Nature is the point

Count the hours you spent in nature last week. Not in the car, not on a city street. Among trees, by water, on open ground, under the sky. For most people the answer is close to none.

01

We live indoors now.

When the United States asked more than 9,000 people to account for every hour of their day, they had spent 87 percent of it inside buildings and another 6 percent inside vehicles. That leaves about an hour and a half for everything else, and much of that is a car park or a doorway.

And outside is not the same as nature. A walk through city streets is outside, but it is traffic, concrete and noise. Nature is the forest, the shore, the hills and the open water, and it is easy to go weeks without reaching it.

Work, errands and getting around used to keep people outdoors for much of the day. Once movement became optional, being in nature became optional too.

02

Nature with nothing to do.

Most of us know we should get out into nature more. So try it. Drive to the edge of the woods with no plan and nowhere to be. After a few minutes you start to wonder what you are doing there. You walk a short loop, check your phone and head back to the car. Children can play in a field for hours. Adults need a reason.

That is the real problem. The world is not far away. We just no longer have a reason to be in it.

03

Endurance is the reason.

A long run, ride, swim or paddle is the best excuse there is. It takes time, so you spend hours out there, not minutes. It takes space, so you leave the streets behind for the forest trail, the lake shore and the hills. And it needs no other justification. You are not killing time out there. You are training, and the place is where the training happens.

It takes you out in every season, too. You run the same path in frost, in the first warm evening of spring and in rain you would never have walked into on purpose, and you see it change through the year because you have a reason to be on it again.

That time adds up. In England, among 19,806 adults, those who spent at least 120 minutes a week in nature were more likely to report good health and high wellbeing than those who spent none, whether the time came in one outing or several. One long weekend session puts you past that line on its own.

04

The ground asks more of you.

Off the pavement, no two steps are the same. The path tilts, a root lifts your toe, a stone turns under your heel, the hill steepens and the wind pushes you sideways. Your feet, ankles, hips and trunk have to answer every one of them.

That has a cost you can measure. When researchers had people walk on ground that varied by only 2.5 centimetres, it took 28 percent more energy than walking on a smooth floor. Their steps grew shorter and far less regular, because the body was constantly adjusting. A floor gives you the same step a thousand times. The world never does, and that is exactly why being able to cross it takes range and strength as well as an engine.

Those shorter, uneven steps also spread the load. On a smooth road the same joints take the same hit in the same way, thousands of times in a row. Rough ground changes the angle, the length and the landing of every step, so no single tissue takes all of it. Shorter steps help too. When runners on a treadmill shortened their stride by taking about 10 percent more steps, their knees took about a third less of the impact. And researchers who study how runners move have found that healthy runners vary their movement more from stride to stride than runners with overuse injuries, though it is not yet clear which comes first. Rough ground has its own risk: a turned ankle or a fall is more likely on a rocky trail than on a road. But the slow, repeated wear of the same step on the same surface is what it breaks up.

05

The weather makes you feel alive.

Sun on your face after a long winter. Rain running down your neck. A headwind you have to lean into, the cold that bites at the start and is forgotten ten minutes later. Indoors, the air is always the same. Outside, you feel the day.

People feel more alive out there, and it is not only because they are moving. In a series of studies with 537 students, a 15-minute walk along a tree-lined river path left people feeling more energetic than the same walk through indoor corridors. When the students kept diaries, time outdoors went with more energy, even after the researchers accounted for exercise and company. The natural surroundings made the difference, and about 20 minutes a day was enough to notice it.

06

You are part of it.

Out there for a few hours, your attention changes. You notice the light on the water, the birds going quiet before rain, the smell of the forest after it. You stop being someone looking at nature through a window and become one more animal moving through it, which is what you always were.

That feeling matters too. Across 30 samples with more than 8,500 people, those who felt more connected to nature were a little happier, with more energy and more satisfaction with life. The link is small, and it shows people who feel connected, not proof that going out makes them so. But the strongest link of all was with feeling alive.

07

The world gets bigger.

The fitter you become, the further the reason takes you. The lake you could walk only part of, you ride around. The next village along the coast becomes a morning's run. The island off the beach becomes a swim. The world does not come any closer. You become able to reach more of it.

08

Take the practice into nature too.

Kettlebells and yoga go out there just as easily. A kettlebell weighs the same on the grass as it does in the garage, and a park, a beach or a quiet field has all the room you need. Pavel Tsatsouline, who brought kettlebells to the West, tells his readers in Enter the Kettlebell to take them outdoors.

Yoga is often kept indoors, on the idea that a quiet room has nothing to distract you. We see it the other way round. Outside, the breeze moves across your skin, the ground is not quite level and there is always something to hear. Holding your attention on your breath and your body through all of it is harder, and that is the point. It does not hand you focus. It trains it.

None of this makes indoor training the lesser version. Yoga on the living-room floor, kettlebells in the garage, lengths in a pool and a bike on a trainer in January all build the body, and a muscle gets stronger in a basement exactly as it does in a park. When the dark, the ice or a busy week closes the door, train inside. When it is open, take the practice out with you. Endurance is what takes you out into the world, and mobility and strength are what keep you able to go: the high step onto a rock, the uneven ground on the way down, the pack on your back.

What this means for you

Pick a place you can see but have never reached. A hill above your town, the far side of a lake, the next village along the river. This week, make one long walk, run, ride or swim a trip towards it, whatever the weather, and go as far as you can. Then take your yoga or kettlebells out into nature once, and notice what changes.

To truly experience the beauty the world has to offer, become capable of traversing it and reaching the places it holds.

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