I’ve been planning to go on a solo backpacking expedition for over a year, but things never seemed to work out. Then last week a friend called to let me know he could not visit over the weekend as we had planned. I was sorry to hear he couldn’t make it, but began thinking that this suddenly open weekend was an opportunity to go for a short backpacking trip. The weather forecast was perfect, and I didn’t have any looming work deadlines. And I was hoping it might help me stop feeling so horrible about my son Brady’s death by suicide last October.

FishI had reasons to hope. Being in nature is something many people recommend for grief. There’s even an organization called The Association for Nature and Forest Therapy Guides and Programs that advocates for something called, among other things, “forest bathing.” This group has a number of links to research papers on the topic on its website.

A detailed look at nature therapies was published in 2016 by a United Kingdom organization called Natural England. Perhaps it is because I am a crude colonial, but I couldn’t see that the lengthy report came to any firm conclusions beyond something like “it looks like this could be good, so let’s study it some more.” (I guess research scientists have bills to pay and so always recommend more study. I know in my work as a reporter I sometimes tell sources that I’m skeptical of anything that supporters claim always works or solves all problems. “Because then I’d be out of a job,” I tell them. I’m not entirely joking.)

Nature Walking May Reduce Circular Thinking

The nature prescription really does have significant scientific support, however. For instance, a 2015 study led by Stanford University researchers and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences — a hot-shot research journal — compared a group of people who walked for 90 minutes in a landscape of grass and trees to a group who walked for 90 minutes along a busy four-lane road. They found the nature-walkers showed less activity in a region of the brain that is active during rumination.

As I wrote in a Grieve Well post titled When Thinking In Circles Can Actually Help (And When It May Not), endlessly ruminating about loss, sadness, yearning, guilt and the other negative emotions of grief is associated with longer, more intense grieving symptoms and less positive outcomes. Basically, ruminating about things that are worrying you is not likely to help. (Although ruminating about how you’re feeling may help.)

The Stanford report, which relied on brain scans for its key findings, making it more reliable than the usual self-reports used in grief research, was described in an article for the Stanford University news service here. This article makes easier reading than the National Academy of Sciences journal piece and has the same key information clearly explained.

Studies have found being in nature helps improve mood and reduce anxiety, which are problems for grievers, of course.

If you’re interested in learning more about how being in nature can help your mental state, the Stanford group is also part of an organization called The Natural Capital Project that is all about benefits the natural world can provide us whether we’re grieving or not. Other studies by researchers affiliated with the group have found being in nature helps improve mood and reduce anxiety, which are problems for grievers, of course.

Hiking for Happiness?

Back to my experience with nature last weekend. I spent three nights sleeping on the ground, filtering drinking water from the streams, eating freeze-dried meals and breaking camp and carrying all my gear to a new site every day. The terrain was typical Texas Hill Country — flat, dry, plateaus separated by steep-sided rocky canyons with clear streams at the bottom. I wore myself to a frazzle, hiking several miles each day and refreshing myself with swims in a cold, spring-fed pool. At night I read on my tablet for an hour or two before bed, either noir crime novels or the Roman stoic philosopher Epictetus.

Much of the time the scenery was beautiful. The songs of the birds and trickle of the waterfalls was soothing. Carrying my 40-lb. pack up the numerous rugged climbs challenged my 60-year-old muscles adequately and then some. I had plenty of solitude, going hours without seeing another person and camping the last night in a postcard-perfect campground without another soul anywhere around, as far as I could tell.

Much of the time I trudged through the canyons and up the ledges in the deeply blue mood that’s been my most typical state of mind since October 2. I was a pretty sad hiker for a lot of those miles.

I met some nice people and had several pleasant conversations. I sat and thought a lot. I walked and thought a lot. I read and thought a lot. Sometimes while hiking or enjoying a view I forgot for brief periods about Brady’s death. But much of the time I trudged through the canyons and up the ledges in the deeply blue mood that’s been my most typical state of mind since October 2. I was a pretty sad hiker for a lot of those miles. A few times I was overcome with sadness and cried briefly, more or less as I do when I’m home in Austin.

My last campsite was only a few feet from the spot where Brady caught his first fish when he was four years old. The picture, which I used to illustrate this post, is one of my favorite ones of him. He’s so gleeful. It’s hard to fathom how that sunny little boy could become so low he took his own life. It was painful for me to sit in that beautiful spot and think back to that beautiful day and compare it to the agony and blackness that pervade my life now.

Do I feel better? Did the nature therapy help? I can’t say for sure. One of the problems with this process is separating the gradual improvement that tends to come with time from the incremental improvement that may or may not have been caused by something I’ve done in the hope it will help. Do I really feel better? Is it because of the intervention? Is it just a random fluctuation? Is it just that I’m getting used to the feeling that I really don’t care about being alive any more?

One of the problems with this process is separating the gradual improvement that tends to come with time from the incremental improvement that may or may not have been caused by something I’ve done in the hope it will help.

I don’t have answers to those questions. I plan to write a post on validated tools for assessing guilt symptoms so you can, perhaps, come up with an accurate and reliable way of knowing you are or are not doing better than last month or last year. (I did write that post and Yes, You Can Measure Grief And Here’s How has become the most-read post on this blog.) It would be nice to know you’re making progress, right? Sometimes it seems like I’m not.

Back to Nature

I hope to go on another backpacking trip before long. It will be getting hot in Texas soon, so my next hiking adventure in nature will likely be in the mountains of New Mexico or Colorado, where summer is not so extreme.

This time I will likely bring a companion, if I can get anybody to go with me. I’ve noticed that being around people and engaged with them is one of the most reliable ways to get me to forget that I hate life now. I consider that a good thing.

The bottom line here, to the extent there is one, is that nature therapy does seem like it could help, and has some evidence behind it. Whether this attempt worked for me is not clear. If you try it, or anything, I hope it works more significantly for you. And I’m not giving up. My long weekend on the trail may yet prove to have helped lift my mood more than it seems right now.

The bottom line here, to the extent there is one, is that nature therapy does seem like it could help, and has some evidence behind it.

As always, this look at an evidence-based grief coping strategy is not intended to suggest that anybody should try it, only that you could. If you don’t want to, fine. Different strokes for different folks. Your mileage may vary.

I hope you find some peace today.