it, “a maladaptive pattern of self-referential thought.” We might
replay an unpleasant exchange or bad feeling over and over until we
drive ourselves batty. Rumination, as Gross and others have shown, is
linked to depression and anxiety. When people ruminate, they activate
a portion of their brains called the subgenual prefrontal cortex, a
region also linked to sadness, withdrawal and general grumpiness,
according to Bratman.
For the next experiment, they sent 38 healthy (not depressed) city
dwellers on a pretty big walk—90 minutes this time—either back to
the green Dish or along traffic-heavy El Camino Real, and scanned
their brains before and after. They also had them fill out rumination-
measuring questionnaires. On the scans, the nature brains showed a
significant, sizable reduction of blood flow to the subgenual region,
while the urban brains showed none. The questionnaires also revealed
less broody feelings in the postwalk Dishers but not in the roadway
walkers. The results were exciting for Bratman, because they point to
a possible causal mechanism for how certain landscapes might be
boosting our moods, basically, by quieting some brain circuitry
governing self-wallowing. The world is bigger than you, nature says.
Get over yourself. At the very least, nature distracts us the way a
parent might distract a whining toddler, by waving a favorite stuffed
animal. As Bratman put it, “The results suggest that nature experience
is impacting rumination in a way that is markedly different from
urban experience.”
CLEARLY, IT WAS time for me to get walking. I was, despite trying for
nearly two years, still feeling unhappy in D.C. The city sounds
jangled me. We were hemorrhaging our savings. My husband had a
fulfilling job saving nature, but we had to leave wild landscapes for
him to do it, which still rankled. What about saving us? I was grateful
to spend more time with my father, who continued his impressive
recovery from his brain trauma. Together, we took increasingly