I think I must be getting old. I’ve started wanting to know the names of trees and birds and wildflowers. I’ve become enamoured with the changing of the seasons. I find myself in my local woodlands at 6am not because I’m still at a “forest rave” from the night before, but because I want to get straight out into nature after waking up, so as to catch the bright morning light, the dew on the leaves and the birdsong in all its rambunctiousness.
Or maybe I’m just tapping into a part of my nature that I have been repressing — or at least failing to recognise — until now; that which predisposes me to love, appreciate and even crave all of these things. Maybe the colours and sounds and textures of nature are ones that even those of us who live in cities have been conditioned to find beautiful and awe-inspiring. And maybe all this is a crucial, yet under-appreciated, component of our wellbeing.
That’s what some thinkers who are part of an emerging interdisciplinary field that stresses the importance of art, beauty and nature for our mental and physical health would argue, anyway.