HOW NATURE HEALS

Getting outdoors is as close to a cure-all as you'll find. It's fast and free, with few (if any) side effects.

- BY Charlotte Hilton Andersen

Early 2023 was a tough time for Taylor MacMahon. The 21-year-old college student says she was "struggling with some intense anxiety and depression, which led to physical health issues as well." So MacMahon decided to seek help from a doctor. The diagnosis she received-chronic anxiety-wasn't much of a surprise. But the treatment her doctor prescribed was.

"She literally told me to 'go touch grass," MacMahon recalls, quoting a popular internet meme meant to poke gentle fun at people so caught up in their online world that they forget the real world exists. MacMahon laughed, but her doctor was being serious. "She told me the next time I was obsessing over a worry, to stop what I was doing, go outside, take my shoes off and put my feet in the grass. She said it would be therapeutic."

MacMahon was skeptical at first, but she decided to follow her doctor's advice and was surprised to discover how well-and quickly-it worked. Simply being outdoors short-circuited her anxiety.

"I immediately felt more calm and relaxed," MacMahon says.

So when one of her professors suggested she enroll in a summer course called Nature Immersion and Human Well-Being, she jumped at the opportunity. For one week at Colorado State University's mountain campus, she experienced all kinds of healing through activities in nature, from hiking to swimming to climbing trees to sitting around the campfire.

"I learned not just that nature works as a cure for mental and physical problems, but how and why it works," she says. "That week was life changing. It felt magical."