FINDING SOLACE IN NATURE
Natural environment helps healing
New nature writing is a relatively recent genre, but it’s become so popular that Barack Obama included one of these books, H is for Hawk (Grove Press), by Helen Macdonald, in his summer holiday reading list.
This new genre combines memoir with the author’s experience of nature, where the author has suffered a trauma and turned to the natural world for solace.
In H is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald tells of the unexpected loss of her father in her late thirties. To distract herself from her grief, she attempts to tame a hawk.
It’s not surprising that Obama would choose this book — he, too, lost his father when he was only 21.
Similarly, Amy Liptrot, in her book The Outrun (Canongate), describes her return to the isle of Orkney, where she took long walks and rebuilt a stone wall as a way of recovering from alcohol addiction and the breakup of a relationship.
The natural environment seems not only to help us heal, but also to unblock our creative powers.
In his novel Amsterdam, Ian McEwan describes the frustration of his hero, Clive Linley, who feels blocked as he tries to finish a musical composition. He leaves London because he knew he “needed mountains, big skies. The Lake District, perhaps.”
It seems that just looking at a natural object has a powerful and positive effect. Roger Ulrich at the University of Delaware examined the medical records of 46 patients who’d undergone gall bladder surgery between 1972 and 1981. Twenty-three of them convalesced in a ward that looked out on to an open space full of trees, while the other 23 had a view of a brick wall.
Ulrich found that those who viewed the trees had a shorter post-operative stay and took fewer strong analgesics than the others.
Whatever it is that the natural environment does for us — whether it’s something in the environment itself, or the exposure to natural light or an increase in exercise that stimulates the release of endorphins — it seems that experiencing the natural world has great power.
Distilling that experience into words, music or art can help us even more. Next time you feel blocked creatively, or you seek relief from pain or trauma, spend some time in natural surroundings. Then write down what happened, both around you and within you.