"Studies show that staring at a photograph of a forest is better than staring at drywall, though a window with a view is better, and a walk outside is best. Gazing at a eucalyptus tree for one minute makes you more generous. Your health will be improved by just a five-minute walk in a park, though 30 minutes will work wonders. Five hours of nature a month is all you need, though, as one scientist says, “if you can go for ten hours, you will reach a new level of feeling better and better.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/04/lessons-of-the-hermit/517770/
Is it any wonder that I am happy in the woods, even if I onyl am driving through them?
Not that I want to be a hermit, but the woods have always been a place of wonder, refuge, and imagination for me.
From my Places and Times, eLectio Publishing, © 2015
THREE WOODS
Few places calm me as the woods.
Whether greening, bursting with spring
or bare-branched in winter, pleading
for the cycle to turn again.
Few places calm me as the woods.
I
At first I was not on my own.
Older boys showed me how to look,
to tell one leaf from the others,
where the water moccasins lived,
over the hills to Ten-Mile-Creek.
Each adventure
brought something new.
I went on
Braddock’s March or deep
into the Ardennes , with Boone
and Crockett away
from the city.
Whether alone or
in a group
happiest was I
in those woods.
II
Dawned the day to search for the sun
leaving everything that I knew
and loved far beyond the mountains.
New sights and tones awaited me
Dawned the day to search for the sun.
Behind houses built to look the same
the drainage ditch led to limestone
kilns, quarries two hundred years old
and railroad between the rivers.
The long, low-lying hill beckoned
to destiny waiting for me
yet too early was it for me.
In time the woods led the back way
to the Mall straddling the Pike
Shadows lengthening, colder air
confined me to the loud house
near the corner of another
residence on a dead-end street.
Years and continents later on
I drove by where woods had been.
Larger, brighter colored houses
settled on fields and woods I roamed.
Where in the hell do kids now go?
III
Now more woods than ever I had
but far less time to savor them.
Tall Southern pines loom over oaks,
Loblollies and others. Early spring
brings flashes of wisteria
purpling as I pass on my way.
Only an occasional path
leads from the paved road deeper in;
otherwise it is hard going
whether with dog or all alone
through brush and low-lying branches.
Here I remain on the paved road;
enough time have I been in deep
woods, sleeping in tents, vehicles,
even under stars and branches,
through enough undergrowth and weeds
navigating my way forward
to personal growth or complete
retirement, regardless of which
I find first or makes itself known.
Most adventures lie in the past.
My motivations now are health-
or sanity-related. I
reflect and plan more concretely
instead of allowing my mind
to wander as I used to do.
Happiest am I in the woods.
