Nature Tracks

Taking walks in nature is not only good for your physical health, but also your mental health too. But why? For many of us, simply being in nature is refreshing to our mind, body and spirit.

We are animals first, and there’s got to be something in our biology that means we find nature refreshing, especially when we don’t get much of it. Don’t get me wrong, most of us aren’t interested in personally hunting down our every meal, but there’s something serious to be said about being too removed from nature and country living too.

When I was a little kid, I grew up in the country on about 100 acres of wilderness in rural East Texas. Most of my friends lived closer to town, and even if we were able to convince their parents to make the 40 minute drive to drop them off to spend the night, most of them didn’t visit more than once. I don’t blame them; the wild woods are scary if you don’t have context for all the sights and sounds you wouldn’t normally come across in town. I kept telling them everything would be fine, but I could tell some of them just didn’t believe me.

If it wasn’t the howling coyotes keeping them up all night, it was the dirty driveway that seemed to get dirt into everything, everywhere. If it wasn’t the creepy crawlies, it was the funny smell coming from the nearby bog.