The best books to connect with nature to create a healthier self

I first read this book when I was developing a course for undergraduates at Cornell titled Nature Rx, based on the book I had co-authored. I immediately felt like Florence Williams had written this book just for me. Her tales of traveling to various points in Asia, Europe, and the American southwest to experience firsthand the impact of nature's immersions on humans in various states of health or illness was exactly what I needed to frame the syllabus for this course.

And Williams is more than a casual observer—whether it’s hiking through a Korean forest to gain the benefits of shinrin-roku (forest bathing) or shooting rapids down the Salmon River with a group of injured female war veterans, she makes us feel every aching joint and bead of sweat, engaging the reader in her real-life experiences. While we clearly live in a time in which cynicism is rampant, this book reinspired in me a belief in the inherent goodness of people to help one another, using the power of nature to promote all forms of healing.  

I’ve been fascinated by all living organisms since my early childhood on Long Island. In our suburban yard, I would sit raptured, watching the hunting techniques of praying mantises, the burrowing ability of earthworms, or the seemingly drunk behavior of cedar waxwings after feasting on over-ripe berries. But I never fully appreciated the intricacies of animal behavior until I read this book. 

What Ed Yong masterfully achieves in this 400-page text is neither a Disney-like humanizing of other species nor an overly scientific explanation of how creatures respond to their environment. Rather, he brings us to a place where we are no longer perceiving other organisms through human eyes but through their own complex senses. 

This greatly increased my fascination with the natural world and, consequently, my need to preserve every precious species on this earth.

I’ve been studying the world of plants since first pursuing graduate degrees in the 1980’s. So, one might surmise that I know quite a lot about how plants function and respond to their environment. Reading through this book, I was fascinated to learn how much I didn’t previously know about these amazingly diverse and complex organisms. Some readers may recall an earlier tome titled The Secret Life of Plants.

In the first chapter of this book, author Schlanger dismisses that once-popular work as “a mix of real science, flimsy experiments, and unscientific projection.” She then goes on to interview various biologists, botanists, and physiologists who collectively are conducting mind-bending research on plant intelligence. While this term may make some folks squirm, the scientists she interviews employ such robust methods that all but the most cynical readers will come away understanding that there are many types of intelligence in this world, some of which are just now being detected.

I recommend that people read this book and An Immense World sequentially to fully appreciate the natural wonders around them.

The COVID pandemic brought on a struggle of isolation and reduced options, made worse in 2020 and ’21 for those of us in northern climes where winters stretch on for nearly half the year. If you’re like me and you wait impatiently for the first true signs of spring, then you may find the simple structure Angela Douglas employs in Nature on the Doorstep to be just the antidote you need.

Starting on March 22, 2020 (a day after the spring equinox, but nature follows its own calendar), Douglas filled her pandemic days by writing family members one letter each week for a full year’s cycle. She chose as the focus of her missives her own modest backyard and the life–and death–portrayed on that stage. It’s the modesty of this work that was its greatest appeal to me. 

In clear, non-esoteric language, Douglas finds beauty and wonder in Vultures and Rabbits on April 12, Natives and Aliens on June 7, and The Backyard Harvest on October 4. One could read these letters in random order, but the reassuring reliability of the yearlong cycle comes through most strongly by following the changes she observes and records each week, leading to the final entry: All change. 

Much is written today about the virtues of immersing oneself in the primeval forest, but through her insightful prose, Douglas has proven once again that there’s no place like home.

When I go out for nearly daily walks, I’m reminded that time in nature can stimulate us in many ways–from identifying the species we encounter to considering the essential interactions between organisms to simply being awed by the status of humans in the complexity of life on earth.

It is this swirl of nature engagements that Lyanda Lynn Haupt captures so beautifully in Rooted. Part poetic reflections, part call to change our daily habits, Haupt finds wonders in urban green spaces and amazement in greater forests. Along the way, she urges us to walk barefoot, clear our minds of daily worries, engage in forest bathing (but to also get muddy on occasion), and to move beyond our human-centric perceptions. 

Haupt includes enough personal anecdotes to temper her more radical suggestions, weaving insights, excitement, and, yes, humor to grab and hold the reader throughout. After reading this book, I feel that every encounter outdoors, no matter how seemingly mundane, holds the potential for an awe-filled experience.