Scala Radio Book Club: Everybody Needs Beauty: In Search of the Nature Cure by Samantha Walton
Last updated 11th Jan 2022
Samantha Walton chatted to Jamie Crick in the Scala Radio Book Club on Thursday (29 July) about her eye-opening new book Everybody Needs Beauty: In Search of the Nature Cure.
The book focuses on the connection between nature and mental health. In a world where hospitals are being retrofitted with gardens and green spaces; on the Shetland Islands, it's possible to walk into a doctor's surgery with anxiety and depression and walk out with a prescription for nature. But where has this come from?
The 'nature cure', it turns out, has a long history, and in this book, British academic Samantha Walton sets out to uncover its cultural legacy. From the miraculous waters of Lourdes to a turn-of-the-century wilderness retreat in Maine, and from a forest bathing centre in Finland to a laboratory working on simulating the experience of nature indoors, she visits landscapes particularly associated with healing, to investigate the history and science of the pull of these natural spaces and the writers who have engaged with them.
When asked why she wrote the book, Samantha replied ‘I decided to write it because I was seeing this information about nature and mental health and the incredible things that nature can do and I felt I immediately connected with that story, because I have often gone to nature, to change my mood to recover from difficult experiences.’
Jamie suggested, ‘The theme, appears to me, to be what it means to have that relationship with the world around us and how it can change, if you're, say, in a forest, or at the ocean, or in a traffic jam.’
‘Yeah’, replied Samantha. ‘I am a big outdoor swimmer, for example, and I find the incredible release you get in cold water just empties my mind and makes me feel so different in my body, different in myself, than going in a forest where my thoughts kind of expand and stretch to meet this place that, you know, also can be a place that brings fear as well as pleasure. I experience a lot of anxiety in a forest, sometimes there as a woman walking alone, which doesn't stop me going, that didn't stop me sort of desperately wanting to be in those places. But I think we all experience them really differently. And to be able to pick up the scientific research that looks into what we get when we seek nature and what we take to those places - the expectations we take to those places as well was really important to me.’
Jamie mentioned how during lockdown people have become more attached to nature.
Samantha related to this with her walks around Bristol. ‘There are walks that I do and I've been doing for years around Bristol. The traffic on those walks that I noticed in the experience of lockdown was just incredible. The amount of people realising that there's places where they're kind of feeling that they had a right to be there, they have an interest in being there, and learning about those places. I found it just so inspiring and beautiful.’
Samantha also discussed her thoughts on the development of green spaces in crowded cities.
‘That development I talk about is this kind of mixed-use housing development where the designers had this obligation to provide green space. And that's the language that's used in design, “there needs to be green space, because green space equals health, and people deserve it and want it”. But green space is just an empty box. You know, green space doesn't tell us anything about biodiversity, what's living there, what kinds of habitats it's providing. So, I kind of use green space as a pivot to think about what we do want from nature. And again, I'm very privileged to live in Bristol, a city where people are really good at reclaiming bits and of land of thinking about ecological interconnections. So, rewilding is a term that's very fashionable. Now, you could just talk about it as leaving a bit of grass to grow and see what pops up there. See what wildflowers pop up, see what pollinators and birds start forming a habitat, forming a place for themselves in that space. I think cities can be a brilliant places to live as they have to be brilliant because something like 55% of the world's population lives in them and that's only going to increase. The cities have to be made better and have to be made more ecologically resilient. And that starts right on the street level, the local level.’
Jamie discussed with Samantha her research carried out in different countries and their relationships with nature.
‘Yeah, one of the things I noticed when I began researching this area is as you talk about nature and wellbeing, people think “oh, that's very white, that's very privileged, that's actually kind of, North American or European, because of the history of romanticism” but when you look, at wider cultures, and historically, there's so many ways of framing that relationship. One of the writers I talked about, Bessie head, was involved in community gardening in Botswana as a process of decolonization and, recovering from the trauma of growing up under apartheid in South Africa. Robin wall Kimmerer is a North American, indigenous botanist and writer, and talks about these reciprocal relations, how they're bound up in indigenous botany and how that's part of her native culture. It's a much bigger story, I guess, than just romanticism and nature worship and I wanted to tell that story in the book.
‘One last thing - The UK where do we sit in all of this?’ Jamie asked. ‘We’ve been talking about traditions that go back a long time. Finland sounds like they've got it right for going out. Have we got it right? Do we have a relationship with nature that's very special?’
‘There's so much to say on that! We certainly produce a lot of books about nature and culture about nature. But a lot of our wildlife is on a steep decline. We have terrible issues with river pollution, with sewage and rivers, and a lot of problems with land access, as well. So, I think there’s a passion there. There is a desire to be out in nature there, and there's a really, really strong awareness that being able to go to nature for mental health reasons, or just to explore and to enjoy, is political. And I really hope that that energy is encouraged and that people start connecting and continue connecting to get some of the things that they have in Finland, for this country.’