How nature saved my life

Story by Maria Kallerson

I hopped into the passenger seat of my dad’s car on a cold November morning, hoping to feel anything but numb even if it was only temporary. As the road rolled beneath us and the trees brushed past the windows, I felt the bits of calm and peace I was seeking.

That peace quickly turned to curiosity as I realized my dad was driving a route we’d never gone before. I felt my mind start to wake from its slumber as I registered the tall pine trees climbing steep hillsides as far as I could see, a low-hanging mist clinging to their needles.

We climbed higher, rounding a curve, and the hillsides disappeared to reveal jagged mountains drenched in snow, their peaks poking up into the clouds. I leaned forward in awe. I’d only ever seen the mountains from a distance, never up close. Seeing them like this, how glorious and divine and ancient they felt, stirred a powerful feeling in me.

I rolled down the window, the sharp scent of pine and snow flowing into the car, my fingers dancing in the cold Cascadia wind. A snowflake landed on my palm, then another, and suddenly I was transported into a winter wonderland I’d only ever seen in Christmas movies.

I told my dad to pull over. His car rolled to a stop on the slushy asphalt, and I flung the door open and stepped out onto the pull-off. I spun around, trying to memorize every peak and valley that surrounded me, feeling the snow cool my skin. I felt a buzzing underneath my skin, too: a mixture of excitement, beauty, desire and wonder I knew I needed to explore.

After weeks of feeling emotionless, it felt like the world had come rushing back to me all at once. That morning I’d been close to knocking on death’s door, but now I had opened one I never knew existed.

That feeling lingered in the back of my mind. Knowing there was a way out of a path I thought I was damned to felt freeing. I still had a long journey ahead of me, though.

As of November 2023, the United States suicide rate has reached its highest point in 80 years, according to a study by the CDC. I could have been a number in the statistics used in this study – another name lost in a never-ending memorial to the failures of America’s mental healthcare system – but I wasn’t.

I survived because during a long battle with chronic depression when I felt a connection to nothing else, I found a connection to nature.

Being a teenager or a young adult grappling with complex mental health issues feels a lot like trying to ascend a steep rock wall with no climbing gear or experience. You try looking for handholds and footholds, but they’re few and far between and usually, they’re not wide enough to hold your weight.

It’s hard to start climbing that wall when you don’t understand the battle you’re fighting or its severity. It’s even harder without having a safe place to turn to for help and guidance. Fifty percent of all mental conditions begin at 14, and in 2019, only 15% of American teenagers reported receiving mental health services at school, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

In my generation, the top concerns for public health risks to young Americans have shifted from binge drinking, drug usage and pregnancy to anxiety, depression, suicide and self-harm. From 2001 to 2019, the suicide rate for Americans ages 10-19 rose by 40%, and emergency room visits for self-harm rose by 88%, according to percentages reported in The New York Times based on CDC reports.

I don’t remember being educated on mental health awareness in my public school health classes. Depression and anxiety were mentioned but never explained, meaning that I was left with no concept of what they were and wasn’t equipped with the tools to fight them. So when I started experiencing the severity of their effects, I thought I was completely alone.

I collapsed on my bed one rainy autumn night after finishing my eighth-grade math homework, ready to watch a couple of episodes of “Gossip Girl” and text my friends about the upcoming football game. Before I could crack open my laptop, a heaviness trickled into my bones.

I didn’t know what it was, but I knew the feeling well. It started in the summer, this weight in my chest that would sit there for a bit and fade. Over time, it grew in size and stayed for longer.

It was like a cave opening up inside my heart and slowly filling with water until there was an entire ocean weighing me to my mattress, its currents ebbing and flowing through every vein in my body. Sometimes the water would drain, sometimes it wouldn’t. This was one of those nights when it didn’t.

Not only did I not know if anyone in my life would understand the way I was feeling, but I also didn’t know if I would be judged for it. Every year, 16 million Americans suffer from depression, and due to the stigmas surrounding mental illness, most suffer in silence, according to NAMI.

I was scared, so I stayed silent and the ocean grew. I started asking my dad if we could go on drives because I knew something about being in the car away from everything helped ease the aches in my mind and body.

When I was 14, the episodes grew from hours into days. I started skipping school because I couldn’t get out of bed. I started disassociating through most of my days, and I didn’t figure out what was happening until years later.

It felt like my soul was detached from my body, like I was just mindlessly going through the motions. My mind, in its most weakened and vulnerable state, started letting suicidal thoughts creep in.

Once that gate opened, I didn’t know how to close it.

When I stepped out of the car on the drive that day, surrounded by the eternal beauty of mountain peaks and the scent of the freshly snow-laden pine trees, I finally saw a path to closing the gate.

When I couldn’t escape to the mountains and the world would start to go dark, I started Googling places in Washington to explore, keeping an adventure bucket list. It wasn’t the same as being outside, but it gave me hope. I knew I could still feel excited about life. I knew what was out there, I just had to wait till I could access it. I just had to survive through the darkness to get to the light.

The winter turned into spring, and when the wildflowers started to bloom around my 15th birthday, my dad took me on my first hike. All the emotions that flooded through me on that first mountain drive came back, but now they were accompanied by a peace and serenity I’d never known. I could think, rationalize and reflect in a way I thought I’d lost forever.

Going to the mountains on the weekends, whether for a hike or just a drive, became my crutch. It allowed me a semblance of stability, one that I needed to finally find handholds and footholds on that rock wall and begin climbing.

Exposure to nature is healing for the brain and body. Not just spiritually, but also scientifically.

The American Psychological Association has found evidence that contact with nature is associated with increases in happiness, overall mood, positive social interactions, and overall well-being; decreased mental distress; and an improved sense of meaning and purpose in life.

The APA study found that even internet exposure to the wilderness was associated with positive mental improvements and the ability to reflect on life problems. However, the effects were found to be stronger for those who actually spent time outside, surrounded by nature.

Social isolation is often associated with a poorer state of well-being, but the researchers reported that when people with low levels of social interaction also had access to nature, they had generally high levels of well-being.

I can certainly see why. In a time of isolation, I found a friend in the beauty of the outdoors. Seeing the mountains for the first time, walking down my first trail, feeling held by the soul of the earth, knowing there was more to life than what I had experienced, being able to tap into new emotions and indulge in a pine-laden curiosity, all gave me the hope I needed to climb that wall.

I wanted to capture those feelings and share them with other people who were suffering in silence like I had been, to show them how much was out there, how many more paths were waiting to be unlocked.

I started writing poetry, short stories, and nonfiction anecdotes; snapping photos on my mom’s old Canon camera and documenting every step of my journey through art. I have nature to thank for giving me two new hobbies I fell in love with and one that would become my career.

On a warm March evening in Sedona, Arizona, I walked up the trail to the Bell Rock Vortex as the sunset bathed the red rocks around me in an orange glow. I was 20 now, an age I had never planned on reaching, and freshly out of a year and a half of intense therapy.

My dad and his girlfriend had gone ahead of me and were probably sitting on the rock overlooking the desert valley by now. I had asked to hike by myself.

The energy vortexes in Sedona are rumored to be powerful areas where one can connect spiritually with the self and the earth. Something inside me told me this was a journey I needed to take alone.

The calmness felt different this time, like the storm was finally over. I reached the spot on the rock where the vortex was said to be the strongest, the orange turning to pink and sweeping over the treetops, painting the Sedona red rocks that bordered the valley.

Gazing out over the valley, I realized I owed it all to the beautiful scenery in front of me that I kept chasing, that gave me hope, provided me comfort and shelter and a place to think without judgment: a crutch to lean on in every moment.

The hole that once lived in my heart has been patched with a mosaic of pine trees, ocean waves, mountaintops, coastal bluffs and desert rocks.

Watching how the shadows moved over the trees as the sun sank further behind the rock spires, tears welled up in my eyes and I was overcome with relief, grief and the realization that I’d reached the top of the wall. The last drops of the weight I had named an ocean trickled out, and I felt the door to that chapter finally close.

I was free.