On a recent weekend away from London, rambling in the hills of Dartmoor, I decided to trespass into a patch of commercial woodland. I am not sure why. Certainly there was nothing appealing about the sombre ranks of fast-growing conifers. Even so, with the light almost gone, I clambered over the sagging barbed wire and ventured into the trees. It was dark between the evenly spaced trunks and the ground looked barren, devoid of the rich, composting life one normally finds on a woodland floor. It was quiet, too: the silence of monoculture.
Walking deeper into the wood, all at once, between the gloomy rows, I caught sight of something vivid green and immense. Hastening forward, I emerged into a wide clearing, and saw that it was a tree — but such a tree as I had never in all my wanderings encountered: a solitary, ancient oak. Its sprawling branches were carpeted in velvet moss and spanned the breadth of the clearing. The tremendous trunk contained on one side an opening that looked like a doorway or portal, a hollowing characteristic of ancient trees.
It was a living cathedral, next to which I felt ephemeral as a mayfly.
At the time, I was sure I had stumbled upon a secret, that this lonely giant was hidden here, screened from view and fenced behind barbed in order wire to protect its location. I imagined a secret society dedicated to the preservation of England’s last remaining Great Trees. More likely the ground on which the oak stands had been sold and its neighbours felled. But at the time I wasn’t thinking straight. The mighty tree awakened in me a deep sense of the mysterious: a marvellous awareness of slow centuries lived on this spot. I climbed carefully up into its branches, lay back against one of its limbs and looked up.
Awestruck.
Awe and Its Origins
Awe is a potent human emotion defined by researchers as, ‘the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your current understanding of the world.’ Awe makes us feel we are part of something much larger than ourselves, and this diminishment of self in turn quiets the mind and inclines us toward cooperation and kindness.
This was the emotion that bowled me over at the ancient oak.
It is thought that awe evolved to encourage the sort of prosocial behaviours — resource sharing, group bonding, and mutual defence — that helped us survive in our ancestral environment. And unlike some of our other evolved tendencies (such as the urge to binge on sugary foods), which can be maladaptive in the modern world, experiences of awe remain as beneficial as ever.
Awe improves rigorous thinking, boosts creativity, and reduces activity in the default modern network of the brain (often associated with introspective, autobiographical thoughts), while triggering the release of oxytocin (sometimes referred to as the ‘love hormone’ because of the role it plays in social bonding). In this hushed mental state, it is easier to put things in perspective, slow down, and take in the vast mysteries of life, the Universe and everything.
According to Dacher Keltner, a psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, and the world’s pre-eminent awe expert, awe can also act as a ‘pathway for avoiding chronic inflammation and the diseases of the twenty-first century such inflammation is associated with, including depression, chronic anxiety, heart disease, autoimmune problems, and despair.’
The inflammation referred to is caused by our immune system, which releases pro-inflammatory cytokines to fight off invading pathogens. Unfortunately, because our minds treat social threats in much the same way, loneliness, prolonged work stress, shame, or being the target of prejudice, can all lead to chronic inflammation. By making us feel supported and integrated in a larger pattern, awe works as an off-ramp, counteracting these negative experiences.
'It is hard to imagine a single thing you can do that is better for your body and mind than finding awe outdoors.'
Everyday Awe
The good news is that awe is available, with a little effort, in lots of places. It is an experience that can be cultivated consciously by focusing your attention and tuning into wonder. An ancient tree or double rainbow might elicit awe spontaneously, but studies have shown that awe is available in a wide variety of everyday circumstances. And — more good news — unlike various other of life’s fleeting pleasures, awe does not diminish in potency with repeated exposure. Rather, as Keltner explains, ‘the more we practice awe, the richer it gets.’
At Lifted, we focus on finding awe in nature. There are two reasons for this: first, the beauty of nature is accessible even in a big city and, for reasons rooted deep in our evolutionary past, is among the most universal means of experiencing awe; second, time spent in nature is associated with a range of additional health benefits. Indeed, writes Keltner, ‘it is hard to imagine a single thing you can do that is better for your body and mind than finding awe outdoors.’
The journalist Lucy Jones, in her important book Losing Eden: Why Our Minds Need the Wild, surveys the current evidence on the well-being benefits of connecting with the natural world. The stories range from hospital patients who recover faster when given a room with a view of trees, to the use of gardening as an effective treatment for people with acute mental disorders, to a deprived area of Chicago where the crime rate is markedly lower in areas where residents have access to green spaces — and much else besides.
Among the most widely applicable areas of research discussed by Jones is Attention Restoration Theory, according to which nature’s ability to soothe our frazzled minds is linked to the quality of attention it empowers. The natural world encourages a soft, effortless engagement we find restful. Our minds float, butterfly-like, between trees, clouds, birds, and wildflowers. After hours of effortful attention at work, likely spent sitting down, gazing into a screen, this pleasant flitting between objects relieves mental fatigue.
All of which serves to confirm what many of us sense intuitively: that time spent in nature calms and nourishes us. Intriguingly, this seems to be true even for individuals who do not like spending time in nature. An evaluation of 50 empirical studies conducted by the Norwegian Institute of Public Health stated it was ‘likely [that] . . . even in individuals who do not express any appreciation for plants and nature, the lack of nature can have a negative effect.’
Our minds need the wild.
As the great naturalist and conservationist E. O. Wilson observed: ‘Without beauty and mystery beyond itself, the mind by definition is deprived of its bearings and will drift to simpler and cruder configurations. Artefacts are incomparably poorer than the life they are designed to mimic . . . To dwell on them exclusively is to fold inwardly over and over, losing detail at each translation, shrinking with each cycle, finally merging into the lifeless facade of which they are composed.’
Expanding the Circle of Care
After my encounter with the ancient oak, I was gripped by the idea there might be other great trees concealed in the commercial woodlands nearby. The next day was spent climbing over (and occasionally getting snagged on) barbed wire fences in pursuit of this idea. I found in one conifer plantation an odd assortment of car tyres poking out of the ground, as if someone had been playing soldiers on a makeshift assault course. But no hidden giants.
Before heading back to London, I returned again to the ancient oak, this time in full daylight, and found its majesty undiminished. I also found its situation tragic. The venerable giant still stood, but the forest society, that tangled cacophony of species to which it would formerly have been connected, was missing, replaced by a monoculture of young trees raised for the saw.
If trees could speak, what story would this one tell?
The human tendency is to anthropomorphise. However, perhaps buried in this tendency is another important reason to find awe in nature. Awe evolved to help us stick together in the wild. But by expanding our circle of care until it is large enough to encompass not just humans, but also trees, rocks, rivers, and birds, awe also encourages in us an urgently-needed stewardship of the Earth. Perhaps if we go out among the trees looking for awe, one day enough of us might care enough to save them. And in doing so save ourselves.
