My favourite place to walk is the forest, along a
river. Walking in a forest
unclutters my mind and soul. The forest is simple in its natural complexity. Its
beauty combs out the tangles of human complexity like a dam dissolving and
grounds me back to the simplicity of natural life. The forest helps me re-align
and focus—without trying. That’s the magic of it. It’s in the not trying.
I carry a notebook with me to jot down ideas that come to me.
They always do. I find writing by hand additionally
helps in the creative process.
My favourite park is the little woodland of the Little Rouge
River, located off a small road hidden from the sprawling desert of suburbia.
It was spring when I first entered this forest. I inhaled its
complex smell, awakening with spring flowers. At my entrance, chipmunks
scattered and scolded me for interrupting their calm. I chuckled and thought
that I’d seen more within the space of one minute here than I had in a year in
the suburb I currently live in. A duff-strewn path led me beneath the pungent
smell of pine and cedar. I made my way toward the riverbank where beech and
maple leaned over the water and found a place to write.
 |
| Little Rouge River in the fall |
When I returned in the fall, the forest was a mix of
colour. Most of the deciduous trees had dropped
their leaves in a revealing show of textured grays, gray-browns and blacks. The
bare trunks and fractal branches contrasted with the deep greens of the
conifers. Rogue trees—like the oak and beech—still claimed their leaves, adding
deep russet tones to the varied grays and deep greens of the canopy. The forest
was now more open, emerging with ancient magnificence from a soft brown carpet
on the ground. The air was fresh with the scent of loam, decaying leaves and
saprophyte activity.
I strayed off the path toward the
riverbank again. I was looking for the old sugar maple I’d spent time with the
previous spring. After several
bends in the river, I saw it, leaning precipitously over the river like an old
man sharing an intimate story. It had already lost its leaves; they covered the
ground in a soft carpet. The old tree literally hugged the bank in a braided
network of snaking roots; like a carved figurehead hugs the prow of a great
tall ship. Eager to see
my old friend up close, I scrambled down the overhanging bank using the old
maple’s root “stairway,” then ungracefully dropped onto the cobbles below. Every
part of my gnarly old maple tree was splendid. Its shaggy trunk stretched up
with typical silhouette of branching-out arms that every Canadian kid drew when
they were six. The horizontal roots stretched out in a tangle and stitched the
bank together, keeping it intact.
The Little
Rouge River calls me to sit and listen to its flowing song—a joyful playful
symphony of breaths, chortles and open-throated froth. I sit. And still my
breath. I find my whole body relax from the tension of the suburban drive. I am
home, sighing with a rhythm I’d forgotten. Re-aligning. Bones with rock. Rock
with twig. Twig with root. The animals no longer scold me. They have
resumed their natural rhythm, as I merge into scenery. And write…
****
What
I do is not new to creative thinkers all over the world and throughout time. I
share great company with people who used walking (usually in Nature) as a venue
toward creative thinking (and writing). All great walkers.
Aristotle
conducted his lectures while walking the grounds of his school in Athens. His
followers, who chased him as he walked, were known as the peripatelics
(e.g., Greek for meandering). Darwin refined his ideas on natural selection and
other topics during his frequent walks along his “thinking path”, a gravel road
called Sandwalk Wood near his home in southeast England. Dickens walked for
miles each day: “If I could not walk far and fast, I think I should just
explode and perish.” Beethoven often took solitary walks. He strolled the
Viennese woods for hours, finding inspiration for his works and jotting them
down on a notepad that he carried with him. Nietzsche loved his walks in the
mountains: “it is only ideas gained from walking that have any worth.” For
Wordsworth, the act of walking was one in the same with the act of writing
poetry. Both involved rhythm and meter. Henry David Thoreau was known for his
great walkabouts. Walking through nature for Thoreau was a pilgrimage without a
destination—more discovery and rapture.
 |
| Nina Munteanu (photo M. Cox) |
Stanford researchers demonstrated that walking boosts
creative inspiration. They showed that the act of walking significantly
increased creativity for 81% of the participants and that the creative ideas
generated while walking were not irrelevant or far-fetched, but innovative and
practical.
“The answer begins with changes to our chemistry,” writes
journalist Ferris Jabr in The New Yorker
(2014). “When we go for a walk, the heart pumps faster, circulating more blood
and oxgen not just to the muscles but to all the organs—including the brain.
Many experiments have shown that after or during exercise, even very mild
exertion, people perform better on tests of memory and attention. Walking on a
regular basis also promotes new connections between brain cells, staves off the
usual withering of brain tissue that comes with age, increases the volume of
the hippocampus (a brain region crucial to memory) and elevates levels of
molecules that both stimulate the growth of new neurons and transmit messages
between them.”
While
walking is good for our creativity and general well-being, walking in a park or
wilderness is even better. Researchers in Europe
and Japan found that anxiety and depression was significantly reduced in the
presence of green space and that it boosted attentiveness, focus and academic
performance. Vegetation creates “a halo of improved health.” Dr. Frances Kuo at
the University of Illinois demonstrated that just seeing a tree helps cognition
and promotes a sense of well-being. While a human-made environment of
objects—cars and buildings—requires high-frequency processing in the brain; a
landscaped environment allows the observer to relax his or her attention,
resulting in reduced muscle tension, lower heart rate, and a generally less
stressful physiology.
References:
Cameron, Julia. 1992. “The
Artist’s Way”. Penguin Putnam Inc., New York, NY. 222pp.
Deasey, Louise. 2015. “Negative Ions Are Great for Your Health”.
Body and Soul.
Munteanu, Nina. 2013. The Journal
Writer: Finding Your Voice. Pixl Press, Vancouver, BC. 170pp.
Oppezzo, Marily and Daniel L.
Schwartz. 2014. “Give Your Ideas Some Legs: The Positive Effect of Walking on
Creative Thinking”, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and
Cognition, Vol. 40, No. 4: 1142-1152.
Wells, Nancy M. 2000. “At Home with Nature: Effects of
‘Greenness’ on Children’s Cognitive Functioning”. Environment and Behavior 32
(6): 775–795.
Nina is a Canadian scientist and novelist. She worked for 25 years as an environmental consultant in the field of aquatic ecology and limnology, publishing papers and technical reports on water quality and impacts to aquatic systems. Nina has written over a dozen eco-fiction, science fiction and fantasy novels. An award-winning short story writer, and essayist, Nina currently lives in Toronto where she teaches writing at the University of Toronto and George Brown College. Her non-fiction book “Water Is...”—a scientific study and personal journey as limnologist, mother, teacher and environ- mentalist—was picked by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times as 2016 ‘The Year in Reading’. Nina’s most recent novel “A Diary in the Age of Water”— about four generations of women and their relationship to water in a rapidly changing world—will be released in 2020 by Inanna Publications. www.NinaMunteanu.ca; www.NinaMunteanu.me
