Family Crises and Healing by Nature

A Father’s Story

In my childhood, there was a period—in retrospect, perhaps during her climacteric—in which my mother, usually a vivacious and fun-loving woman, would erupt into long spells of distressed wailing and manically-driven insomnia. If the episode occurred in our subarctic winter, my father’s strategy was to repair to the bunkhouse at the mine where he worked. I found respite at age 11 in the open air hockey rink across the street where I would shovel snow, clear the ice, and play hockey, often by myself, far into the night, until I was so exhausted that sleep was assured, the wailing not-withstanding. I was afraid that so sleep-deprived, I might lose control. Though essentially a gentle soul, I had recently startled myself by lashing out at a bully who threatened me in the schoolyard. That uncharacteristically violent reaction alerted me to my sudden vulnerability to provocation. I wanted to avoid any such outburst in my home at all costs.

If the rink was not free, I would head out across the starlit lake, the crunching of the snow oddly comforting in the silence of the frozen winter night. Those were our only strategies of escape until spring came and my mother’s turning the earth barefoot, planting seeds and bulbs, and weeding had a powerfully salutary effect on her emotional state.

A little later in the season, whenever my mother grew restive, my father and I would suggest heading into the woods to look for berries and mushrooms, and, although deathly afraid of bears, she would never turn us down. It was basically parallel activity: breathing in the spicy smell of spruce and pine in winter, and as the luxury of walking upon soft and comforting moss and the scent of the berries took hold, tension would evaporate and soon murmuring

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conversation, then spirited comments, and even hearty laughter would follow. I still remember those transformative moments as mystical, magical. They crystallized for me the power of the environment to overcome family distress even in extremis.

As an adult, in a very different marital era in North America, I have followed the same formula during times of crisis, transporting my wife and children to a place in nature large and sensually overpowering that allows us to place our angst in perspective, letting the sea, the forest, or the river overcome us. They have always had the desired effect, at least until the return to the crisis environment of the home.

I have twice been a single dad of a teenager, once of a daughter and once of a son. Many times I have recreated those places as sanctuary: places where one can move and talk in the comfort of positive memories, and the environment overwhelms with positive associations, prompting a return to childlike peace of mind. Those places override the idiosyncrasies of individuals, their individual torments, effecting a return to personas within the family that are comforting through their positive associations even as the 21^st-century modal family itself morphs into something unfamiliar. So far, that modus operandi appears more effective than drugs or even in-depth counseling alone (that is, without a major change in environment) over a wide spectrum of family issues that ranges from depression to existential crises.

For me the idea that changing the environment was a powerful therapeutic strategy, even for individuals in extreme psychic pain or physically dependent on narcotics, stemmed from the research of Bruce Alexander at Simon Fraser University. Realizing that the sterile existence of drug addicts parallels the sterile wire cage lives of rats made physically addicted to morphine, he divided addicted rats into two groups, one of whom also had unlimited access to morphine along with food and water, but could also interact, fight, procreate, and build nests. Those rats chose “cold turkey” to go through withdrawal symptoms rather than continue taking morphine. The wire-caged addicts, as reported in the medical literature, preferred morphine to food and water, unto death.

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A Son’s Story: Natural Healing of Personal Crisis

As a young boy I was happy entertaining myself in the forest or on the beach while my dad was fishing, cooking, or setting up our campsite. I would occasionally participate in his hunting and fishing, but more exciting for me was the chance to explore the wilderness on my own, looking under rocks for crabs, spotting animals and fish. When I was 11 my parents separated, and I became a teenager more troubled than most. My infatuation with the wilderness waned. I accompanied my father less on his outdoor excursions.

The shock and conflict of the divorce fueled rebelliousness. Fighting and drug use followed. I was kicked out of every school in town. Left at home to work on courses via correspondence, I quickly became bored and depressed. I could not control my drug use and I was enveloped in a cycle of partying, insomnia, and oversleeping. In between I sat looking out the window in front of my desk either staring into the forest or over the ocean.

One bright spring day, when I was 16, I got up from my desk, left my correspondence textbooks, and walked out into that forest. My eight-month-old, very curious English setter accompanied me as we started up the steep mountain creek that ran through our yard during spring runoff. We hiked up the creek bed into the lush temperate rainforest and immediately my thoughts were transformed. My senses were lost in the atmosphere of the trees and the earth and the sounds of the birds that intrigued my dog.

Life became simple. Nothing mattered but my footing on the mountain, my next step on the creek bed, the next breath, drink: air and water. Guilt, depression, all the negative thoughts in my head deconstructed and disappeared. Only my new situation mattered: me, my dog, and the forest. After a full day of hiking and exploration, and the unexpected—a hermit I got to know whose abode I stumbled upon—my love for the wild, and the world, blossomed again.

It gave me something to be passionate about in my life. Looking forward to the next hike, I felt the depression lift, replaced with the anticipation of what I might discover growing or lying, living, in the forest. One day I came face to face with a cougar.

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Coming across an animal like that alone would normally send most people into a state of panic. Instead, I was elated. I felt as if I had made a discovery, an ancient totem. I was closer to nature than I had ever been. Here was the wild personified. Another day I sat beside a deer for a half hour, trying to figure out why he was letting me sit so close. Those outings gave me time to think about life and gave me a new perspective on the world. Family and school problems were no longer relevant and taking drugs would only diminish the outdoor experience rather than enhance it.

I know now that families, especially children, that have a close connection with things wild can escape into a realm beyond the sometimes stressful world of social interaction, and soothe their minds, energize their bodies, and perhaps heal their souls.

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