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‘Becoming human again’: Exploring connections between nature and recovery from stress and post-traumatic distress

Work 50 (2015) 161–174

161

DOI 10.3233/WOR-141934

IOS Press

‘Becoming human again’: Exploring

connections between nature and recovery

from stress and post-traumatic distress

Stephanie Westlund

E-mail: steph.westlund@gmail.com; Website: http://www.ﬁeldexercises.com/

Received 8 May 2013

Accepted 6 January 2014

Abstract.

BACKGROUND: Many military veterans are seeking ways beyond conventional treatments to manage their stress injuries. An

increasing number is turning to nature, including hiking and ﬁshing, farming and gardening, and building relationships with dogs

or horses. Many continue to beneﬁt from medication and therapy, but ﬁnd that nature provides an additional measure of support,

relief and healing in their lives.

OBJECTIVE: This paper examines reciprocal interactions between humans and nature during post-conﬂict recovery, with a

focus on the experiences of four North American veterans who regard their personal recovery from stressful and traumatic

military experiences as intimately tied to their nature experiences.

METHODS: Experience-centered narrative inquiry often sheds light on details and experiences concealed or overlooked by

other research paradigms. In-depth interviews about post-military experiences with recovery were conducted with four veterans

who suffer from stress and/or post-traumatic distress; these experiences are further illuminated by supporting interviews, and

theories and praxis in ecopsychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, biophilia, and ecological intelligence.

RESULTS: Through exploring themes of sensory experience, safety, sense of purpose, and renewed relationships, this research

gives space to former soldiers’ stories of experience and to their individual realizations that their embodied interconnections with

nature provide alternative experiences to their military training and combat exposure.

CONCLUSION: The veterans’ experiences with nature and recovery are pointing towards an avenue of recovery that is little

acknowledged in the mainstream literature and praxis, but deserving of attention.

Keywords: Military veterans, ecopsychology, combat exposure, narrative inquiry

1. Introduction

The documentary Shake Hands with the Devil: The

Journey of Roméo Dallaire is a devastating account of

the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda’s

failure to prevent the Rwandan genocide [1]. In the

years since the Mission, Lieutenant General (retired)

Roméo Dallaire, who was commander of the Mission,

has spoken candidly about his post-traumatic strug-

gles. Approximately an hour into the ﬁlm, Dallaire and

his wife, Élizabeth, stand holding hands atop a lush ter-

raced hillside in Kinihira, Rwanda – a place he visited

often during the Mission – and he tells her, “C’est ici

que j’ai redevenu humain.” (English translation: “It’s

here that I became human again.”) Later, Dallaire re-

turns with the ﬁlmmakers to that hilltop and remarks,

“I want to show you where in all this I could ﬁnd my-

self. I could ﬁnd the solace and be one with my soul,

with my heart, with my being.”

Morris, meanwhile, is a young man and former child

soldier from the Liberian and Sierra Leonean civil

wars [2]. After many years, Morris escaped to the

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S. Westlund / Exploring connections between nature and recovery from stress and post-traumatic distress

Buduburam Refugee Camp in Ghana following a real-

ization that his ﬁghting had turned him into an empty

shell and that he no longer felt human. As part of his

personal healing, and to give back to the refugee com-

munity, Morris assembled approximately 200 other

former child soldiers living in the camp, and the young-

sters built a farm to grow and harvest fruits and veg-

etables. The healing and recovery process for these

young people is anything but easy. All of them carry

the stigma of their former roles as combatants, and

many others in the community continue to see them

as rapists and murderers. However, the youngsters ﬁnd

comfort both in their relationships with one another

and in cultivating new life together [2]. And they carry

hope that others will eventually see that they have the

power to change, to do good, and will one day accept

them into the larger community.

Extending examples such as those of Lt. Gen. Dal-

laire and former child soldier Morris, this paper exam-

ines reciprocal interactions between humans and na-

ture during post-military recovery, with a focus on the

experience-centered narratives of four North American

veterans who regard their recovery from traumatic mil-

itary experiences as intimately tied to their nature ex-

periences. Most of the veterans came accidentally to

the discovery that they felt better in the outdoors, af-

ter which they purposefully sought out more such ex-

periences. Through exploring themes of sensory ex-

perience, safety, sense of purpose, and renewed rela-

tionships, this paper explores recovery from conﬂict as

embedded in and supported by more-than-human na-

ture.1 In this context, the term “recovery” does not sug-

gest erasing or forgetting the stressful and/or traumatic

experiences that the veterans have lived through, but

1Rather than ‘non-human nature,’ the author prefers David

Abram’s [53] term ‘more-than-human nature,’ which accepts the rad-

ical ecological dependencies and relationships within the larger fam-

ily of things. For example, if a tree deﬁned everything other than it-

self as ‘non-tree,’ the ‘tree’ world becomes very narrow. The ‘non-

tree’ world would include the soil in which the tree grows, insects

that pollinate the tree’s ﬂowers, the birds and winds and squirrels that

disperse the tree’s seeds, the rain and snow waters that help the tree

grow, the animals whose excrement and decomposing bodies pro-

vide essential nutrients to the tree’s roots, the human who sits in the

tree’s shade on a hot summer day and breathes out carbon dioxide to

give the tree breath, the insects and worms that decompose the tree

once its life ends so that it may provide life to other trees, and so

much more. By changing ‘non-tree’ to ‘more-than-tree,’ it is possi-

ble to conceptualize the tree as being in ecological relationship with

all these other beings that, while distinct, are important in the tree’s

lifecycle, and without which, the tree would not live. Similarly, the

term more-than-human accounts for the complex ecological depen-

dencies that form the basis of human life.

rather, that these events provide the context of their

present living, and it is from there that they seek ways

to continue living their lives.

1.1. Theoretical perspectives

In the 1960s, psychoanalyst Harold Searles argued

that most studies in psychoanalysis have been limited

to understanding inter- and intra-personal processes in

personality development. The literature considered na-

ture to be irrelevant, “as though human life were lived

out in a vacuum – as though the human race were

alone in the universe, pursuing individual and collec-

tive destinies in a homogeneous matrix of nothingness,

a background devoid of form, color, and substance” [3,

p. 3]. In response to these studies, and drawing on his

work with schizophrenic patients, Searles began artic-

ulating his vision that nature is of primary importance

to the human psyche, since the human personality ma-

tures within a “total matrix” comprising “predomi-

nantly nonhuman elements – trees, clouds, stars, land-

scapes, buildings, and so on ad inﬁnitum” [3, p. 53].

Accordingly, he observed that when humans ignore the

connections between their psyches and nature, it en-

dangers their psychological well-being.

Meanwhile, social historian Theodore Roszak has

observed that at one time, “all psychologies were

‘ecopsychologies.’ Those who sought to heal the soul

took it for granted that human nature is densely em-

bedded in the world we share with animal, vegetable,

mineral, and all the unseen powers of the cosmos” [4,

p. 14]. Indeed, connections between nature experiences

and human health have been accepted by poets, sages,

and indigenous peoples, amongst others, for thousands

of years. Ancient Greek healing places and temples

were purposefully located on hilltops in the country-

side with views of the ocean, around the same time that

Taoists in China were building greenhouses and culti-

vating gardens as part of their approach for maintaining

health and wellbeing [5,6]. Chinese mystics often es-

caped the activity and clamor of towns for the country-

side, where they sought to ﬁnd and restore their souls,

while the Christian Bible tells numerous stories of holy

men who retreated to the desert to have contact with

God [7].

In the Middle Ages, gardens were deemed an impor-

tant facet of human healing, particularly in monastery

settings [8]. During the Victorian era, gardens were of-

ten found in hospitals [9]. And beginning in the nine-

teenth century, French churches advocated commu-

nity gardens as a way to improve the circumstances

S. Westlund / Exploring connections between nature and recovery from stress and post-traumatic distress

163

of the working poor [10]. Similarly, the Quakers’

Friends Hospital in Pennsylvania treated patients suf-

fering from mental illness with gardening and walks

in the surrounding lands [5]. Today, however, human

health tends to be placed solely in the urban-industrial

context of the individual, separate human being [11,

12]. Within this context, clinical psychology and psy-

chotherapy are viewed as the best methods for help-

ing struggling individuals, and relationships within the

wider world of nature are viewed as irrelevant [13].

In contrast with modern psychology and psychother-

apy, ecopsychology explores the intertwining between

healthy ecosystems and human health conditions [4,

12,14,15], and is described as an intervention aimed

at “the regaining of lost world-relations and life-

meanings” [12, p. 187]. Ecopsychology works to lo-

cate the human psyche within what Larry Robin-

son calls “the complex, interconnected web of hu-

mans, animals, plants, microbes, rocks, oceans, and

stars” [16, p. 26]. Indeed, ecopsychologists regard

urban-industrial society to be at the root of much of

the suffering – grief, despair, and anxiety – in modern

times. Western culture, they say, leads to estrangement

from nature by dismissing ecological instincts deeply

rooted in the human psyche. The most important con-

tribution of ecopsychology to this project is its rejec-

tion of the notion that humans are separate from (and

higher than) nature and the idea that “inside” is dis-

connected from “outside.” In particular, ecopsycholo-

gists’ interests lie in envisioning and achieving a ful-

ﬁlling, life-nurturing, and sustaining relationship with

what Fisher calls “the world of nature” [12, p. 33].

Meanwhile parallel theories and research are also

arising in various other traditions. For example, biolo-

gist E.O. Wilson has observed that human beings have

an afﬁnity for all life forms, which expresses a deep-

rooted genetic and biological need [17,18]. For Wil-

son, our humanity itself is deﬁned by our interactions

and kinship with other organisms. Author and psychol-

ogist Daniel Goleman [19], perhaps best known for his

work on emotional intelligence, which draws on Gard-

ner’s [20] theory of multiple intelligences, has recently

promoted what he calls “ecological intelligence”: “our

ability to adapt to our ecological niche” [19, p. 43].

Neuroscientist Kelly Lambert’s research shows that

human bodies, senses, and emotions were crucial to

human evolution and becoming, but that people all

over the world today are engaging almost exclusively

in cognitive tasks, which leave the body behind. Her

overall contention is that “the environment around us

is a critical variable in determining the severity of our

stress responses in different situations” [21, p. 243].

And cognitive science draws on the human body as

a “lived text” and establishes the interconnectedness

of all things, revealing that it is embodied interactions

in the world that offer the grounds for human percep-

tion [22]. Drawing on research in cognitive science,

linguist George Lakoff and philosopher Mark John-

son argue that “our body is intimately tied to what we

walk on, sit on, touch, taste, smell, see, breathe, and

move within. Our corporeality is part of the corporeal-

ity of the world” [22, p. 565]. Further, nature is not an

“other” or an assortment of objects we might stumble

upon. It is the basis of our being, “the locus of our ex-

istence and identity. We cannot and do not exist apart

from it” [22, p. 566].

Most importantly in the context of this paper, while

the theories and research described above come from

widely varying perspectives, they are connected by an

agreement that the human brain evolved in complex

environments, in which human survival depended on

constant interaction with other creatures and all of the

sentient earth. Moreover, all assert that while often re-

pressed in modern times and culture, deep ecological

instincts continue to be rooted in the human psyche.

Humans today, despite our technological prowess and

increasingly urban lifestyles, are genetically the same

as our hunter-gatherer ancestors [5,18,21]. Indeed, an-

thropologist Euclid Smith likens the rate of biological

evolution to “the speed of a glacier in comparison to

the rate of change in our culture” [23, p. 13].

1.2. Terminology and post-traumatic distress

Various terms have described the suffering that

comes with the invisible wounds of war, including ex-

pressions such as estar roto, a Spanish term from the

seventeenth century which literally means “to be bro-

ken” [24, p. 99], as well as “soldier’s heart,” “shell

shock,” “combat fatigue,” and “battle fatigue” [25–28].

All convey powerful images of shock and distress com-

pared with today’s more sterile term “post-traumatic

stress disorder” (PTSD), which simply becomes an

abbreviation or organizing category on a medical re-

port [29]. In an interview, research participant and vet-

eran Shepherd Bliss reﬂected, “I don’t like the term

PTSD because . . . the problem is, then you see yourself

as a disorder. Nobody is a disorder.”

Indeed, Jungian psychologist James Hillman brings

attention to the “the inhuman stress of war” and argues

that “the very idea that human agony can be named a

‘stress syndrome’ is inhuman, imagining a man as a

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S. Westlund / Exploring connections between nature and recovery from stress and post-traumatic distress

machine part, a cog in a military wheel” [29, p. 62].

Because this research explores the narratives of veter-

ans who have found ways of easing their suffering out-

side the medical model, it also requires a break with the

language of the medical model. This paper therefore

uses the term “post-traumatic distress” as suggested by

Andy Fisher [30].

1.3. Experience-centered narrative inquiry

Trauma and distress are experienced subjectively

and are embodied in various ways, including through

“physical illness, disability, addiction and pain” [31,

p. 11]. It may be easy to examine speciﬁc trauma in-

cidents underlying some veterans’ distress, but it is

more difﬁcult to understand the experience and the

meaning the distress has in their daily lives, at the un-

expected swells of anger or the unpredictable nature

of ﬂashbacks, for example, that impede each veteran

from living as he or she might wish. Narrative inquiry

makes it possible to shed light on details and experi-

ences often concealed or overlooked by other research

paradigms. Similar to phenomenology, rather than be-

ing concerned with quantitative criteria such as valid-

ity and reliability, narrative inquiry aims at understand-

ing the phenomenon of each person’s individual expe-

rience [32]. Experts note that a crucial aspect of narra-

tive inquiry is that it provides space for individuals to

tell their stories [32]. The narratives comprise the re-

search data and allow researchers to explore the topic

in complex and multiple ways, and all learning arises

out of the stories [33,34]. In the case of veterans suffer-

ing from stress and post-traumatic distress from their

military training and service, it is not enough to un-

derstand their symptoms causally. Accordingly, this re-

search draws on experiential accounts and reﬂections

of veterans’ lived experiences to illuminate the impor-

tance of human senses, and to value their embodied

contact with the world around them.

In experience-centered narrative research, one im-

portant way of exploring a particular phenomenon is

to interview several people about the same experi-

ence [35]. This research brings to the forefront the sto-

ries of veterans suffering from stress or post-traumatic

distress, who have tied their coping and recovery from

traumatic military experiences to their lived experi-

ences within nature. Andy Fisher observes that the

body – not the mind – “is always implying further steps

of living that will carry our experiencing forward” [30,

p. 165]. And in this research, all the veterans, and many

of the supporting interviewees, reﬂected that their rela-

tionship with the natural world came before conscious

reﬂection and theorizing. They each realized that they

were feeling better, and, only following that realiza-

tion, did they reﬂect on where and in what context they

felt better – that is, namely in the company of more-

than-human nature.

Participants were selected via a convenience and

network sample. The author ﬁrst became aware of

three of the veterans’ stories by reading about their ex-

periences in news articles and research books, while

the fourth veteran was introduced to her by an-

other veteran. The author conducted a total of eleven

unstructured, open-ended interviews; however, inter-

views with the four veterans form the core focus of

this paper. In the case of the Canadian Veteran Adven-

ture Foundation (CVAF), the author also interviewed

all members of the board of directors. Two additional

people were interviewed to illuminate and comple-

ment the veterans’ stories: Kurt Hoelting, who runs

a sea-kayaking outﬁtter-guide business and teaches

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction to veterans at the

Seattle VA Hospital; and Andy Fisher, a psychother-

apist and leading scholar within the ﬁeld of ecopsy-

chology. The veteran interviews centered on how each

came to realize that nature was important in his life

and his experiences of interacting with nature during

his ongoing recovery. Open-ended questions allowed

each interview to follow a trajectory mainly set by the

veteran. Each participant was provided with a copy of

his interview transcript for review and approval. Using

a process of inductive analysis, the author read and re-

read each interview transcript many times, to draw out

and code common themes, ideas and patterns within

the veterans’ narratives.

It is important to acknowledge the gender and eth-

nicity imbalances in this research, although the author

is unsure whether these imbalances affect the ﬁndings.

Because of the sampling method used, the author did

not encounter the stories of either female veterans or

ethnic minorities emphasizing their experiences of re-

covery and nature. In addition, three of the veterans

served in the Canadian Forces, which has traditionally

focused its recruitment efforts on young men, aged 17–

24, living in rural areas or smaller urban centers with

populations below 100,000 [36]. The rural population

in Canada tends to be of European descent, as does the

population of smaller cities and towns across the coun-

try. Typical recruits have thus tended to be young white

men, often with family histories of serving in the mil-

itary. Future research on this topic would ideally in-

clude additional narratives from both female veterans

and ethnic minorities.

S. Westlund / Exploring connections between nature and recovery from stress and post-traumatic distress

165

2. Analysis

Andy Fisher draws attention to the ways that “our

experience is always directing us toward some sort of

contact with the world and the world itself calls forth

our experience” [12, p. 26]. The veterans’ subjective

experiences studied in this paper vary widely, as do

the causes of their stress and/or post-traumatic distress,

and their interactions with/in the natural world. How-

ever, when their stories are read together, their expe-

riences inform one another and reveal commonalities

and connections.

All four veterans are white males, ranging in age

from early 30s to mid-60s. Three of the partici-

pants asked that their real names be used, while one

(whom the author calls Tim Normann) requested a

pseudonym. All of them joined the military as young

men, with three serving in the Canadian Forces, while

one served in the United States Army. Two saw ac-

tive duty as either a peacekeeper or combat soldier,

while the other two completed training but were never

deployed. All four men relay the ways in which their

lives were changed by their military training and/or

service and describe suffering from stress, hypervigi-

lance, and/or distress resulting from their military ex-

periences, although only some have been medically di-

agnosed as suffering from post-traumatic symptoms.

Christian McEachern, now in his 40s, served in the

Canadian military for 14 years. He was a peacekeeper

in the former Yugoslavia and Uganda and was ofﬁ-

cially diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder in

1998. A few years after leaving the Canadian Forces

with an honorable discharge in 2001, Christian be-

gan studying for a Bachelor of Applied Ecotourism

and Outdoor Leadership at Mount Royal College (now

Mount Royal University) in Calgary, Alberta. After re-

ceiving a slew of veteran support services, including

counselling and medication, Christian describes how,

as he sat on the banks of a river in 2005, he ﬁnally felt

“at peace with life for a moment.” In 2006, Christian

founded the Canadian Veteran Adventure Foundation

(CVAF), which he envisioned would provide another

tier in the care and treatment of Canadian Forces veter-

ans suffering from post-traumatic distress through out-

door programming and adventure training.2

Tim Normann served as a member of the Cana-

dian infantry in Afghanistan in 2004 and 2005. Upon

returning home, Tim felt a clear need to go climb-

2Unfortunately, the CVAF disbanded in July 2011 due to a lack of

funding.

ing in the mountains, something he had done since

he was a teenager. Now in his early 30s, young and

ﬁt, Tim is the perfect picture of an outdoorsman in

Canmore, Alberta, a mountain town where he and his

wife moved shortly after releasing voluntarily from

the Armed Forces. His post-military dream was to be-

come a full-time alpinist and to have a job on the side

to sustain that lifestyle. Tim says he does not suffer

from post-traumatic distress but describes himself as

“changed” by his military service, and suffers from

stress reactions and episodes of hypervigilance. As

he describes, “There’s something about the outdoors

that’s helped me move on from my service and look

inside. And to become – I wouldn’t say whole again,

but just not so military, if you will.”

In 1968, at age 19, while training to become a Cana-

dian peacekeeper in Vietnam, Gord Cousins was criti-

cally injured in a training accident. He lost all the ﬁn-

gers on his right hand, and the hearing in his right

ear was severely damaged. In addition, a 21-inch-long

piece of shrapnel pierced his right collar bone in two

places, opened the top of his right lung, and stopped

within a quarter of an inch of his spine. In addition to

his physical injuries, Gord suspects that he also suf-

fered from post-traumatic distress as a result of the ac-

cident. He recalls his experiences of tremendous anger,

and what he refers to as “a killer instinct coming out,”

despite never having been on the front lines of com-

bat. From his childhood through the present, Gord has

spent time in nature, and he believes this was critical as

he adjusted to his changed life circumstances. A tall,

slim man now in his early 60s with short greying hair

and a friendly smile, Gord emphasizes the embodied

aspects of spending time in nature, and the ways that

human experience itself takes on a different rhythm in

the natural world that contrasts sharply with the con-

stant demands of modern urban life.

Shepherd Bliss was born into a long-time military

family, and he never questioned that his destiny was

also to be in the military. After being commissioned

into the U.S. Army and having requested a post in Viet-

nam, however, he left the military after hearing Mar-

tin Luther King, Jr., speak at a peace rally. Soon there-

after, he went on to earn a doctorate from the Univer-

sity of Chicago School of Divinity. He also spent time

in Chile during the Allende regime in the early 1970s.

He left Chile shortly before Augusto Pinochet’s mil-

itary coup in 1973; however, Shepherd’s ﬁancée was

tortured there, and his best friend was tortured and

killed. These various traumas from his military up-

bringing, his own military service, and his experiences

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S. Westlund / Exploring connections between nature and recovery from stress and post-traumatic distress

in Chile caused him to suffer from post-traumatic dis-

tress – in particular from what Shepherd terms “sound

trauma,” in which he is exceptionally sensitive to noise.

In his 40s, he bought a farm in Sonoma County, Cal-

ifornia, and today Shepherd credits farming as one of

the most beneﬁcial activities in managing his trauma

experiences. Farming, he says, redirects energy to the

plants and animals, and there is (or can be) limited con-

tact with other human beings. He also observes that the

act of growing food for other people has been impor-

tant in his recovery. Now in his late-60s, Shepherd re-

ﬂects, “Life is good. It hasn’t always been that way.”

2.1. Sensory experience in the more-than-human

world

The veterans interviewed often highlighted how the

phenomenological experience of trauma is the oppo-

site of feeling present. Through ﬂashbacks and panic

attacks, sufferers are easily drawn into the past which

seems to be happening in the present. Connecting with

more-than-human nature, meanwhile, provided each

veteran with an alternate sensory experience, in which

he described increased mindfulness and a feeling of be-

ing more fully present in the world. While it is impor-

tant not to overstate an urban/nature dichotomy [37],

many of the veterans remarked on the signiﬁcance of

places ‘away’ from urban environments. These places

took them away from the pressures of everyday life and

modern technologies, opening space for their energies

to dissipate and to explore their wounds and ﬁnd still-

ness.

Each veteran described how his embodied experi-

ences in the natural world turned his attention back to-

ward the ways that nature is regulated by cycles and

seasons, by birth and death, by relations between ani-

mals and plants, and so on. For example, Tim Normann

shared how being in nature helps him to put life and

his experiences into perspective:

If I’m not mindful about what’s going on with my

environment and with me when I’m in the out-

doors, especially in the mountain environment, I

could be at risk. I could be walking right into a dan-

gerous situation. So for me it deﬁnitely increases

my sense of awareness. It brings down a lot of the

barriers to being fully present. You leave the watch

at home. You leave technology behind and you get

a chance to slow down . . . you’re on a different

clock when you’re outside.

After moving to Calgary in the 1970s, Gord Cousins

spent a lot of time alone in the mountains, and he ob-

served that spending time in nature leads him to feel

more “fulﬁlled, in control, you’re responsive to the

things around you . . . perhaps a better way of saying it,

you’re more aware of the things around you rather than

having to respond to every circumstance.” As Gord

spoke, he emphasized the physical/embodied aspects

of spending time in nature, and that rather than go-

ing by the rhythm of urban lifestyle or the demands of

other people, nature presents its own rhythm. Gord ex-

plained, “Day turns to night, you stop. Light comes in

the morning, you get up. There’s a rhythm that’s much

different than somebody yelling at you to do this or

that. Or you’ve got to punch a clock at a certain time.”

When he bought his own farm, Shepherd Bliss ini-

tially sought to recreate some of his childhood experi-

ences on his uncle and aunt’s Iowa farm. The sensory

experience available through farming and working the

land became clear in Shepherd’s description of using

only hand tools, such as scythes and machetes, on his

farm. He pulls weeds by hand, and enjoys hearing the

wind blowing through the nearby bamboo, as well as

watching and listening to his chickens dance and talk

to one another and dig in the dirt. Indeed, he credits

farming as one of the most beneﬁcial activities in his

learning to live with and move towards recovery from

his trauma experiences. (The other beneﬁcial activity

is his continued participation in the Veterans’ Writing

Group led by writer and poet and peace activist Max-

ine Hong Kingston) [38,39]. Farming, in many ways,

is the opposite of conventional therapy. It is the oppo-

site of a “talking cure;” it is, Shepherd explains, “not-

talking” [38].

Pointing to other ways that nature opens possibili-

ties for mindfulness, Shepherd also described his and

other members of the Veterans Writing Group’s slow

walking meditations beneath the canopy of the giant

eucalyptus forest, led by Kingston. Shepherd observed

how difﬁcult the walking meditations were for veterans

who were used to “walking point” in Vietnam, which

means they were ﬁrst in line on their foot patrol into the

jungle, and knew they would be the ﬁrst to draw enemy

ﬁre. “But after a while, you really get into the wonder-

ment of knowing that you are protected and there is no

threat, so you walk it out. Your body sees the land, not

as a place to be scorched with napalm or that’s conceal-

ing somebody who could hurt you, but it’s welcoming.

And so you begin to transform that.”

After years of undergoing treatment for his post-

traumatic distress through the medical system, Chris-

S. Westlund / Exploring connections between nature and recovery from stress and post-traumatic distress

167

tian McEachern shared how one of his ﬁrst moments of

feeling “at peace with life” in his post-military experi-

ence came while he sat on the banks of a river. More-

over, in recalling a 2009 weekend trip offered for veter-

ans by his organization, the Canadian Veteran Adven-

ture Foundation (CVAF), Christian described the pal-

pable differences in the other veterans after just one

morning of rafting on the Bow River: “You could just

see the guys melting, starting to relax and smile.” Sim-

ilarly, Ian Sherrington, a CVAF board member and as-

sociate professor at Mount Royal University who was

also on the trip, commented how over the weekend,

he could “see the life ﬂowing back into [the veter-

ans].” Even psychiatrist Greg Passey, who participated

in the weekend’s activities, observed in his comments

on the CVAF’s website the “calming effect and sense

of peace” instilled for many of the veterans [40].

In all of these experiences, it seems that through

their sensory interactions with the elements, with the

earth, air, water, and with more-than-human beings, the

veterans began to transform their experiences. Their

encounters with/in the natural world provided alter-

native experiences to those manifested during their

stress reactions and/or other symptoms associated with

stress and/or post-traumatic distress. As Andy Fisher

observes, “against the historical interiorizing of the

psyche, our bodies call for a re-establishment of safe

and loving world-relations” [30, p. 167]. Further, he

writes that “the voice of traumatic pain in our own

time is thus asking for a more loving, human, spiritual-

ized world. That’s the body talking” [ibid.]. The body

speaks clearly in each of the veterans’ narratives.

2.2. Safety in nature

Many veterans, and particularly those suffering from

the effects of stress and post-traumatic distress, de-

scribe not feeling safe once they return home to Canada

or the United States. Their wartime and/or peacekeep-

ing experiences are forever imprinted on their psyche

and body and become the new vantage from which they

experience the world. Many veterans then feel con-

stantly threatened by the people and situations they en-

counter in daily life at home.

In his interview, Christian McEachern described

“taking a knee” in Safeway during a panic attack.

Meanwhile, Tim Normann shared the story of how late

one night, he rushed out of his condo with a baton and

bear spray towards the occupants of a car who were

honking their horn incessantly. The occupants drove

off before an altercation could occur, but Tim was baf-

ﬂed by his reaction.

When we do not feel safe, our body becomes tense,

on constant alert. The heart might pound as increased

adrenaline courses through the veins, and one may re-

act in ways that are surprising, as in Christian and

Tim’s examples. Similarly, the feeling of safety is also

something experienced in the body.

Tracing a word’s etymology sometimes reveals for-

gotten meanings embedded in a word, and an etymo-

logical examination of the term ‘safe’ reveals impor-

tant insights and connections. Its Latin root salvus,

which means ‘uninjured, healthy, safe,’ is related to

the Latin salus, meaning ‘good health,’ and saluber

meaning ‘healthful.’ Furthermore, all of these words

share an ancestral tie to the root sol, from the Proto-

Indo-European ancestral language, meaning ‘whole,’

and are thought to be connected to, among other words,

the Sanskrit sarvah, ‘uninjured, intact, whole,’ and the

Greek holos, ‘whole’ [41]. Therefore, a sense of safety

refers not only to an experience of freedom from dan-

ger or lacking injury, but also a state of good health and

a sense of wholeness.

Accordingly, an important connection amongst the

veterans’ stories is the way each describes ﬁnding

safety in more-than-human nature. For example, Tim

Normann observed the difference in the quality of the

conversations that occur between veterans in outdoor

spaces compared to indoor spaces. He reﬂected that

in his experience, spending time in nature “allowed us

[veterans] to create some space outside that essentially

is a safe space for us to just talk about [experiences of

post-combat stress reactions]. I’ve spent a lot of time

with veterans in other situations . . . but not being out-

doors, and the same types of conversations don’t hap-

pen.”

Christian McEachern reﬂected on the notions of ten-

sion and negative energy and the ways that it is much

easier and feels safer for him to talk about military in-

cidents and events to a friend or another veteran while

grooming horses together. He contrasted this with his

experiences of indoor group therapy sessions, after

which he often found that his agitation and anger had

increased rather than decreased. And as he came to

notice the ways that spending time outdoors eases his

suffering, Christian began to ask why therapy sessions

could not be held outside, perhaps around a campﬁre

after a day of canoeing. His own experiences support

his belief that “with being outside, that [negative] en-

ergy has a place to go.”

Gord Cousins observed that from his childhood

through his rehabilitation and even today, spending

time in nature has helped him to adjust to changing life

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circumstances. He shared his struggles with frustration

and anger during the 1980s and suggested that perhaps

there is a link to the fact that, when he had young chil-

dren in the 1980s, he wasn’t able to keep up his ac-

tive outdoor lifestyle. In the 1990s, as he once again

became active in the outdoors through a new role with

the local Cadet corps, Gord described how his angry

outbursts and waking periods in the night began to sub-

side.

Shepherd Bliss shared that the main beneﬁts of

farming lie in how it redirects energy to the plants

and animals. He has written about how his relation-

ships with other people have improved because of his

work on the farm [38]. During his interview, the no-

tion of safety came up in the ways that his farm pro-

vides possibilities for new relationships with children.

Even though he has no children of his own, Shepherd

described himself as “newly captured by the grandfa-

ther archetype” and observed that his interactions with

the children who come to his farm provide important

and “safe” contact, since his post-traumatic distress has

made maintaining relationships difﬁcult. Furthermore,

Shepherd reﬂected that the farm – the earth, grass,

winds, leaves, ﬂowers – provides safety for other vet-

erans who spend time there. Shepherd has noticed that

the veterans sometimes open up around a picnic table

in ways they might not in a clinical setting. In his expe-

rience, “there’s something about the healing power of

the regenerative earth, the grass, the leaves, the ﬂowers,

the bees, whatever wanders in, the ants while they’re

doing their work, the honey bees that don’t sting.” And

in this context, Christian McEachern’s question “why

does counselling and group therapy have to be in the

ofﬁce all the time?” becomes very important.

It seems that each veteran is describing the ways that

the natural world calls forth his experience, his nega-

tive energy, his suffering. The more-than-human world

is big enough to hold his stress and distress. Drawing

on attachment theory, Andy Fisher observed during his

interview that the more-than-human world often be-

comes a secure base for children in middle childhood:

“We learn to rely on the places where we are and our

knowledge of them to ground ourselves and to feel a

sense of security in the world.” Further, he suggested

that this security is something we can return to in adult-

hood. Indeed, understood within an ecopsychological

framework, the experiences and safety the veterans

are describing are demonstrating a “life-forwarding di-

rectionality.” Tim Normann observed that rather than

having expectations about what needs to happen next,

nature “meets you where you’re at.” And elsewhere,

Fisher contends that “bearing pain is always a matter

of placing it in a larger context so that it both loses its

overwhelming power and is given the space it needs to

move” [12, p.192]. For each of the veterans, it seems

that more-than-human nature calls forth his suffering

and provides this space to move. And perhaps, at its

base, the security each ﬁnds in nature lends to the sense

of good health and wholeness held within the etymol-

ogy of the word “safe.”

2.3. A renewed sense of purpose through experiences

in the natural world

As each veteran spent time in nature, he also re-

gained lost conﬁdence, developed a sense of purpose

and meaning outside the institutional context of the

military, and realized that he had a valuable role to play

in his community. In exploring the issues of lost con-

ﬁdence and lost purpose, it is helpful to consider the

military, especially venues such as military academies,

basic training (or “boot camp”), and missions away

from home, within the realm of what sociologist Erv-

ing Goffman names a “total institution” [42]. Members

learn very speciﬁc ways of being and acting in the insti-

tution’s context, which provides an all-encompassing

experience for those working and living inside it.

Joshua Goldstein reﬂects that the key goal of basic

training is to implant in soldiers a deep sense of dis-

cipline and an “instinct to obey orders” [43, p. 203].

This instinct was conveyed in Christian McEachern’s

observation that “they train you so hard that it’s in-

stinct after a while.” Similarly, it is found in Tim Nor-

mann’s comment that “you’re trained to respond to sit-

uations in a certain way . . . [and] the ideal response

in a stressful, dangerous situation is . . . with maximum

speed, aggression, and violence to take out the en-

emy or the threat.” It also becomes clear in Shepherd

Bliss’s description of being born into and raised in

a long-time military family and growing up on mil-

itary bases. “Demilitarizing myself has been forty-

some years,” he commented. “I was militarized the

ﬁrst twenty, twenty-ﬁve.” In addition, militarization, as

Goldstein observes, involves training and disciplining

soldiers to suppress their emotions, particularly fear

and grief, since “cultural norms [in the military] force

men to endure trauma and master fear, in order to claim

the status of ‘manhood”’ [43, p. 264].

This awareness of the military as an institution

that completely orients the lives, bodies, and emo-

tions of soldiers is helpful in understanding the sense

of loss and lack of purpose that many veterans ex-

S. Westlund / Exploring connections between nature and recovery from stress and post-traumatic distress

169

perience upon leaving the military. Lost conﬁdence

is also common for veterans suffering from post-

traumatic distress, because ﬂashbacks and panic at-

tacks are unpredictable. After all, panic attacks and

post-traumatic suffering might be viewed as the oppo-

site of the “archetypical (ideal) military member” who

is “a strong, capable, courageous man who is willing

to give up his life to protect the freedoms and way

of life of western citizens” [44, p. 1]. Experiencing

a ﬂashback and becoming incapacitated in an every-

day life situation, such as shopping at a grocery store,

can lead sufferers to increasingly avoid such situations

or even to withdraw and disengage from their com-

munity. Accordingly, Christian McEachern observed

that a common sentiment amongst veterans is that their

ﬂashbacks, panic attacks, and anxiety make them feel

“stupid,” and they are always worried about “looking

stupider than they already feel.”

Christian, too, experienced lost conﬁdence and lack

of purpose after being discharged from the military.

And it was a number of years after leaving the military,

as he participated in the outdoor activities provided

through the Bachelor of Applied Ecotourism and Out-

door Leadership at Mount Royal College in Calgary,

that Christian describes a moment of sudden insight:

“It was almost as if I realized I could still do it.” As his

conﬁdence in his own abilities returned, Christian felt

able to take on more of a leadership role amongst his

peers. He also began to trust in his ability to provide

support to other veterans suffering from post-traumatic

distress, which led him to found the CVAF.

Shepherd Bliss believes that growing high-quality

food for other people has been very important for him.

“There was something about the recovery of the fruit

that enabled my recovery,” Shepherd said. Not only did

he, through painstaking hard work, recover his farm

from its previous state of disarray, he began to provide

food – organic boysenberries and chicken eggs – to

nourish the bodies and souls of others in his commu-

nity. Furthermore, he takes on the role of guardian for

his chickens, protecting them from predators such as

mountain lions, coyotes, and great horned owls. Shep-

herd also has a prominent role as an advocate for the

Farmer-Veteran Coalition, hosts other veterans on his

farm, and recently began volunteering with the Horses

Building Communities program in Sebastopol County,

which uses equine therapy to support military men and

women and their families at all stages.

When Gord Cousins was ﬁnally discharged from

hospital after ﬁfteen months of recovery, he was

“in poor shape physically, skitterish, gun shy, under-

weight.” He believes the sudden transformation from

being in the hospital to working in the bush in and

around Thompson, Manitoba, for the summer was cru-

cial to his recovery. “That immersion really rapidly put

things behind me and I felt useful. It was the beginning

of a feeling that I really had a role to play.” And in the

summers that followed, Gord continued to work out-

doors. He recalls the experience of getting back into a

canoe: “In each case, I was the bowman. I wasn’t in

charge of the canoe. But I was able to portage it and

paddle and do the different strokes quite well.”

In each of these cases, the veterans describe remem-

bering skills and activities they had known prior to

their military service, or had learned in the military

but perhaps forgotten or not used recently. Andy Fisher

observes that “our bodies . . . still carry the knowl-

edge of our buried needs, of our unactivated interac-

tional patterns” [12, p. 109]. The areas and activities

to which each veteran was drawn involved connect-

ing with the wider world, rather than withdrawing in-

side himself. As each became immersed in the more-

than-human world, and opened himself to that experi-

ence, his buried bodily needs became known. Most of

the veterans described feeling separate from the human

communities in which they were living, but as their

bodies remembered previous roles, they, too, gained a

purpose beyond the institutional context of the military.

It was the wider world of nature that enabled them to

once again connect with their own bodies, with other

humans, and with the more-than-human world. Addi-

tionally, both Christian and Shepherd described how, at

times, it is still difﬁcult to be part of the human commu-

nity, but in those instances, the wider planetary com-

munity – plants and animals in particular – provides the

support to ground their lives in the present and carry

their living forward.

2.4. Relationships facilitated in more-than-human

settings

Social interaction is an important part of human

experience, since as Fisher observes, “only a being

who essentially belongs with others can suffer from

isolation” [12, p. 78]. Hillman stresses how combat

situations bring forth a tenderness and fellow-feeling

amongst comrades. He recalls the words of a French

soldier who wrote that his experience in the trenches

was “the most tender human experience that he had

ever enjoyed” [29, p. 147]. Hence, despite the violence

and cruelty inherent in war, Hillman’s words evoke

a beauty in the ways that soldiers ﬁnd community in

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ﬁghting together – even in dying together. Indeed, the

military is akin to a second family for most soldiers,

and when a soldier leaves the military, it is comparable

to leaving his/her family.

The experience of isolation is common amongst vet-

erans suffering from post-traumatic distress, and dur-

ing this research, several interviewees commented on

the fact that many veterans spend a lot of time in

their home basements. However, research indicates

that stress and isolation are harmful to human health

and can lead to slower healing and both magnify and

multiply illness outcomes [6]. Judith Herman, clinical

professor of psychiatry with expertise in trauma expo-

sure, indicates that “disconnection from others” is a

core experience associated with psychological trauma.

And she observes that “recovery can take place only

within the context of relationships; it cannot occur in

isolation” [27, p. 133]. Similarly, Esther Sternberg ob-

serves that “positive social interactions are important

buffers against stress” [6, p. 230]. Indeed, recent stud-

ies have shown the importance of social support in re-

ducing rates of post-traumatic distress amongst those

affected by war [45]. In line with this notion, in his in-

terview, Kurt Hoelting reﬂected that the veterans who

take his mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR)

course get great beneﬁt “from doing this work with

others who have been where they are.”

Similarly, the experiences of the veterans in this re-

search reﬂect the signiﬁcance of the social support and

camaraderie facilitated within more-than-human set-

tings. For example, psychiatrist Dr. Susan Brock, who

leads an Operational Support Injury (OSI) clinic in

Saskatoon, and who participated in the CVAF’s 2009

weekend, wrote the following on the group’s website:

Avoidance, withdrawal, and social isolation are

often the most treatment resistant symptoms of

PTSD, and the hardest to challenge within a tradi-

tional therapy setting . . . It was a truly rewarding

experience as a therapist to witness ﬁrst-hand the

transformation that occurred in this group over the

course of the weekend; anxiety transformed into

smiles and expressions of joy [40].

As Andy Fisher described, it is simply a phe-

nomenological fact that being in the natural world

opens human beings to the possibility of making good

contact with one another at the level of their shared

experience. He suggested an analogy to the ways that

nature provides a secure base from which we can feel

safe enough to make contact with others in a supportive

way. And each of the veterans’ narratives provides ex-

amples of how it is this collective experience that sup-

ports veterans in helping one another. Indeed, Christian

McEachern’s whole purpose in starting the CVAF was

to provide support for other veterans who, like him,

were suffering from post-traumatic distress. And he

described how on the ﬁrst morning of rafting together

as a group, the veterans on the CVAF’s 2009 summer

program began to visibly relax. Tim Normann reﬂected

that in his experience, when soldiers and veterans come

together in the outdoors, their conversations often turn

to their post-military experiences of anger and hyper-

vigilance, which provides them with insight and un-

derstanding into the ways they have been changed by

their military service. While Shepherd Bliss observed

that farming can provide solitude when a veteran needs

it, he also described how veterans can sit together and

ﬁnd comfort in one another’s experiences and stories,

both on his farm around the picnic table as well as in

the Veterans’ Writing Group to which he belongs. And

Gord Cousins described how it was ﬁrst volunteering

for the Cadets in the 1990s and then being invited to re-

enlist into the Reserves – his old family – that gave him

a new sense of purpose and increased time outdoors,

which also coincided with reduced angry outbursts and

better sleeping.

French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty

brings attention to the fact that “we do not start out in

life immersed in our own self-consciousness (or even

in that of things) but rather from the experience of

other people” [46, p. 65]. He argues that it is only

through contact with others that we come to be aware

of and understand our own existence. And it is this

common understanding and contact with others that

seems particularly important in the veterans’ experi-

ences. As Tim Normann emphasized, in his experience

the more-than-human world facilitates interactions that

do not happen within more urban or indoor contexts.

However, Kurt Hoelting highlights that through mind-

fulness practice, changes can and do occur, even in

bleak contexts such as the hospital basement where he

teaches MBSR classes for veterans. He observed that

our inner human nature makes sure that we can connect

with one another in any environment, but that being in

a natural setting facilitates the process.

Robert Greenway recalls that human evolution took

place in a tribal setting, in which mutual care and

sharing essential activities were important for the very

survival of the human species. He argues that spend-

ing time together in nature, particularly in situations

that require mutual trust and care, “arouse this tribal

consciousness” [7, p. 136]. In addition, Fisher writes

S. Westlund / Exploring connections between nature and recovery from stress and post-traumatic distress

171

that “any practice that helps re-embed us within the

society of nature, or expand the ﬁeld of our care,

cannot but help us bear our pain and suffering” [12,

p. 192]. Fisher’s reﬂection is borne out in both Chris-

tian McEachern’s and Shepherd Bliss’s descriptions

of the importance of more-than-human beings in their

lives. For Christian, who has often felt isolated since

leaving the military, his dogs and his horse have pro-

vided crucial companionship. Further, Christian’s good

friend Monica Culic observed that he has become more

grounded and aware of his reactions through spend-

ing time with and caring for his horse, which she im-

plied has also helped his relationships with other peo-

ple. And throughout his interview, Shepherd referred

often to animals and insects. When he recalls the time

spent on his uncle’s farm during his youth, Shepherd

fondly remembers making good contact with the ani-

mals and bees there. On his own farm today, he loves to

watch his chickens dance and play and maintains that

they have something important to teach him.

3. Discussion

A sense of lost humanity is common amongst those

who have lived in the midst of violence and conﬂict. In

Judy Jackson’s ﬁlm War in the Mind, Wayne, a young

veteran, observed that “being a basic human being con-

ﬂicts with being a soldier in some circumstances. Be-

cause you know as a human being what you should be

doing, but as a soldier, it may be different” [47]. Mean-

while, Morris, the former Sierra Leonean child soldier,

noted that no longer feeling human led him to escape

from his former life [2]. And as Lt. Gen. Roméo Dal-

laire stood on that hilltop in Rwanda, his very words

were, “C’est ici que j’ai redevenu humain” (“It’s here

that I became human again”) [1].

Indeed, when hearing and reading accounts of sol-

diers in training and combat, one realizes that the train-

ing and the actual act of being a soldier can narrow a

person’s sense of humanity. The UBC Veteran’s Tran-

sition Program director, Dr. Marvin Westwood, told

Jackson that part of the purpose of his program is to

“undo the wiring that military training has implanted in

[the veterans’] brain” [47]. And Christian McEachern,

Tim Normann, Gord Cousins, and Shepherd Bliss all

spoke about their military training and/or upbringing

as inﬂuential in their lives. While each described gain-

ing skills and a sense of discipline, this training, which

included sleep deprivation, being marched around to

the point of exhaustion, being constantly yelled at, and

being taught to respond with speed, aggression, and

violence, also involved learning to suppress or ignore

his body’s instincts. As Jungian psychoanalyst James

Hillman reﬂects, “The eventual unbearable division

between the engine of war and human warrior com-

mences in the drills learned in basic training performed

as ceremonies of separation” [29, p. 63].

All the themes explored in this paper culminate in

the notion that contact with more-than-human nature

provides possibilities for regaining one’s lost sense of

humanity. Fisher suggests that when we, as human be-

ings, are alienated from our body’s naturalness, our

body is in conﬂict with itself. He describes how “kin-

ship with the rest of nature has traditionally been won

by admitting boundaries and then dialoguing with the

nonhuman presences on the other side of them, through

ritual, dream, myth, nonordinary states of conscious-

ness, skillful everyday interaction, and so forth” [12,

p. 96].

It is perhaps important to ask: What is it to be hu-

man? The etymological origins of the word ‘human,’

the Latin humus, point to the literal meaning that hu-

mans are ‘of the earth, soil or ground’ [41]. Similarly,

the Hebrew word for ‘man,’ adam, comes from the

Hebrew adamah, meaning ‘ground.’ Connected to the

earth and soil, human bodies and minds are inseparable

from the sensible world. As Merleau-Ponty observed,

“There is no break in this circuit; it is impossible to

say that nature ends here and that man or expression

starts here” [48, p. 319]. The Western habit of mind,

however, resists this insight, since the separate self is

a deﬁning feature in our individualistic worldview. As

Catherine Keller observed in an interview with Derrick

Jensen, “one of the prime hallucinations of Western

culture – and I would add the paradigm of dominance –

is the belief that who you are is a skin-encapsulated

ego” [49, p. 274].

Amongst the symptoms associated with post-trau-

matic distress are feelings of isolation, loneliness, and

helplessness, resulting in increasingly avoidant be-

haviour, a disengagement from the outside world, and

an overwhelming sense of being able to do noth-

ing [50–52]. A movement toward humanity, on the

other hand, implies the opposite of feeling alone and

isolated. It suggests moving outside oneself, an en-

gagement and relationship with others and with the

world. A restored sense of humanity thus implies com-

ing back to participation in the (more-than-human)

world, for as David Abram observes, “We are human

only in contact, and conviviality, with what is not hu-

man” [53, p. 22].

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S. Westlund / Exploring connections between nature and recovery from stress and post-traumatic distress

The movement from aloneness to humanity is vivid

in all the stories in this research. Christian McEachern

started the CVAF with the speciﬁc intent of working

with other veterans suffering from post-traumatic dis-

tress. Shepherd Bliss hosts other veterans on his farm

and is involved in community programs for soldiers,

veterans and their families, such as Horses Building

Communities and the Farmer Veteran Coalition. And

Tim Normann and Gord Cousins are also active with

reaching out to other soldiers and veterans. In each of

the stories shared in this paper, it was intimate em-

bodied contact with more-than-human nature that re-

imbued life with new or remembered meaning. That

contact helped the veterans remember they are an-

chored to the world and begin to make sense of their

experiences. It seems, perhaps, that it is only in contact

and deep relationship with the natural world that we

are most human.

During his interview, Kurt Hoelting reﬂected on the

moment on his kayak retreats when participants move

beyond their intellectual understanding of nature and

realize that “at a cellular or visceral level, we’re part

of something really huge.” Kurt described this experi-

ence as catalytic for participants. Similarly in the vet-

erans’ narratives of recovery, one can appreciate their

realization that the more-than-human world is deeply

implicated in their own life and experience. The veter-

ans’ stories point clearly to an understanding through

their bodies that nature is a place they feel secure and

that it is in contact with the wider world that they ﬁnd

hope and possibilities for carrying their human living

forward. Each in their different ways, the veterans are

describing their innate desire – perhaps both conscious

and unconscious – to go beyond human communities

and to connect with more-than-human nature.

Each veteran’s body is expressing its need to con-

nect to the larger world, which is demonstrated by the

shift in their experiences when they spend time in na-

ture [30]. There is an overwhelming sense of presence,

mindfulness, and awareness in each narrative, as well

as the calmness and peace that comes with that expe-

rience. Perhaps the veterans are describing what Kurt

Hoelting remarked is “the boundary between self and

world softening,” the ways that the heart and mind can

open more easily and quickly in nature.

In suggesting that more-than-human nature is im-

portant for soldiers and veterans recovering from stress

and post-traumatic distress, contact with nature is not

advocated as a panacea to cure all ills. Connelly and

Clandinin warn about the danger of a “Hollywood

plot” in narrative inquiry, where participants’ stories

are smoothed and moulded by the researcher to show

that despite hardships, everything worked out and

ended well [32]. It is important to remember that the

stories told by Christian McEachern, Tim Normann,

Gord Cousins, and Shepherd Bliss are the narratives

they continue to inhabit every day. Their experiences

in nature have not “cured” their stress and/or post-

traumatic distress, and all spoke of their need for more

than one path of recovery. For Christian, in addition

to spending as much time as possible in the outdoors

and with his animals, the path has involved medica-

tion and therapy. Tim eventually sought counselling to

gain further insight into his post-military stress reac-

tions. Gord believes that re-enlisting in the Reserves

and once again having a larger purpose in life was im-

portant for his own recovery. And Shepherd’s involve-

ment in the Veterans’ Writing Group has been a crucial

part of his healing, in addition to individual and group

therapy over the years.

Accordingly, connecting with nature does not in it-

self guarantee transformation or healing and recovery,

and nature contact is not a cure-all or magic treatment

for veterans. Many veterans continue to beneﬁt from

medication and therapy, but ﬁnd that nature provides

an additional measure of support, relief and healing in

their lives.

4. Conclusion

Other veterans describe experiences similar to those

detailed in this research [54]. Canadian scholar, Harold

Adams Innis, who was wounded in World War I, un-

dertook a summer-long canoe trip on the Peace and

Slave Rivers in 1924 with his friend John Long. In-

nis’s biographer Donald Creighton writes that “the

long summer, with its wind and sun, its space, and

peace, and friendly companionship, had done [Innis]

an immense amount of good. He had, as it were, shaken

off the last of the evil effects of the war . . . He had re-

covered his health and spirits” [55, p. 63]. Similarly,

during World War II, American psychiatrist Karl Men-

ninger became the ﬁrst advocate for horticulture ther-

apy to help U.S. veterans recover from their wartime

experiences [5,56,57].

Today, there is a growing movement to provide op-

portunities for U.S. veterans to move into farming after

they leave the military. These soldiers-turned-farmers,

many of whom suffer from stress and/or post-traumatic

distress, are reporting signiﬁcant beneﬁts from work-

ing outdoors with plants and animals and providing

S. Westlund / Exploring connections between nature and recovery from stress and post-traumatic distress

173

healthy foods to feed other people [58–63]. Many

of these farmers also offer peer-to-peer programs for

other wounded veterans, who come to work on their

farm, decompress, and explore farming as a possible

career. The overall commonality amongst the different

farms and programs is that the soldiers-turned-farmers

are describing how farming has showed them the way

forward – the ways that life can continue beyond their

military experiences [58–63].

The veterans’ narratives in this research give space

to the former soldiers’ personal experiences and to

their realizations that their embodied interconnections

within more-than-human nature provide alternative ex-

periences to their military training and combat ex-

posure. The rhythms of the more-than-human world

become part of and leave traces on each person’s

story. Nature speaks through the veterans’ bodies and

through their stories of embodied experience as they

come into relationship with one another and with the

natural world. The importance of paying attention to

these stories of experience is that while they are few

in number, one cannot deny that the experiences are

pointing toward an avenue of recovery that is little ac-

knowledged in the mainstream literature and praxis.

As Andy Fisher observed during his interview, when a

veteran describes the shift in his experience in nature,

this “takes our thinking of the healing process beyond

the therapy ofﬁce into a more-than-human ﬁeld of what

might be called for in the healing process.”

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