Cover Story…
In Scottish wildness lies a great tool for improving mental health, and it must be treated with respect
Cameron McNeish on the mental health benefits of nature
I’VE been reading a lot recently about the mental health benefits of walking in the countryside. Often heralded as new research, it’s a subject many outdoor scribblers were writing about a good 40 years ago.
However, the Covid-19 pandemic and its associated restrictions have brought the subject to light again and underlines the basic need we have for nature and the natural world.
One of the first times I considered the benefits was on reading The Complete Walker, first published in 1968 by a Welsh/american by the name of Colin Fletcher. Colin was to become a huge influence in my own outdoor writing career.
On the very first page, Fletcher articulates the benefits perfectly, “Up there, alone with the wind and the sky and the steep, grassy slopes, I nearly always found after a while that I was beginning to think more clearly. Yet ‘think’ doesn’t seem to be quite the right word. Sometimes, when it was a matter of making a choice, I don’t believe I decided what to do as much as discovered what I had decided.
“It was as if my mind, set free by space and solitude and oiled by the body’s easy rhythm, swung open and released thoughts it had already formulated. Sometimes, when I’d been straining too hard to impose order on an urgent press of ideas, it seemed only as if my mind had slowly relaxed; and then, all at once, there was room for the ideas to fall into place in a meaningful pattern.”
It struck me that if the brain could react to quietude and exercise to help tease out a flow of complex thoughts, perhaps it could also react in a positive way to mental issues like stress and depression.
During this Covid-19 crisis we have heard much about “mental health” – a description that covers a huge
“All at once, there was room for the ideas pattern” to fall into place in a meaningful
range of issues. On this occasion, I’m referring to those caused by the restrictions of lockdown – worry, stress, loneliness and isolation. To some, these are merely an irritant to their everyday life, but for others they can become chronic mental health problems.
However, you do not need to travel long distances and climb a Munro, one of Scotland’s mountains of more than 914m (3000ft), to boost your mental health. A walk in a green and peaceful environment, like in a forest, along a riverside or stretch of coastline or even in a city park has massive mental health benefits and has been proven to reduce stress and depression.
Another great American writer and ecologist, Henry David Thoreau, once said, “In wildness is the preservation of the world.” John Muir agreed, “In God’s wildness lies the hope of the world – the great, fresh, unblighted, unredeemed wilderness.”
Today, and particularly during the recent lockdowns, increasing numbers of people have embraced a more fundamental plagiarism of Thoreau’s words – in wildness is the preservation of the mind. But, and it’s an enormous but, as more and more people discover this phenomenon and tune into nature as never before, nature itself has been on the receiving end of what has been described as “lockdown surge”.
Popular walking routes, like the Whangie and Ben A’an in the Trossachs, the hills of the Pentlands and Highland Perthshire, became mobbed when the last lockdown restrictions were eased. Car parks were full and police had to move vehicles parked on busy roads.
On Ben Lomond and Ben Lawers, both easily accessed from the Central Belt, the National Trust for Scotland pleaded with the public to stick to the usual footpaths, as double the normal numbers were causing erosion and trampling rare alpine plants.
In Glenmore, at the foot of the Cairngorms near Aviemore, locals complained of unprecedented numbers of visitors, some even parking and camping in their gardens. Ancient Caledonian Pines were cut down and used as firewood and the beach at Loch Morlich became a public lavatory.
Similar scenes were enacted throughout the country as people flocked from the cities, encouraged in many cases
“Freedom responsibility” to roam comes with
by Scotland’s freedom to roam legislation. Sadly, many of those new to the Scottish countryside apparently didn’t realise that freedom to roam came with an important adjunct – responsibility. We can only have a right to access if it is undertaken responsibly and if a person acts in an irresponsible way, like chopping down trees, leaving litter, or camping in someone’s garden without permission, then they are not acting within the law and can be prosecuted. This sense of responsibility when taking access is crucial to the long-term success of the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 and until now people have generally taken it to heart, but alarm bells are now ringing. MSPS have called for changes to the legislation and some are calling for a ban on wild camping, or camping outside official camp sites. Some naturalists and wildlife organisations are calling for particular areas to be kept solely for wildlife, with no human entry, and other organisations, like the National Trust for Scotland, are asking hikers to walk only on official footpaths. Several months on, at the time of writing, we are in another national lockdown, and when these restrictions are eased it’s highly likely we will see a repeat of last summer’s rural carnage – so what can be done? Wind back to 2003. When the Scottish Government proudly proclaimed the world-leading access provisions of the Land Reform Act, the announcement came with a flurry of public advice about responsibility in the countryside.
Remember the traffic light sequence adverts on television from Scottish Natural Heritage? Copies of the Outdoor Access Code were everywhere and there was a government-led campaign to get the public onside and made aware of their responsibilities.
And it worked!
The legislation faced very few teething troubles and even those landowners and farmers who were initially hostile to the idea of open access to the countryside were surprised at the success of it.
In the 1980s, I presented a weekly radio programme
on BBC Radio Scotland called In The Country and I frequently interviewed folk from a government supported campaigning group called Keep Scotland Beautiful.
It was essentially an anti-litter campaign and the success of it was this – most people knew that if they dropped litter they would be heavily fined.
I don’t even know if the organisation still exists. And I wonder how many of you remember the Country Code?
We have to be reminded of our responsibilities. And perhaps most important of all we have to remember that we are not divorced from the natural world, we are a part of it. And because we are part of it we have to treat it with love and respect.
If we do that we will be rewarded with those mental health benefits I wrote about earlier, blessings that are lost if we have to wade along footpaths covered in litter and cold campfire remains, blessings that remain remote if we have to share a countryside trail with hundreds of others.
Let me finish with that wonderful quotation from the American forester, writer and ecologist Aldo Leopold.
“We abuse the land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see the land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.”