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white_hart) wrote2019-01-07 07:08 pm
white_hart) wrote2019-01-07 07:08 pm
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Reading: The Wild Remedy
T sent me a link to Emma Mitchell's new book, The Wild Remedy, last week, saying he'd seen people talking about it on social media and thought I might be interested though he wasn't sure if it would really tell me anything I didn't already know, given that getting outside and walking is already one of the main things I do to manage my mental health. I was interested enough to pop into Blackwells to have a look at it, and then Waterstones the following day because Blackwells didn't have it, and liked the look of it enough to buy a copy and read it over the weekend.
The Wild Remedy is subtitled How Nature Mends Us - A Diary, and it's Mitchell's chronicle of her interactions with nature - dog-walking, views from kitchen and car windows, trips to the seaside with friends - and their effects on her mental health over a year. It begins in October, as the light starts to fail and Mitchell's SAD symptoms begin to manifest, and follows her through the difficult winter months and a major crash in early spring, and then a gradual recovery as spring and summer progressed. I had been a little worried that the book would turn out to be suggesting exposure to nature as a one-size-fits-all solution to mental health problems, but in fact Mitchell is very clear that nature is not a substitute for medication or talking therapies; instead, she advocates it as a way to maintain balance and address smaller fluctations in mood, backing up her argument with references to research suggesting that being outdoors in the countryside has a measurable effect on brain chemistry. Her interactions with nature are mainly of the everyday kind accessible to just about anyone; hedgerow flowers and fruit, garden birds and local woodlands, and even rarer events such as a murmuration of starlings near the East Anglian coast, or a trip to seek out orchids in a nature reserve in Derbyshire, are nothing like as far off the beaten track as those described in a lot of nature writing.
It's a very beautiful book, printed on lovely glossy paper, with the text accompanied by photographs and drawings of plants, birds, insects and more. One of the reasons I bought it in hardback was that it didn't feel like a book that would work half as well in paperback or ebook, without the coloured plates and marginal illustrations. It's beautifully written, as well; the descriptions are clear and vivid and I really felt I could visualise the scenes Mitchell was describing. If I have a complaint, it's that it did feel rather slight; the book is less than 200 pages, and more than 10% of those are full-page illustrations or chapter titles. I read it in two days and really wished that there had been twice as much of it.
The Wild Remedy is subtitled How Nature Mends Us - A Diary, and it's Mitchell's chronicle of her interactions with nature - dog-walking, views from kitchen and car windows, trips to the seaside with friends - and their effects on her mental health over a year. It begins in October, as the light starts to fail and Mitchell's SAD symptoms begin to manifest, and follows her through the difficult winter months and a major crash in early spring, and then a gradual recovery as spring and summer progressed. I had been a little worried that the book would turn out to be suggesting exposure to nature as a one-size-fits-all solution to mental health problems, but in fact Mitchell is very clear that nature is not a substitute for medication or talking therapies; instead, she advocates it as a way to maintain balance and address smaller fluctations in mood, backing up her argument with references to research suggesting that being outdoors in the countryside has a measurable effect on brain chemistry. Her interactions with nature are mainly of the everyday kind accessible to just about anyone; hedgerow flowers and fruit, garden birds and local woodlands, and even rarer events such as a murmuration of starlings near the East Anglian coast, or a trip to seek out orchids in a nature reserve in Derbyshire, are nothing like as far off the beaten track as those described in a lot of nature writing.
It's a very beautiful book, printed on lovely glossy paper, with the text accompanied by photographs and drawings of plants, birds, insects and more. One of the reasons I bought it in hardback was that it didn't feel like a book that would work half as well in paperback or ebook, without the coloured plates and marginal illustrations. It's beautifully written, as well; the descriptions are clear and vivid and I really felt I could visualise the scenes Mitchell was describing. If I have a complaint, it's that it did feel rather slight; the book is less than 200 pages, and more than 10% of those are full-page illustrations or chapter titles. I read it in two days and really wished that there had been twice as much of it.
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