Hi, I'm Florence Williams. Welcome to Radio Headspace and to Monday morning.

I'm excited to be your guest host this week, especially because it's National Parks

Week, a topic that's near and dear to me. For those of you who don't know, I'm a journalist,

an author of The Nature Fix, a book that really digs into the science of how nature can

make us happier, healthier, and more creative. So in honor of National Parks Week, I'm going

to be talking about some of the truly profound things I learned while researching the book.

I'll cover how green spaces can change our perspective, the ways our environment affects

how we function, and how you can reap the benefits of nature in relatively short periods

of time. Nature is so important to our mental health because, first and foremost, we're

animals. We evolved outside for 99.9% of our existence. We're meant to feel connected

to other living things, other living creatures. We're used to soothing ourselves and sort

of calming stress by doing things like looking at the sunset, looking at the stars, sitting

around a campfire with our kinfolk. We've always been creatures who faced stress, but I

think in our deep evolutionary past, we found kind of micro solutions for that by finding

peace and beauty outside. You know, in modern times, often in cities where we live, it's

kind of an exercise in blocking out stimulation. We don't really want to hear the street noise

outside our window so that we can focus on the task at hand. But this really amazing

thing happens the minute we step outside into sort of a pleasant nature setting. It's

wonderful to open our senses. We can smell good things. We can hear beautiful things.

We can feel these gentle breezes. That changes our whole relationship. In some ways to our

mood, it changes our relationship to our day. It makes us feel this vitality that we are

so beautifully capable of. While I was reporting and researching the nature fix, I spent a week

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