The healing power of nature. Dean Yates

Fraser Creek hut, deep in the Tarkine rainforest. Dean Yates

In mid-2016 when PTSD had taken over my life, when I’d toss and turn in bed unable to sleep, I’d think about a recent trip I’d made to Fraser Creek Hut in Tasmania’s Tarkine rainforest. In my troubled mind, I’d re-walk the tracks around the old miners’ cabin I’d stayed in. I’d touch a King Billy Pine tree. I’d stare at the mist rising off the forest canopy. I’d listen to Fraser Creek as it bubbled past the hut. I could find a moment of peace for a mind that was otherwise at war with itself.

A couple of months before I went to Fraser Creek, I visited the tiny village of Corinna in the Tarkine. Surrounded by the Pieman, Savage and Whyte rivers, something changed in me.

“For the first time in many years, I don’t feel like I’m in a hurry,” I later wrote in my journal. “It’s like I’m in another world. It’s so peaceful.”

I’m not sure if it was the rich Aboriginal history of the Tarkine or the sheer wildness of the country, or a combination of both, but the word spiritual came to my mind there in Corinna. I’d found a place where I could still my mind. I’d found a place where I could begin to heal.

Drifting along the Whyte River, 2016. Dean Yates

I’ve visited the Tarkine seven times in the past 14 months.

Going to this 450,000-hectare wonderland in Tasmania’s northwest has been vital to my efforts to manage my PTSD. It might not be as important as the five weeks I spent in a psychiatric ward for PTSD sufferers in Melbourne last year, or the wonderful help I’ve gotten from experienced therapists or the support from family and friends. But my regular trips have been restorative. They have nourished my mind and body. In the Tarkine, I live in the moment. I sometimes struggle to recall what my clinicians say unless I write it down later. I never forget what I’ve seen, heard, touched or smelt in the Tarkine. It’s like meditating. My body breathes more slowly, my mind calms.

On my most recent trip, I leaned against a Myrtle Beech tree estimated to be a 1,000-years old. Earlier that day I took a (very quick) skinny dip in the chilly waters of the Frankland River. There is no phone signal in the Tarkine, no WiFi, no TV. You listen to the rain falling instead. Or you listen to the silence.

Granted, not everyone is lucky enough to live just a three-hour drive from a rainforest ranked by CNN has the number 1 greatest wilderness area left in the world.

But in an age where the pressure of our work often seems unrelenting and stress a constant companion, try to make time to get out into nature, whether it’s walking in a park, strolling along a riverbank or hiking along a mountain trail.

Nature offers much to anyone who is stressed, depressed, anxious, grieving or just feeling low. Go by yourself or with friends or family. See what it can do for you. 

This article in Time Magazine collates a series of studies that confirm nature’s therapeutic values. This 2016 study found that people living in neighbourhoods with more birds, shrubs and trees were less likely to suffer from depression, anxiety and stress.

In Hong Kong, I loved walking the Dragon's Back, a ridge along Hong Kong Island. In Singapore, it was the Botanical Gardens and MacRitchie Reservoir. Coffee at a café besides Hoan Kiem Lake in Hanoi was always relaxing. So was having a meal at a rooftop café in Jerusalem’s Old City. Jakarta was a bit of a challenge, but it was easy to get away to the nearby tea plantations around Cisarua or the beaches of Sambolo in West Java for a weekend. Baghdad was even more challenging. But in 2008, when violence had dropped considerably, I enjoyed spending a bit of time in a park along the Tigris River near the bureau. It was nice to see Iraqi kids having fun.

Dean Yates was a journalist, bureau chief and editor for Reuters for more than 26 years. He has reported extensively on war, conflict and natural disasters in Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Dean was diagnosed with PTSD in March 2016. He has been admitted three times to the Ward 17 psychiatric unit in Melbourne. He also served as head of journalist mental health and wellbeing strategy at Reuters.

This blog first circulated internally on July 18, 2017.

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