"I become engrossed in every leafy, creepy or flying inhabitant of the wood, with each detail depression begins to disperse."
"Depression grows stronger through stillness," Emma Mitchell, the author of The Wild Remedy: How Nature Mends Us, writer, broadcaster, and maven of the pervading calm of nature, tells us from personal experience.
Like others who have traipsed about to find stillness within, Mitchell believes in movement there is a blessing. But not just a blessing. In movement, there is possible abandonment of the dark, thudding muck that is depression. Mitchell guides us:
I become engrossed in every leafy, creeping, or flying inhabitant of the wood, and with each detail that draws my attention, with each metre I walk, the incessant clamor of daily concerns seems to become more muffled, and the foggy pall of depression begins to disperse.
Humans often pull our horizons close so we cannot see the future to avoid what we know is coming. In a normal state, this can be helpful. I think of Annie Dillard's manufactured consciousness between the lamp and the desk, in which she writes. Mitchell is no stranger to depression, suicidal thoughts, or nature's sensory warmth. "Depression grows stronger through stillness," Mitchell writes from depression's confinement, i.e. bed:
My world narrows. I stay in the cottage and move slowly between its rooms. My thoughts become sluggish and jumbled, and ideas for drawings, photographs, and writing vanish. I avoid friends and turn down invitations to socialize. I manage only the simplest of tasks each day, the guilt I feel about my inability to contribute to the household, fulfill commitments, and be an engaged parent is overwhelming. Self-reproach brings my mind lower still.
At first, I try to continue. I work from bed as best I can, and I continue to write during the short periods when my mind is more alert. Sleep dominates everything. I can barely stay awake and have three, sometimes four naps a day, along with a full night's sleep. My memory blurs, and several times, I find that the end of the day has arrived, and I was barely aware that it had begun.
Mitchell's remedy draws on the natural healing power of nature, but she also recommends not simply walking in it but also becoming part of it.
A very small story was unfolding in front of me: I was seeing a snapshot of that creature's life, and I felt thrilled and privileged to witness it. I will still squat, aged forty-six, to examine humble yet exquisite collections of plants or lichens growing on the pebbles of Dungeness or the small creatures that dart about in rock pools.
The nineteenth-century poet John Clare called this ‘dropping down,’ and he did it too, sitting among wild plants to see the natural world from the point of view of a snipe in its nest. This physical and mental immersion in nature informed and inspired his verse. The sight of a path curving gently through hazels, a great stand of beeches, the sweep of the white sands and calm water of Shell Bay in Dorset, or the monumental yet softly cat-like Howgill Fells in Cumbria is undeniably uplifting and beautiful.
John Clare, a late Romantic-period poet and patron saint to many who seek solitude and comfort, wrote his poetry during regular countryside rambles. He veined the earth to calm, situate, and see the universal in the small. Like Clare, who had lifelong depression, Mitchell's state waxes and wanes. And you realize depression is about survival. It is about treading water above a dark, murky infinity where reality capsizes into oblivion and we fear to follow.
The Wild Remedy is not about a day in nature, a trip, or even single events strung together. It is an entire year of Mitchell's life. And not just any year, every year. The book begins, "I suffer from depression and have done for twenty-five years."
Mitchell does not simply step into nature; she draws, collects, sees, touches, and marvels at it. She carries that sense of wonder that environmentalists Rachel Carson, David Attenborough, and J. Drew Langham were and are so keen to ignite and inflame.
Mitchell continues gently:
Then, a small patch of blue catches my eye, and a plant I have longed to see is just there in front of my shoes. Once my mind has attuned to this new thrill, I spy strands of it among the thyme and fairy flax for several metres in all directions. This is milkwort.
Whether or not you rejoice at milkwort or teasel is irrelevant. Don't let Mitchell's easy oneness with nature put you off. Anyone can appreciate the yellow of lichen or the redness of a Boston ivy come autumn. Without knowing the names of anything, anyone can listen to birdsong or marvel at grass patterns (or insects!).
This year of using nature as a remedy has convinced me that humans may need to be in natural landscapes regularly in order to feel fully well. There is an ancient and potent connection between us and the land: we evolved it to live in wild places. Perhaps it is the displacement from nature in modern life that is causing so many of us to struggle with our mental health.
The abounding strength of The Wild Remedy is Mitchell's conviction in the healing powers of nature, the utmost beauty of stepping in and dropping down. Mary Oliver shows us how in her poetry, as she always has.
"Just a minute," said a voice in the weeds,
So I stood still in the day's exquisite early morning light
and so I didn't crush with my great feet
any small or unusual thing just happening to pass by
where I was passing by
on my way to the blueberry fields,
and maybe it was the toad,
and maybe it was the June beetle,
and maybe it was the pink and tender worm,
who does his work without limbs or eyes,
and does it well...
From Mary Oliver's poem 'Just a minute"
But I believe there is more to it for Mitchell. We are social beings first. As odd as it might seem, the entire revolution of self begins with stepping outside and ends with posting something online or in a book that speaks to you, me, or any other inhabitants of depression's dark, thudding depths. There is a buoyancy of caring, of reaching out.
I desperately seek nature's humming depths, like Mitchell. But even more, I cling to this rule: when you want to contract, expand instead. Depression hates movement; it also hates noise. Shout yourself into eternity, empty yourself into the world. Open your heart. Depression writhes and suffers.
Read Mitchell's The Wild Remedy in its entirety to feel the full warmth of her abilities and generosity. Her social media are vessels of beauty and calm, findings from her many ventures outside. She is a real, human thing, as present on the page as any as I've ever read.
I also wholeheartedly recommend these generous expansions of self from Maya Angelou on forgiving yourself first, collage artist Mark Hearld on joy in life's daily doings, psychotherapist Stephen Grosz's case studies of losing and finding ourselves, or my study of the importance of touch and the formation of our inner landscapes.