Nature’s role in mental health
As I walked on the earth, my feet bare to the ground, I stopped and breathed in — the scent of rich humic soil, straight from the forest floor danced across the air, activating memories from long ago. Here I was, nearly three decades later. Home. Back on the land that filled my early life with such meaning.
I walked further, following a familiar trail. The leaves crackled, mud squelched between my toes. Then, in the distance, I could hear it. The sound of life, roaring, as water cascaded and carved its way through the ancient basaltic landscape. My spirit burst with delight, as though unwrinkling from a long, dry season without much rain.
When the pandemic hit in 2020, the yearning for this place — or rather, an all-pervasive sense of homesickness — set in. I started to hear the land. It would whisper in the night breeze, as I drifted to sleep. Night after night. My heartland, she was calling me, signing a song from within.
“Come child, come back to me,” she’d say.
And finally, last week I returned — as a pilgrim, to reconnect with my roots. I grew up in the hinterland of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, with 360 degree views of the countryside and a waterfall with a hidden gorge at the end of the road.
This place, and the forest here, is central to my identity. I am deeply attached to it. Even though my family moved away from the area when I was young, perhaps much earlier than the small child within me was ready for. And a thick sense of dislocation remained.
But here I was, once again. I had arrived, back in time, to the place where my eternal love for nature and the Earth’s forests had begun.
It’s the land of the Jinibara people, who come from the mountain regions of the Sunshine Coast where the lawyer vine grows. And where the sacred bunya pines and red cedar trees decorate the landscape, though not as thickly as they once did before colonisation. Waterfalls abound and volcanic soils provide the footings for lush subtropical habitat.
For me, the forest and waterways at the end of the old country road that I so adore are sacred. You can feel the energy or spirit of the place. It permeates your being, like a channel of crystalline light.
Playing in the stream as a child, I can recall what may be described as my first transcendent experience — I was eight. I felt buoyant and expansive, in flow, like the waterfall itself. The essence of that moment, when the forest revealed itself and opened up to me, remains. And it’s this connection with the essential nature of the place, and of myself, that I had since longed for.
Nature is my church — it’s holy.
Fritjof Capra, a physicist, systems theorist and deep ecologist who wrote on such topics understood this, too: “Ecology and spirituality are fundamentally connected, because deep ecological awareness, ultimately, is spiritual awareness.” Maintaining a sense of connection to place, and the natural world, is profoundly important. It anchors and shapes us. It provides structure and meaning in our lives and offers physical and spiritual sustenance.
We are part of nature, not separate from it. Knowing that, really knowing that, will go a long way in alleviating our mental struggles, enhancing the quality of our lives, and increasing our willingness to care for and respect this place that we all call home — Earth.
This article was first published in The West Australian in Renée Gardiner’s weekly column in Agenda, 12 November 2022.