Why I’m spending this winter outdoors to stay happy

In recent years I’ve found winter difficult on my mental health. I decided to spend a weekend in nature to see if it helped

The rain stops as I step out of the taxi at the edge of the wood. Mud squelches beneath my boots as I lug my bag of supplies for the weekend up the track. Sunset was an hour ago, so I’m walking in hazy darkness, trying not to slip. The silhouette of a shack stands out against the twilight forest, its triangular pitched roof the only man made shape in sight. 
It’s early January and North Norfolk is cold, dark and wet. Not exactly most people’s idea of a restorative weekend break. Yet as I chop firewood under the stars, listening to the wind gusting through the pine trees, I can feel myself starting to relax for the first time in months. 
Earlier this year, I volunteered to spend a weekend in a glorified shed in the woods as part of a study by hiking app AllTrails and off-grid camping company Unyoked. They’re aiming to discover the impact – if any – of giving burnt out, stress-ridden workers some time in nature. 
Before setting off, I completed a survey measuring my mental wellbeing, level of burnout and connectedness to nature. My responses made for bleak reading. 
In recent years I’ve found winter difficult. At work I am unable to think straight, catastrophising over minor setbacks, trapped in existential dread. I can’t sleep and I’m grouchy. Some days I barely function thanks to stress headaches. As Christmas approaches, I’m despondent, hopeless and lonely, shutting out friends, too exhausted to socialise. 
For a long time I told myself cold weather, lack of sunlight and too much drinking over the festive period did this to everyone. “It’s just winter blues,” I told myself. “Once spring comes around, I’ll be fine.” But descending into that darkness is terrifying, and I fear not being able to climb out again.
In a moment of desperation, I signed up for the study – what’s the worst that could happen? 
The hut, one of several thrown up across the country by Unyoked, offered a bed, kitchenette, shower (which I soon discovered was out of hot water), composting toilet, and a stove to make a fire. There was no television, no Wi-Fi, barely any phone reception. 
What the cabin did have was panoramic windows. The night I first arrived it was so dark outside that I forgot to close the blinds, and woke up to sunlight glinting off frost-speckled trees. 
I sat up in bed, my toes resting on the residual heat of last night’s hot water bottle, and gazed into the wintry woods. I reached for my phone before recalling the lack of reception. 
I once read a study which found that people who see 10 bird species a day are happier than those who see none, so I looked for 10 birds. I sat for an hour, counting the occasional crow flying overhead. Eventually some deer appeared out of the morning mist and I counted those too – they’re bigger than birds anyway, I decided. 
I spent much of my time in the cabin by the window, when I wasn’t out hiking; hunting down some nearby Iron Age barrows; exploring an abandoned 13th-century church in the next village; or cooking on the firepit, bundled up in my thickest winter coat. 
What I didn’t do was spend time zoning out and wondering whether I was letting down my friends and family, comparing myself to people I perceived as doing better than me, and worrying about unpleasant online commentary. 
It seems I’m not alone. After several months of review, the results of the study I took part in were released over the summer. Participants found that mental wellbeing improved 12.7 per cent on average, and feelings of burnout dropped 16 per cent. People who were feeling worse to begin with saw even bigger improvements. 
The study discovered that spending a weekend in nature was 47 per cent more effective at reducing feelings of burnout than doing a programme of mindfulness exercises. 
“Burnout is a sense of exhaustion and being overworked, but a sense of detachment and a loss of meaning in one’s work, as well as a lack of control over work,” explains Dr Suzanne Bartlett Hackenmiller, the chief medical adviser at AllTrails.
“When you consider the sense of detachment and loss of meaning that characterises burnout, it’s not hard to imagine that connecting with nature – with the awe and wonder of our planet – can help to bring about a sense of connection, purpose and realignment,” says Dr Hackenmiller. “There are numerous health benefits from spending time in nature – everything from lowering our blood pressure and pulse, improving sleep and heart rate variability, to improving the immune system. By resetting our autonomic nervous system from one of over reactivity to one of calm, time outside is beneficial to health in every way.” 
The idea that being out in nature is good for our health is nothing new. Nature therapy has become something of a buzz word. But I’ve always contended that if a walk in the woods was enough to cure my depression, why would I or anyone else be miserable ever again? 
“For a lot of people, nature is in the ‘voodoo science’ bucket,” concedes Prof Baroness Kathy Willis, a professor of biodiversity at the University of Oxford. 
In her new book, Good Nature (£20, Bloomsbury), Prof Willis is challenging that perception, bringing together decades of research to explore the hard science behind nature’s importance to our health. 
“One study which intrigued me looked at people in hospitals looking onto a view of trees,” says Prof Willis. “They found those who did recovered faster and needed less pain relief than those looking onto a brick wall. That struck me, because it seems there’s a direct impact, something affecting some mechanism in the body to improve health outcomes.” 
The more she searched, the more studies Prof Willis found. “There’s a huge body of clinical evidence,” she explains. “Not all woolly mindfulness stuff either – compelling research has been published in The Lancet, Oncology and Oncotarget – serious journals. It’s becoming clear that green spaces provoke responses in our neurological pathways – affecting our heart rate and blood pressure – or in our endocrine system, lowering adrenalin.”
Even if we accept that nature is doing us good in the broadest sense, much of what has been missing in the conversation is the answer to the most basic question: why? 
“That’s always going to be an issue when you’re dealing with this,” admits Prof Willis.  “When you’re walking in nature, what’s having an effect: is it the sound? The smell? The sight? Is it that you’re less distracted by the computer screen? 
“One line of evidence where you really start to get it is to do with smell. When you’re walking in a pine forest, for example, you smell pinene, the volatile organic compound which comes from pine trees,” Prof Willis continues. “If you look at people who walk in pine forests, you find pinene compounds in their blood, interacting with the same biochemical pathways as prescription drugs and trigger all sorts of metabolic processes which are good for us.” 
Lavender contains compounds which act in the same ways as anti-anxiety drugs – studies have shown people who smelt lavender while sleeping slept longer and deeper. Inhaling compounds from cypress trees causes an immune boost. “Studies have shown people who walked in a cypress forest for five hours per week had significantly higher levels of natural killer cells, even a week after their walk,” says Prof Willis. 
During her research, Prof Willis has looked at studies showing that spending time outdoors improves the diversity of bacteria in the gut microbiome, which may help in reducing inflammation and even preventing conditions such as dementia. 
It’s harder to pin down why my trip to a cabin in the woods would ease my winter blues. 
“Our bodies are stimulated in different ways in outdoor environments, and using our senses is important,” posits Dr Kaye Richards, a senior lecturer in psychology at Liverpool John Moores University specialising in nature therapies. “Research suggests being in outdoor environments makes us more aware of what’s going on around us. We hear more, smell better, and sense things better. It rebalances our awareness, putting us more in tune with our bodies and minds.” 
“Why we become more physiologically and psychologically calmer when we look at nature is thought to be due to stress reduction theory,” explains Prof Willis. “It states that we instinctively enjoy natural scenes, which leads to a more positive emotional state in them, which triggers responses in our bodies and minds. Some theorise we have a positive evolutionary response because they were the landscapes we evolved in.” 
Another suggestion is attention restoration theory, which posits that when we spend time at work, or watching television, or browsing the internet we’re using “directed attention” – effectively ignoring all the information going on in the background to focus on our task. 
However, directed attention requires a lot of cognitive resources to maintain, tiring out our brains until focus wanes. In contrast, natural scenes don’t require focus on any particular thing. “Your eyes wander across the whole vista,” says Prof Willis. “That gives a break to the directed attention, restoring it. Numerous studies find that looking out of a window on a natural scene for 50 seconds increases performance in tasks requiring attention.” 
Dr Richards adds: “It creates a pathway in our brain to shift attention away from the cognitive intensity of life. There’s also evidence showing nature shifts our attention from the immediate moment to the future. In everyday life, our stress, anxieties and fear distort our sense of time, whereas natural environments help us change our conceptualisation of time, which reduces stress.” 
Scientists have also been able to pinpoint specifically the best ways to experience nature for the optimum benefits. 
A 2019 study looked at how long people need to spend in nature to get benefits, measuring saliva for the enzyme alpha-amylase, which is released in times of stress. “They found the ideal amount of time to be in nature, either walking or sitting, is about 20 minutes or more,” says Prof Willis. “And actually, the best stress reduction comes from sitting down, rather than moving. Tuneful birdsong is also helpful, studies show people who listen to birds singing have less stress than those listening to anything else. 
“Other studies looking at brainwave activity and heart rate have also shown that a horizon with a few scattered trees is the most calming,” she adds. “Those early landscape painters had the right idea.” 
In spite of my initial scepticism, my weekend sitting by the wide windows of my little Unyoked cabin in the woods did provide a stop-gap from my winter depression. It shunted me outside of my worries and stress. In stepping outside physically, it was like I’d opened the doorway in my mind that let me step out on my worries and stress, too.
As winter approaches again, and cold, dark nights loom in my thoughts, I’m preparing in various ways. I’ve got vitamin D supplements ready and I know where to access professional help. But I’m more convinced than ever that part of the solution is getting outside, off my phone, and spending time in the great, green world. 
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