Nature Facilitated Stress Relief

“In wildness is the preservation of the world.”

Henry David Thoreau

If you often come home from a long days work and feel something deep inside you is missing, could you allow yourself an hour or more per week to reconnect with this most sacred part of yourself? It cannot be done through television, internet, movies, or a book. Usually, these abstractions further cloak our deep yearnings for authentic Nature connection. Time spent with a pet indoors does not fully satisfy our callings for Earth Consciousness and relatedness on deeper and multidimensional levels.
We inherently need Wildness in Nature because ultimately, this is who we are.
For 25 years now, the most common response I receive from people after we have walked in a sacred and wild natural area is: “How have I so neglected this part of myself? I feel so at peace now.”

This past Monday, a friend and I spent the whole day in the Wilderness of Bear Island in the ACE Basin of the Lowcountry in South Carolina.  We walked for miles along dikes through old Rice Fields and experienced Bald Eagles (one within 50 feet), Alligators, White Pelicans, hundreds of other birds, and were stunned by the beauty of an untouched (by human destruction) Maritime Forest.  We spent 3-4 hours in this Wilderness, both knowing deep within ourselves, the re-spiriting, stress relief, and nourishment it gave us.  I encourage all of you to spend more time in direct connection with Nature. 

“The eyes of the future are looking back at us and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time. They are kneeling with hands clasped that we might act with restraint, that we might leave room for the life that is destined to come. To protect what is wild to protect what is gentle. Perhaps the wildness we fear is the pause between our own heartbeats, the silent space that says we live only by grace. Wilderness lives by this same grace. Wild mercy is in our hands.”

Terry Tempest Williams, RED: Passion and Patience in the Desert