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Today I’m focusing on nature travel and how it provides us with mental escapes long after we depart from the beautiful landscape.
To help discuss this topic I will be sharing some excerpts from The Art of Travel (Alain de Botton, 2002) which I also referenced in my last post.
Remember if you prefer to listen to me talk about this, you can check out my Youtube channel instead.
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Fact: I life for nature travel (almost always)
When people ask me my favorite places to travel to my answer either involves something to do with hiking beautiful trails or exploring national parks and wildlife.
I used to think this was because I grew up near Toronto, and being so sick of the city, I craved nature travel escapes.
After debating some passages from The Art of Travel, I started to wonder if it had a lot more to do with giving my mind a break. I’ve added an excerpt below to start explaining this more.
Part of Wordsworth’s complaint was directed towards the smoke, congestion, poverty and ugliness of cities, but clean-air bills and slum clearance would not by themselves have eradicated his critique. For it was the effect of cities on our souls rather than on our health, that concerned him.
The poet accused cities of fostering a family of life-destroying emotions: anxiety about our position in the social hierarchy, envy at the success of others, pride and a desire to shine in the eyes of strangers. City dwellers had no perspective, he alleged, they were in thrall to what was spoken in the street or at the dinner table. However well provided for, they had a relentless desire for new things, which they did not genuinely lack and on which their happiness did not depend. And in this crowded, anxious sphere, it seemed harder than it did on an isolated homestead to begin sincere relationships with others. ‘One thought baffled my understanding,’ wrote Wordsworth of his residence in London: ‘How men lived even next-door neighbours, as we say, yet still strangers, and knowing not each other’s names.’
(page 136)
If this doesn’t resonate with you then perhaps you haven’t spent enough time living in a city. Or perhaps you are so caught up in the rat race and hustle mentality that you don’t quite realize it yet. It might be time for you to schedule a nature travel trip!
Every time I take myself away from the city and into a park or green space, I immediately feel lighter, as if my lungs can breathe fully. Perhaps the relief I feel is a brief release of the anxieties Wordsworth writes about. Perhaps this is also why when I seek out my future travel adventures, the further from the city I can be is where I aim to go.
Another concept this reminds me of is how the simple village life can sometimes be preferable. I previously wrote about this in more detail here.
Wordsworth explains how in the city we often don’t know our neighbours names—which for me is also true! On my home street in Toronto, I could probably list maybe five names of neighbours. This is sad really.
The village life is much different.
From experience, I can tell you your chances of making a connection with someone new while walking about is much greater in a town of perhaps 50 people than it is in a city of millions. This is my reasoning:
We are so overwhelmed with the crowds of people we live among, that to cross another human’s path is of no interest to us. Being caught up in the hustle of the city convinces us into thinking that making a connection with humans around us isn’t worth our time.
I would take this further and argue that in smaller villages (away from large buildings and surrounded by natural landscapes), we are generally more happy and pleasant towards others, and perhaps this also contributes to our incentive to make new connections with people we come across.
Nature Travel as a Ledge to Lean On
The next important topic I want to discuss is the ability nature travel has to relieve our anxieties—not just in the moment—but long after we return back to our city dwellings (if of course that’s where we reside).
In the following excerpt De Botton explains how he realized the impact a view of trees made on him long after he returned to London.
My receptivity to the scene lasted only a minute. Thoughts of work then intruded, and M. suggested that we return to the inn so she could make a phone call. I was unaware of having fixed the scene in my memory until, one midafternoon in London, I was waiting in a traffic jam, oppressed by cares, and the trees came back to me, pushing aside a raft of meetings and unanswered correspondence and asserting themselves in my consciousness. I was carried away from the traffic and the crowds and returned to trees whose names I didn’t know but which I could see as clearly as if they were standing before me. These trees provided a ledge against which I could rest my thoughts; they protected me from the eddies of anxiety and, in a small way that afternoon, contributed a reason to be alive.
(page 152)
I actually have a large database of these mental images from my nature travel adventures which also provide a ledge in times of anger, frustration or anxiety.
I think back to the coastal trails in Asturias in Spain, the quiet farm towns surrounding my grandmothers hometown in Germany, cycling around limestone hills in Vietnam without a single car horn audible.
These are what I like to call ‘moments of bliss’.
Moments of bliss—mountain peaks in the distance, tall trees shading me from the sun, or rushing waves coming towards me—are my mental safety net any time the city life overwhelms me.
It might not surprise you that when I search my mental image archive, I can’t find a single moment of bliss which involves me being in a bustling city. None of the images I use as an escape are memories from an experience in a city, which really proves the point Wordsworth and De Botton make.
In conclusion, I’d say I’ve always unconsciously been striving to acquire these moments of bliss as I travel. But now that I understand this phenomenon better, I will have an even better explanation for my friends next time they question my decision to spend an undetermined amount of time in the wilderness without a cell phone connection.
That’s all I’m covering today!
How do you feel about nature providing a ledge to lean on in stressful moments? Do you also seek out nature when you travel? Leave me a comment below to chat!
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Thanks for reading friends, I wish you all the best in your next nature adventure!
Much love,
Danika
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