Spending time in nature is known to be beneficial to our mental health. “Forest-bathing” is now a thing and “ecotherapy programmes” have become recognised treatments to ease anxiety and depression. I’ve always preferred the natural world to the man-made one. It’s true to say that I prefer animals to people on a general level and that part of my own enjoyment of nature is the ability to escape from the chaos and noise of humankind.
My girlfriend and I rescued two Serbian street dogs back in March, having suffered the heartbreak of losing our pug earlier in the year and our chihuahua last Summer at the ages of 14 and 12 respectively. In doing so we moved from looking after two big characters in small bodies to two big characters in bigger bodies requiring a good deal more exercise! We’re woken at 6 am most mornings and walk the dogs for at least an hour before 8 am and again in the later afternoon/early evening. Every day, rain, wind or shine.
The exercise is good for us all and our varied walks take us all around our local patch which includes a small nature reserve, woodland, a canal, ponds, fields, streams and footpaths. You could be forgiven for thinking we live in the middle of nowhere. In fact, we live at the edge of a substantial residential estate in Hampshire, near the Surrey border and 10 minutes from the M3 motorway.
In the almost 2 years since we moved to our home we’ve been fortunate enough to see kingfisher, bank vole, field vole, shrew, tawny owl, roe deer, muntjac deer, sparrowhawk, red kite, common buzzard, crayfish (we clearly disturbed a heron’s breakfast), blackcap, all manner of passerines and finches, robin, thrush, mistle thrush, frogs, toads, grey squirrel, fieldfare, feral and wood pigeons, rabbit, grey heron, fox and badger – all within a mile by foot from our front door.
We live in a 3-bed semi with a small back garden and a tiny front lawn. Goldfinches, house sparrows, collared-doves, woodpigeons, feral pigeons, dunnocks, robins, blue tits, coal tits, long tail tits, starlings and great tits are regular visitors to our garden. We’ve even had sparrowhawks and a great spotted woodpecker taking a breather on our back fence. One dark winter’s night Lauren even discovered a badger snuffling around on our back lawn, having dug its way in under the fence in search of suet crumbs from one of the bird feeders. We recently recorded 4 different bat species flitting overhead as we sat on our tiny patio one evening enjoying a beer. A camera trap I left out in the garden one night in an attempt to record mouse activity instead revealed that a tawny owl called in for a drink from our “pond” ( a small stone sink dug into the lawn).
We’re lucky that we enjoy nature. It’s true that we go out into it every day and that we’re keen observers of natural life. Sometimes, we get cold and soaked. Often recently we’ve exchanged glances with the dogs and all wondered what we’re doing out in the rain. But if we didn’t get out on such a regular basis, we wouldn’t have witnessed the week-long exodus of froglets and toadlets moving en-masse from their natal ponds into the safety of the undergrowth. We would have missed the dazzling dance of the demoiselles and dragonflies by the canal. Countless bees wouldn’t have been rescued and carefully placed back among the pollen and nectar. Oil beetles, soldier beetles and long-horned beetles would have remained unnoticed. We wouldn’t have seen, and saved, that queen bumblebee. Or been able to ease that crayfish back into the water before the joggers and cyclists descended on it. We would have missed out on the sight of those newly hatched moorhen chicks. The ducklings and cygnets. The dabchicks. The unforgettable sight of a tawny owlet gawping at us from a shrub it had landed in after some over-enthusiastic branching. A dozen rolling carp down by the bridge.
We can all put ourselves in nature because it’s actually all around us. It comes into our gardens if given the slightest encouragement of a bird feeder or two. A tiny pond. Some flowers in beds or pots. A couple of bee or insect hotels on a wall. Put up a nesting box. Or a bat box. You’ll be amazed at the results. Cut a hole in the bottom of your garden fence and put out some hedgehog food. Or food for your local foxes.
Take a walk regularly and look around. Nature is life and death on a daily basis. It’s literally survival of the fittest. Daily battles for food, water, habitat, breeding and the right to live another day. It’s enthralling. Humbling. Savage and beautiful. Mindfulness at its best.
ecolelogical 