snowy to really even go outside for anything beyond survival essentials.
During these times I find myself watching nature documentaries. Or watching HD nature scenery with ambient music in the background on YouTube. Certainly not the same as the real thing, but there’s a calling to seeing nature that soothes my soul.
When I get off the main trail and am genuinely surrounded by trees, bushes, flowers, plants, grass, weeds, dirt, birds and bugs…I feel…at home…I feel…at peace.
Because humans are apart of nature. Just because we as a species want to poor a concrete layer over the entire planet, doesn’t mean that we didn’t come from nature. The forests are home. Nature is home.
The lessons to be learned from observing and being in nature, I feel, directly help combat the mental and emotional illnesses that are becoming rampant in the modern, developed, first world countries of the world.
Anarchy Journal Constitutional 