I spend a lot of time staring at screens. My job requires me to spend my days staring at computer screens, and my ambitions tack on a few hours more. To relax, I typically look for a television screen. I probably do somewhat better than some of my colleagues, though; I camp, hike, fish, take walks, tend a garden, and generally seek out a connection with a more-than-human world that people I work with consider something between a quirky hobby and a bizarre obsession. Still, I think I know how Linda Buzzell would diagnose my periodic bouts of depression and anxiety. Co-editor with Craig Chalquist of the new anthology Ecotherapy: Healing with Nature in Mind, just released by Sierra Club Books (May 2009), she describes how she approaches patients with similar complaints. “I ask them to keep a time-journal in which they record the hours and minutes spent each day outside, as well as the hours spent inside in front of a screen. My clients are often shocked to realize how disassociated they have become from nature and our species’ natural ways of living, and the effect this disconnection is having on their psyche. In fact, a 2007 study from the University of Essex shows that a daily ‘dose’ of walking outside in nature can be as effective at treating mild to moderate depression as expensive antidepressant medications that can sometimes have negative side-effects.”

One of the major symptoms of depression is withdrawing from other people. So it’s interesting that as we civilized folks have withdrawn as much as we can from the rest of the community of life, depression has gotten more common. Much like someone suffering from depression distances himself from other people, most of us Americans distance ourselves from nature. A depressive thinks he’s alone; we wonder if we’re alone in the universe, as if theoretical life on other planets would somehow make more legitimate company than the life on our own. Is it any wonder, then, that taking a walk in the country has been found to help treat depression?