THE PSYCHOLOGICAL BENEFITS OF WILDERNESS Garrett Duncan

The healing effect of wilderness is one of the most intensively researched areas of ecopsychology. Search any psychological database under the headings of "nature," "emotions," "psychology," "wilderness," and you will find hundreds of entries, all of them experiments with distressed people in many categories. The results are invariably what our common experience would seem to tell us: getting away to a quiet, non-urban, sanely paced place is deeply restorative. The same basic truth can be found in commonplace stress management work. Ask people to visualize a relaxing condition, and nobody comes up with a freeway, an airport, a downtown street. They imagine forests, sea coasts, mountain retreats, fields of flowers. The sounds that relax are ocean surf, birdsong, forest murmurs. It might almost be a bad sign that we think we need research to prove such obvious truths. In any case one is left to wonder what the world will be like one day when access to authentic wild places vanishes. How sad if we should ever be left with nothing more than videocassettes and computer simulations to provide our need for the more than human world! The issues these considerations raise include one significant political possibility. Currently, the Wilderness Act, the cornerstone environmental law of the United States, was passed to preserve several values that we find in wilderness: the cultural, historical, the economic, the aesthetic. Significantly, the act does not include the psychological benefits we gain from the non-human environment. If it did, might that not give both psychologists and environmentalists a powerful new tool to use in defending the sanctity of nature and the sanity of people? Garrett Duncan is a M.S. Candidate in the NRPI Department at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California. His article surveys many of the ways wilderness and wilderness experiences can exhibit therapeutic effects.

One of the relationships that ecopsychology has the ability to examine is between a person's health and their surroundings. For centuries people have attempted to articulate the health benefits of living in, or visiting environments where the work of human beings is not readily noticeable. In this country we have been privileged to study the words of people like Emerson, Thoreau, and Muir who were all concerned with our "surroundings." Later, people like Aldo Leopold, Bob Marshall, Sigurd Olson, and Howard Zahnizer, to name a few, contributed classical writing about the out-of-doors. This conceptual and philosophical foundation helped inspire the National Wilderness Preservation System (NWPS), created by the Wilderness Act of 1964. This Act is our most important piece of federal legislation protecting wilderness areas at the national level. Although we will use the word "wilderness" to refer to congressionally designated lands, many of the benefits that will be discussed in this paper can be derived from de facto wilderness, or wildlands.

When the NWPS was created, the research emphasis was on allocation of lands for inclusion, user trends, and management practices. In the late 1960s, users' attitudes were studied and researchers began to explore visitor benefits by examining the values visitors attached to their experiences. Psychological benefits, measured by an improvement in the visitor's condition, began to be examined. While work continues on measuring and understanding the psychological benefits of visiting wilderness, this remains one of the least developed and understood bodies of knowledge about wilderness.

In 1987, Driver and colleagues developed one of the most thorough indexes of wilderness benefits. They created a "Taxonomy of Wilderness Benefits" that was divided into two broad categories, personal and social benefits. Included were some of the benefit categories that are of interest to those examining ecopsychology: developmental, therapeutic/healing, physical health, spiritual, and self-sufficiency. These benefits are often realized by an individual visiting a wilderness area.

Developmental benefits can be assessed through such concepts as self-actualization, skill development, and self-concept. In 1981, Burton (cited in Kaplan and Kaplan, 1989) estimated that there were more than 300 developmental programs for juvenile delinquents, psychiatric patients, business leaders, military personnel, and educators. Burton stated, "it appears that Outward Bound-type programs do have positive effects...most substantial in the area of self-perception (self-concept, personality, locus of control and self-assertion)." Burton looked in depth at 19 Outward Bound-type program evaluations that he felt were valid. "The gains were for the most part in an improved self-concept." Some of the measured benefits were: more realistic self-reports of weakness and strengths, a sense of greater self-sufficiency with respect to their use of time and their talents, an increased sense of concern for others, and an improvement in self-image.

In 1984, Young and Crandall (cited in Driver and others, 1987) measured self-actualization in wilderness areas compared to other more developed environments. They found (in wilderness areas) that "In comparing the more active users in the panel with the less active, self-actualization increased for both groups but significantly more for the active users." They concluded that the results "suggest that wilderness use may cause increases in self-actualization either directly or through moderating variables."

When exposed to unfamiliar and challenging tasks, one often develops new skills. If we agree that through skill development, self-confidence is built and that this is one of the best defenses against unhealthy peer-pressure, then it could be argued that building skills is indeed a healthy activity. Wilderness areas can challenge visitors to acquire new skills even when they are unaware that the process is occurring. Planning, group participation, physical exertion, humility, fear, and thinking on your feet all help develop skills that we can use everyday.

Wilderness areas facilitate therapeutic healing because they are void of so many of the factors that require an outward focus. Think about driving an automobile or grocery shopping. In many ways, these amount to sensory overload. Although we acclimate to these tasks, we are nonetheless overloaded, for the most part, to the point of having only outwardly-directed thoughts. In wilderness, the lack of these types of outward pressures and the forced increase in self-dependency and isolation provide the setting for inward self-reflection.

It is generally agreed that a long day-hike, an overnight, or an extended trip can have physically challenging aspects. Most of the wilderness trips that we have been on, and have heard of, involved physically-challenging exercise. While there are settings outside of wilderness that can provide an improvement in physical health such as the tennis court or the gymnasium, most of the visitors to wilderness are required to exert themselves to achieve the experiences that occur at the destination. Many destination activities can have strenuous-exercise components such as day-hiking, canoeing, and swimming. When it is time to leave the destination there is the exercise involved with exiting the wilderness area. These activities add up to a physically-demanding experience that can have health benefits resulting from the aerobic and cardiovascular exercise, as well as the mental health improvements that come from satisfying a challenging task.

Henry David Thoreau and John Muir discussed the spiritual benefits that can accrue from spending time in the deep woods or in the mountains. Thoreau and others of his time felt that by placing one's self in an environment devoid of unnecessary distractions, one could reach a higher plane of thought and being. Upon reaching this place people begin to better understand and truly enjoy their surroundings. Listening to the sound of the leaves rustling in the wind or observing the subtleties of snow falling were more rewarding to Thoreau than taking comfort in coffee or spirits. Muir felt that the Sierra Nevada was a very spiritual place. He, like Thoreau, eloquently articulated the pleasures that he took in his "range of light."

Furthering the examination of the spiritual benefits that can be derived from wilderness was a study by Rossman and Ulehla (1977). They sampled University of Colorado students who remarked that by visiting a wilderness, there was the "chance for spiritually uplifting experiences" and "psychological reward values." Visiting a wilderness area can be humbling. Because the evidence of human activity in wilderness is minimal, the visitor can better observe the natural processes that have shaped an area. When one begins to comprehend the time-scale within which the processes that we now witness occur, one realizes humility. Is this not a spiritual experience?

Self-sufficiency is potentially a challenge in any wilderness area, even for the day-hiker. While back country patrols do occur in many areas, one must still be self-sufficient in the event of an injury or other incident such as becoming lost. The ability to traverse trails or cross open country and arrive at a set destination builds confidence. The ability to catch a fish and cook it with the gear that you brought with you on your back is a confidence builder as well. So too the ability to deal with unforeseen circumstances and leave-no-trace. Self-sufficiency is the product that is realized through the process of preparation, planning, and then exposing yourself to the unknown.

People interested in ecopsychology should consider and understand the dynamic relationships which occur when visitors participate in a wilderness experience. There are measurable benefits that can occur from this experience, such as an improvement in personal development, therapeutic/healing, physical health, spiritual well-being, and self-sufficiency. Wilderness can facilitate meaningful changes in one's psychological well-being, benefiting the user through an improvement in their psychological condition.

References: Burton, L.M. 1981. A critical analysis and review of the research on Outward Bound and related programs. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ. Driver, B., R. Nash, and G. Haas. 1987. "Wilderness benefits: a state of knowledge review." Proceedings: national wilderness research conference: issues, state-of-knowledge, future directions. R. C. Lucas compiler. Gen.Tech.Rep. INT-220. Ogden, UT: U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Forest Service, Intermountain Research Station. pp. 294-319. Kaplan R. and S. Kaplan. 1989. The experience of nature: a psychological perspective. Cambridge University Press. 340 p. Rossman, B. and Z. J. Ulehla. 1977." Psychological reward values associated with wilderness use: a bifunctional-reinforcement approach." Environment and Behavior 9(1):41-65. Young, R. and R. Crandall. 1984." Wilderness use and self-actualization." Journal of Leisure Research 16(2):149-160.

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