Here is where I will confess three things that will make me lose 63% of my reader base (and friends—most of them, too):

1. I don’t like musicals
2. I don’t like dogs
3. I don’t like nature

So you will never catch me walking a puppy in the park while humming Popular (from the Wicked soundtrack—a reference I obviously had to look up). 

I am a fan, as no one ever admits in writing, of The Great Indoors.

I generally dislike the whole “outdoorsy” thing, and out of all the non-inside things to do, I very much dislike hiking.

But The Husband loves both the great outdoors AND hiking (ugh), and so because I am contractually bound via marriage a generous wife, from time to time I will hike to make The Husband happy. Compromise: the great divorce-delayer!

Just a quick diatribe on this walking-in-nature-with-a-stick business:

Me, in Palm Springs, before I dove off the rock behind me. Anything to avoid the hike back down.

Hiking is the worst because you have to hike just to get to the hike. All the other outdoorsy people (who seem so superior wearing their REI costumes, while I’m still trying to figure out what “layering” is) have parked their Subarus in the parking lot that fits 3 cars and then allllll along the road, so we have to park like a mile away from the trailhead. “THAT WAS THE HIKE” I want to yell when we get to the starting point, but again, I am a loving wife—so I know how to take one for the team, and mostly I am too out of breath to yell anything.

Before the second hike begins (after the first exhausting hike from the car), we pee in the most repulsive outhouse ever and then can’t wash our hands because outdoorsy people don’t need to do that. The next pandemic is going to come from the petri dish known as National Park Pit Toilets; you heard it here first.

So we start hiking and we’re always off to a rocky start because IT IS ALWAYS SO GODDAMNED ROCKY. I am very klutzy. I worry about rolling my ankles stepping up onto the curb in the Ralph’s parking lot, so a “moderate elevation” hike is a death wish for me. I wear hiking boots and I still worry about rolling my ankle(s), every step of every hike. I know I’m supposed to enjoy the well-being benefits of nature—”being present” and other kinds of green-tinged bullshit, but all I can think about is what layer of my clothing The Husband will use to compress my eventual compound fracture. Oh right: I fail at layering so he’s just going to have to let me bleed out. Maybe it’ll be best for us both if I go quickly.

Speaking of death on the trails, one of the only silver linings from hiking is the hope that one day I will find a body. The Husband and I watch all the murder shows and we all know the woods are where victims are buried, often in alluringly shallow graves. Psychokillers love to dump bodies &/or body parts in nature: forests, ravines, you name it—so this true crime hound is on high alert for a black garbage bag with a torso poking out of it. I don’t even need to find a full body; I’m not greedy. I would settle for a skull, maybe just a mandible. As the hike gets going I’m pretty confident I’m going to crack open a cold case—like how people who rarely play the lottery are convinced they’re going to win that one time they play. But as the hike progresses my enthusiasm starts to wane. I lower my expectations accordingly: “at this point I’d settle for a thumb,” I sullenly admit to The Husband, who must also hope I stumble upon a body part just to help salvage the wreckage of the hike. There is never a torso, though. There is never a thumb. I’ve only ever found trash left by Subaru drivers who pretend to care about the planet. With a body count of zero, a hike is a horrible endeavor.

I tell you all this not just so you’ll never invite me on a walk in the woods. I confess my biophobia because it a) provides a forum to talk about how beneficial the outdoors really are (*sigh*), and b) might make you feel less alone if you, too, don’t want to be outside where the bugs are.

I acknowledge that I am missing out on the benefits that nature provides. I have written on this topic before… and research remains sparklingly clear that exposure to nature leads to better mental health, less bonkers behavior in kids, oodles of physical health benefits (like lower blood pressure, reductions in diabetes incidence and mortality), and the list goes annoyingly on and on.

Get a load of this little research nugget: “In a study of 38 students in Michigan (USA), Berman et al. measured cognitive performance with a backwards digit span task, in which participants listen to a sequence of numbers and repeat them in reverse order. The results showed that cognitive performance was greater after students had walked through a tree lined arboretum when compared with a busy city street.”

Guys.

Mother Nature needs a way better PR firm, because I can’t be the only one walking around pissed that I can’t recite more numbers backwards.

Silliness aside, the same researchers executed a study version where participants sat in a quiet room, looking at pictures of nature (rather than lacing up and having to swat mosquitos away outside amidst the trees). Guess what? The participants “only viewing pictures of nature produced cognitive improvements.” (Fun fact: the study used nature pictures from Nova Scotia. This is a picture I took in Nova Scotia last year, and I love that we are both going to get cognitively sharper just by looking at it. If you look closely you’ll see it’s the Titanic cemetery. So many fun facts today.)

Moral of the story? Get outside if you can hack it. If not, look at photos of outside. And bring hand sanitizer if you’re brave enough to go into the park.