In the summer of 2018, Britt and I were waiting to board a flight to Portland, Oregon to celebrate our friends’ wedding. While sitting in the terminal I realized that I had failed to bring any reading material for this coast-to-coast jaunt. While perusing the newsstand near the gate, I purchased a book entitled “When” by Daniel Pink. This impulsive selection was based mostly on the minimalist cover design (including Futura typeface). Based on the thickness of the books, the page count also seemed to be about the correct amount to last me for the entire flight.

I enjoyed the book quite a bit and would recommend it to anyone who is interested in modern behavioral science. Without getting into the weeds about the premise of Pink’s text, something that struck me profoundly was a section about the effects of proximity to nature on the human psyche. According to the book, there are a multitude of studies which have shown that spending time in nature is a de facto mood booster.

Before I had ever heard any buzzwords like “forest bathing” or “nature immersion” I could recognize the restorative and uplifting properties of spending some time in nature. The positive effects of this phenomenon for Britt and I personally, was a large part of the impetus behind the initial decision that we made to search for a place to make our own in the Catskills.

Fast forward almost half a decade to early 2020. In NYC, the collective mood was arguably its lowest since the 2011 attacks on WTC. I was among these masses feeling acute anxiety and despair. With unknown variables disrupting humanity on a global scale, my mind (and pulse) was racing through all of the worst case scenarios. Finding myself in this situation, apparently instinctively, I desperately craved nature.

Early spring in the Eastern Catskills is kind of like a dystopian version of Narnia. The deciduous trees are still completely bereft of foliage, even though the temperatures have migrated above freezing. Yet, it still seems to snow almost every night, but only enough to make everything muddy by noon. Notwithstanding these less than ideal conditions, I was provided a considerable amount of relief from all of my pandemic-related stress almost immediately upon arriving in this setting.

I acknowledge that being able to focus on a huge project like renovating a house distracted my mind from teasing out all of the various doomsday sagas. But I cannot discount the value attributable to being in the middle of God’s country while undertaking said distraction. It was like being shot up with some sort of optimism steroid every time I walked the dog up the hill into our backyard.

Just sauntering around our neighborhood I could be serenaded by migrating birds and watch wildflowers sprout while I noodled on designs for the deck, wiring solutions, bathroom plumbing configurations, etc. It was kind of amazing. No wonder guys like Thoreau, Emerson and (our Catskills own) John Buroughs chose nature as the venue to develop their ideas and writings.

On almost a bi-weekly basis there was some reason that I would need to make a trip back to NYC. I could feel my stress meter going up while gathering the requisite masks, hand sanitizer and other essentials necessary to responsibly operate once I arrived. The mood was always very heavy. Everyone I crossed paths with was a potential unwitting conveyor of viral infection. It was nerve wracking. Inversely, I could feel my spine unwinding as soon as I began to travel back into the woods. The trips to NYC and back during this period only bolstered my realization of nature’s mood enhancing properties. Along with it, grew my level of gratitude for the good fortune and/or luck that Britt, Lola and I had encountered during the entire ordeal.

Growing up in the Rocky Mountains, Jake Breinholt has been an avid outdoorsman and photographer for as long as he can remember. He moved to New York for school in the early aughts. After about 15 years of the desk jockey grind, he and his wife made good on their years-long dream of owning a home in the Catskills. As he’s spent the past few years fixing up the place, he’s also getting back in touch with his roots through time in the great outdoors. Check out his Personal Blog + Photography.

This column first appeared in the HVNY newsletter, This week in the Hudson Valley. Sign-up to get it delivered for free every week.

Nature: the de facto mood booster amid various doomsday sagas