![]() ![]() She tells us how the human epidermis is more like a pond surface or forest soil than fleshy armour, and how it responds to microorganisms in fresh air. Jones’s ideas are not cosseted in psychobabble, but rooted firmly in peer-reviewed science. “Nature picked me up by the scruff of my neck,” she writes, “and I rested in her teeth for a while.” ![]() In her 20s she had a dependency on drink and drugs that was partly relieved by her walks in London’s Walthamstow Marshes (along with psychiatry and psychotherapy, she says she’s not a writer wanting to give nature an easy, breezy pass). She begins by telling us how much we’ve travelled inwards as human beings, both literally and psychologically, nowadays spending only 1 to 5% of our time outdoors (she adds later that three-quarters of children in the UK, aged five to 12, now spend less time outside than prisoners). Jones’s book is a beautifully written, research-heavy study about how nature offers us wellbeing. (If they tried that today, the police would send them home.) These books, each in their own distinct way, take that idea and twist it. Nature writing in recent years has often been about landscapes granting peace, even if that peace has mostly been limited to white men walking up mountains and having epiphanies. ![]()
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