Heroes Not Zombies

Once travel restrictions were eased we took the chance and made a trip to Scotland from our home in the Charente. It was a long trip. We decided the safest way to travel was the one which minimised time spent in the presence of strangers. That meant avoiding airports, planes, railway stations, trains, and buses. What’s left? Driving. Well you can’t drive all the way from France to Scotland. So we booked overnight journeys on the ferry. On the ferry we went directly from our car to a cabin and in reaching the other side directly from the cabin to our car.

All that comes with certain consequences. There’s a kind of heightened awareness of “the other”, a wariness of strangers, and a sense of, if not quite alienation, then, at very least, of separateness.

I suspect the world is going to feel odd and awkward this way for a long time.

My daughter and my son live in the city but luckily Edinburgh has an abundance of green spaces ranging from parks and gardens to forest trails.

Walking along winding paths under tall, ancient trees is a particularly good healing activity. It connects us to the natural world.

Spending time in Nature has been shown to be so good for us that it’s even been called “Vitamin N” and the lack of time spent in Nature has been termed “Nature Deficit Disorder”. Time spent amongst forests has been shown to have particular benefits as we breathe in a range of molecules produced by the trees…..molecules which boost our immune system and lower our inflammatory levels.

I’ve been lucky to have access to a garden throughout this pandemic but there’s something extra, something special, about the activity of “forest bathing”. Was it really a good idea to keep everyone at home? I can’t help feeling that it would be a better plan to allow and encourage everyone to access Nature Therapy.