Let me start by saying that I never liked hiking. My husband is a hiker… I never was. I used to joke that “all you do is huff it up the mountain to just turn around and go back down”. No thanks. I always loved being outside and I loved to exercise, but hiking always felt like more of a punishment than a workout. I have always loved the beach. Our families yearly vaca is glamping at the beach. I knew that after those two weeks of being mostly outside I felt like a million bucks. I attributed that great feeling to time off and away from work… but now I realize it was so much more than that.
Que quarantine, and so much down time for the first time in years, and I didn’t know what to do with myself. We were all used to driving around to multiple practices and games and competitions. Life felt more like survival than anything else. But when the lockdowns came, for the first time, we had time. I know many of you probably feel the same. The new down time brought our family together and if you have to pull the positives out of a very hard time, I would say it helped all of us hit the pause button. We did puzzles, board games, long walks with my daughter and neighbors, and my husband and I started a new habit too. Long walks in the woods.
We started going out into the woods for a few hours every other day. Long walks, at first on pretty much flat or rolling ground. He took me to local trails and we would look at cool tree’s- the patterns in the bark. How did I never notice how amazing that was? We would follow winding streams and I would see the way the water cut into the ground and how it glittered in the sun when it hit just right. Was it always that magical? We would watch the birds above us, and hear them calling to one another. The more we hiked new trails, the more I started to hear the birds talking, the squirrels calling to each-other. It may sound corny, but I’m telling you I realized really fast that all those tiny moments- it's like nature's Xanax. A medicine with very few side effects, the biggest one being you start to constantly crave being outside. Closing my eyes and listening to the water run, the birds singing all around me… It changed my life. That sounds dramatic. But it did.
It’s like, I knew those sounds were always there. I just never paid attention. I was so busy worrying and planning and going, going, going… That phrase “stop to smell the roses”. I get it now. We get so caught up on all this meaningless shit and the absolute beauty and wonder we have around us… we miss it. We skip over it and we become so detached from the simple things that can bring us so much peace and gratitude and safety… we just totally miss the things that are right there to help us feel whole. You think I’m kidding? Being dramatic? Try it. Try hiking up to a place where you can see for miles and look out at the world while your breathing hard and it’s quiet… and try NOT to change. I promise you will.
Because whether we want to admit it or not, whether we are “city folk” or “country folk” or anything in-between. Nature cures us. A quick google search will bring you hundreds of articles, half scholarly and half opinion, about forest bathing and its positive impact on your health. You hate exercise you say? Well ok, go sit in nature. Sit with it all around you. My mom would sit out on the front of her wrap around porch and just look at the big field next to her house and watch her humming birds and that was her place. When she got really sick and her thinking wasn’t as clear, she would still be drawn out to the porch with her tea or water in hand and just sit and look at that field. When she passed I had trouble feeling her, but when I am on that porch, sitting in her chair, and listening to the wind, I feel her. I feel her. But it’s not just there. When I go to the mountain near our house and stand on the lookout tower and look out as far as I can, I feel her there too. I feel her everywhere in those moments. Because she is everywhere.
Whatever you believe; heaven/ hell, or maybe you think we just become ashes and dust when we die, a bag of bones to rot and decay…. We still return to earth. Either way involves pieces of us going back to our tiniest parts, molecules that become what is all around us. The worms eat the dirt, the birds eat the worms, and then fly to far off places and perhaps get eaten by bigger things. The cycle of life is all connected. If you believe that energy can’t be destroyed, and we are all beings who are 99.9999% energy and space (because we are), then when we die we must shift into something else. We are nowhere and everywhere and all at the same time. We are the wind and the streams and the ground beneath our feet and the air and it’s like thousands of years of those who have gone before us are just whispering to us from every space, helping us feel that connection we all ache for. We never really go away. That is what forest bathing feels like to me.
Listen, I know what some of you are thinking… I am a New England girl- so yes, I get that many places are super cold and snowy for several months out of the year. The first time my husband told me “you’re going to fall in love with winter hiking” I laughed in his face. I HATED the cold. But, dammit, he was right. This girl who hates being cold and falls walking on solid ground- strapped on some spikes and went out on 20-degree days and let me tell you....Amazing. You get warm fast, surprisingly so, and when you spend a few hours crunching through fresh snow- listening to how quiet it is, something in you just shifts. Smelling the ice, and seeing icicles that have formed and glisten in the sunlight. It is like, how was this magic all around me and I never knew? I just never got it, until I did… So yes, forest bathing can be done in the warm, in the mild, and in the cold places too.
Forest bathing, to me, is when we stand in nature and we get quiet and get out of our head and just observe. We zone in and become connected to all that was and to all that will be and that feeling of connection to a greater thing is what gives us that rush of calm and centeredness that we all need in our souls. And at the end of the day it doesn’t matter what I think, what matters is what you think. Are you ok? Do you need to feel better, or more connected? Do you let yourself go outside and allow yourself to feel that feeling you get standing in the middle of trees that have been around for hundreds of years? Would you try if it meant it would change your life? I don’t write this to tell you what is right or wrong. I write this to say, hey, there is this thing and it might help you. There is no harm in trying.
This is how I get through it… and I hope this can help someone else who may need it.
Love, Nikki
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