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CNN
10-07-2025
- CNN
Nine months after Hurricane Helene: Still mud and mess, but a powerful lesson in small-town resilience
Korey Hampton sees progress every day as she works along the French Broad River. But, nine months after Hurricane Helene, there are still painful reminders and flashbacks. 'I still see piles and I wonder if there is somebody in it,' Hampton said. 'I still smell smells and think I should go look at that pile. It's hard to switch back to the, 'Oh, everything is fun. No big deal.'' Hampton is trying. She and her husband, Mitch, own French Broad Adventures, an outdoor activity company that offers rafting, ziplining and more in Western North Carolina. The river is her office, and her source of income and joy. Tourists are drawn here for the postcard views. The Appalachian Trail winds through the mountains above; the French Broad River below is a rafting and kayaking playground. But the Hamptons are also volunteers for the local raft rescue squad. When the floodwaters came after the hurricane, it meant days of exhausting rescues. Then weeks of worse: recovering bodies. 'It painted the river in a new light for me, right?' Hampton said. 'Normally, we are taking tourists out. Families, school groups, wedding parties. Everybody's out here to have a good time. But for that amount of time I was here doing, we were all here, doing gruesome work. … So, I'm getting there, but it's going to take a while.' Hampton's personal recovery runs parallel to the physical, financial and emotional challenge of getting the small towns devastated by the floods back to some new normal. To visit is to see obvious progress. In downtown Marshall, for example, some businesses have reopened, and the steady sound of saws and hammers and drills tells you others are getting closer. But the steep challenges remain obvious, too, no matter where you look. In the town, some buildings are still closed, still filled with dirt and mud, still waiting for an insurance check or government help or for their owners to decide if they can afford it or risk it happening again. Along the river, there are still debris piles in harder-to-reach places, some of them carrying logos of businesses 20 miles or more upriver. We met Hampton at a rocky and sandy bend she said was lined with mature trees this time last year. 'The water came up 27 vertical feet,' she said. 'That meant sometimes hundreds of horizontal feet where there was floodwater. So a lot of trees are missing, and the river feels a little bit wider.' We visited as part of our 'All Over the Map' project, an effort to track major events through the eyes and experiences of everyday Americans. We were reminded, yet again, of the often-giant gap between what we see and hear on social media or in national political conversations and the views of those who live in the center — in this case literally — of the storm. The blame game and finger-pointing playing out now after the tragic recent Texas flooding is in many ways a flashback for residents of Western North Carolina. Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida on September 26 as a Category 4. It was the next day, September 27, that churning horror came to the small towns dotting the rivers and streams below the eastern facing slopes of the Blue Ridge Mountains. 'The first call came in about 6:30 in the morning,' Hampton said. 'We pulled people out of second-story windows in a river that just the day before was calmer even than it is today.' Cellular service was lost. Radio communication was spotty. Saving lives and property was all that mattered. It would be days, sometimes longer, before locals could get online or hear from family or friends who lived elsewhere. A lot of what they heard was from a parallel universe. It was a little more than five weeks to Election Day, and the internet swelled with misinformation. About the death toll. About the federal and state response. About just about everything. Prev Next Then-candidate Trump made a number of false statements about the Biden administration response. Among them: that President Joe Biden refused to call Georgia's Republican governor; that FEMA was ignoring Republican counties impacted by Helene; and that FEMA lacked resources because Vice President Kamala Harris had directed FEMA funds be used to house undocumented immigrants. Trump and allies also reposted social media postings that were false 'We just didn't have the time. People were literally dying,' Hampton said. 'We didn't even know what was happening until the first Black Hawk helicopter landed with water and food.' The debate continues, at considerably less volume, nine months later. Then it was about Biden. Now it is President Trump at the center of questions about the pace and scope of federal help and the future of FEMA. In the epicenter, where the pain and need are deepest, that conversation is remarkably calm and respectful. 'We're not down here taking sides,' Hampton said. 'We just wish somebody would help and that political wrangling over our futures would stop.' The 2020 census put the population of Marshall at 846. Hot Springs, about 16 miles to the northwest, was listed at 520. All of Madison County — northwest of Asheville, where North Carolina meets Tennessee — is home to 22,000 people. Small towns like these are different. And full of lessons. While Trump and his allies helped fuel the disinformation campaign after the floods, Amy Rubin wasn't going to vote for him anyway. She is a Democrat in Hot Springs, in a county that voted 60 percent for Trump. But her disagreements with him aren't related to disaster relief, so Rubin shares them with likeminded friends in private and then remembers what is paramount here. 'We, the community, we just tried to let all of that go and just help each other,' Rubin said. 'And that's what was great about it.' Rubin and her husband own Big Pillow Brewing, one of the first businesses to reopen in Hot Springs. They are still waiting for a check from their flood insurance, but decided to press ahead with the cleanup and rebuild anyway. An unpainted board across the bar inside marks how high the waters rose in the building. 'About maybe thigh high,' is Rubin's memory. The stage for music outside is all new lumber. The crowd on a recent Friday night was proof that locals and visitors are grateful for at least a taste of normal. But it takes just a few steps to see the daunting work that remains. The building that housed the offices of the sheriff and mayor, as well as other town offices, is still a mess, though most of the mud has been shoveled from the basement. The hardware store is closed. So is the inn where Hampton made one second-story rescue. The flood here was mostly caused when debris turned a bridge on the Spring Creek into a dam. Ask almost anyone here what still needs to be done, and replacing the bridge or significantly redesigning its support beams tops their long list. 'I don't really know whose jurisdiction that is, but it is definitely something that needs to happen,' Rubin said. 'Because, you know, people are saying this is going to happen again.' Hot Springs Mayor Abby Norton met us after taking her first days off since September 27. 'A little recharged,' she said with a smile and laugh. But now she's back to work. 'I would say we are only about 40 percent back.' Norton's initial expectations turned out to be unrealistic. About how long it would take: 'I was thinking months. … At the time, you are just not thinking clearly to see all the damages. We still got a year, two years before we are back.' And about who pays: 'What I thought Washington would do would be to immediately come in and either fix everything or supply the funds for us to fix everything. But that is not how it works.' Norton now knows things she wishes she didn't about FEMA rules and environmental studies and other bureaucratic hurdles. And she knows some in her community might disagree with her take on Washington's role here. Some context first: Mayoral elections here are nonpartisan. Norton is a Christian who says prayer guides her every big decision. She says she voted third-party in November — just after the flood — because she couldn't bring herself to support either Trump or Harris. Her take: 'I'm not a politician. I never have been. But it has been better under the Trump administration than it was under Biden. My opinion.' Still, she says things take too long — like getting a federal check to repair the town offices. And she is troubled when she hears Trump and his team talk about eliminating FEMA or dramatically shrinking the federal role in disaster relief. 'FEMA doesn't need to be eliminated,' Norton said. 'The processes need to be easier, more user friendly. No, I don't think it needs to be eliminated at all.' Or its functions shifted to the states? 'No.' To live in a river town is to know the waters will rise now and then, that you better keep sandbags handy and think twice about how you furnish the first floor. But it is nearly 500 miles east to the Atlantic Ocean from Marshall; more than 500 miles south to the coast along the Florida panhandle. Madison County was not a place on any hurricane watch list. So when Josh Copus woke up early on September 27, he was thinking about sandbags and moving some valuables up to the second floor of his Old Marshall Jail Hotel. Plus, moving or securing the furniture on the restaurant patio that abuts the railroad tracks along the French Broad River. 'I knew it was going to be bad, but I was, like, 'We got this,'' Copus said. 'And at 9 o'clock, the water went over the railroad tracks, which hadn't happened since '77. In an hour, there was 4 feet of water in the town, and you could just immediately know this was a different kind of event.' He went to the top step of the Madison County Courthouse, the highest place with a view of the river and his hotel. But after two hours watching, he had to flee: The water was rushing up the steps and into the courthouse. At the peak, it surged 27 feet up the flood ruler painted on the side of the old jail Copus had painstakingly restored as a hotel and gathering place. 'The first phase is shock,' Copus said. 'Just feeling like floating outside of my body.' He thought the town was finished, and business with it. 'In that moment? 100 percent,' Copus said. 'We were alone. There was no cell service. … And you are in that space, and you are looking at that destruction and it feels like you are done.' But Copus headed to town early Sunday anyway and realized there was one thing the flood could not break. 'No one could talk to each other,' Copus said. 'But we all just had the same idea. I guess we just go to town. And everyone went, and we just started. Started with shovels. Dump trucks came. Backhoes came. Neighbors brought things. I saw a woman walking into town with a mop. Just walking into town with a mop. And I was, like, 'you go, girl.' Bring it. Whatever you got.' 'And we didn't wait on anyone to save us. We just started. And that was the moment. … I changed the way I was speaking about it, and I said, you know, our buildings were destroyed. Our town is not the things. It's the people. And the people are still here. And we've got the best people.' Copus was still shoveling when Election Day came, but he took a break to vote and encountered the parallel universe. 'I remember standing in a line and this woman, you know, from our community, was like, 'I heard FEMA condemned Marshall.' And I was like, 'I just came from there. Like no, we're coming back.' And she was like, 'I saw it on the internet.' …. That stuff is hard, but it is the world we live in.' But it is different here. No one shoveling mud asked anyone whom they were voting for or whether a Democrat or Republican owned that building or business. Now, getting new pipes and bridges and things like the railroad crossing fixed are challenges for everyone in Marshall and Hot Springs. 'It's not like everyone is walking around with a blue hat or a red hat,' Copus said. 'We're just people down here. And some of the beauty of the flood was how it really taught us that, again, we have more in common than we have that separates us. 'We're all Appalachian Americans. That's something that we can all connect with. So regardless of your political affiliation, our culture connects us for sure. Our values systems are actually not that different.' To hear the words 'beauty of the flood' from Copus is telling. He is a potter, a gifted ceramics artist with a studio and kilns in the woods outside Marshall. He organized musicians to record an album at the hotel in the middle of the restoration work. The proceeds will help the recovery. 'I've been looking for silver linings the whole time,' said Copus. 'This is a terrible deal and it's not the deal any of us wanted. But it's the deal we got. Sitting around and feeling sorry for yourself isn't going to help. I think artists are really good at trying to see beauty within the darkness. And that's what I have been trying to do.'
CNN
10-07-2025
- CNN
Nine months after Hurricane Helene: Still mud and mess, but a powerful lesson in small-town resilience
Korey Hampton sees progress every day as she works along the French Broad River. But, nine months after Hurricane Helene, there are still painful reminders and flashbacks. 'I still see piles and I wonder if there is somebody in it,' Hampton said. 'I still smell smells and think I should go look at that pile. It's hard to switch back to the, 'Oh, everything is fun. No big deal.'' Hampton is trying. She and her husband, Mitch, own French Broad Adventures, an outdoor activity company that offers rafting, ziplining and more in Western North Carolina. The river is her office, and her source of income and joy. Tourists are drawn here for the postcard views. The Appalachian Trail winds through the mountains above; the French Broad River below is a rafting and kayaking playground. But the Hamptons are also volunteers for the local raft rescue squad. When the floodwaters came after the hurricane, it meant days of exhausting rescues. Then weeks of worse: recovering bodies. 'It painted the river in a new light for me, right?' Hampton said. 'Normally, we are taking tourists out. Families, school groups, wedding parties. Everybody's out here to have a good time. But for that amount of time I was here doing, we were all here, doing gruesome work. … So, I'm getting there, but it's going to take a while.' Hampton's personal recovery runs parallel to the physical, financial and emotional challenge of getting the small towns devastated by the floods back to some new normal. To visit is to see obvious progress. In downtown Marshall, for example, some businesses have reopened, and the steady sound of saws and hammers and drills tells you others are getting closer. But the steep challenges remain obvious, too, no matter where you look. In the town, some buildings are still closed, still filled with dirt and mud, still waiting for an insurance check or government help or for their owners to decide if they can afford it or risk it happening again. Along the river, there are still debris piles in harder-to-reach places, some of them carrying logos of businesses 20 miles or more upriver. We met Hampton at a rocky and sandy bend she said was lined with mature trees this time last year. 'The water came up 27 vertical feet,' she said. 'That meant sometimes hundreds of horizontal feet where there was floodwater. So a lot of trees are missing, and the river feels a little bit wider.' We visited as part of our 'All Over the Map' project, an effort to track major events through the eyes and experiences of everyday Americans. We were reminded, yet again, of the often-giant gap between what we see and hear on social media or in national political conversations and the views of those who live in the center — in this case literally — of the storm. The blame game and finger-pointing playing out now after the tragic recent Texas flooding is in many ways a flashback for residents of Western North Carolina. Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida on September 26 as a Category 4. It was the next day, September 27, that churning horror came to the small towns dotting the rivers and streams below the eastern facing slopes of the Blue Ridge Mountains. 'The first call came in about 6:30 in the morning,' Hampton said. 'We pulled people out of second-story windows in a river that just the day before was calmer even than it is today.' Cellular service was lost. Radio communication was spotty. Saving lives and property was all that mattered. It would be days, sometimes longer, before locals could get online or hear from family or friends who lived elsewhere. A lot of what they heard was from a parallel universe. It was a little more than five weeks to Election Day, and the internet swelled with misinformation. About the death toll. About the federal and state response. About just about everything. Prev Next Then-candidate Trump made a number of false statements about the Biden administration response. Among them: that President Joe Biden refused to call Georgia's Republican governor; that FEMA was ignoring Republican counties impacted by Helene; and that FEMA lacked resources because Vice President Kamala Harris had directed FEMA funds be used to house undocumented immigrants. Trump and allies also reposted social media postings that were false 'We just didn't have the time. People were literally dying,' Hampton said. 'We didn't even know what was happening until the first Black Hawk helicopter landed with water and food.' The debate continues, at considerably less volume, nine months later. Then it was about Biden. Now it is President Trump at the center of questions about the pace and scope of federal help and the future of FEMA. In the epicenter, where the pain and need are deepest, that conversation is remarkably calm and respectful. 'We're not down here taking sides,' Hampton said. 'We just wish somebody would help and that political wrangling over our futures would stop.' The 2020 census put the population of Marshall at 846. Hot Springs, about 16 miles to the northwest, was listed at 520. All of Madison County — northwest of Asheville, where North Carolina meets Tennessee — is home to 22,000 people. Small towns like these are different. And full of lessons. While Trump and his allies helped fuel the disinformation campaign after the floods, Amy Rubin wasn't going to vote for him anyway. She is a Democrat in Hot Springs, in a county that voted 60 percent for Trump. But her disagreements with him aren't related to disaster relief, so Rubin shares them with likeminded friends in private and then remembers what is paramount here. 'We, the community, we just tried to let all of that go and just help each other,' Rubin said. 'And that's what was great about it.' Rubin and her husband own Big Pillow Brewing, one of the first businesses to reopen in Hot Springs. They are still waiting for a check from their flood insurance, but decided to press ahead with the cleanup and rebuild anyway. An unpainted board across the bar inside marks how high the waters rose in the building. 'About maybe thigh high,' is Rubin's memory. The stage for music outside is all new lumber. The crowd on a recent Friday night was proof that locals and visitors are grateful for at least a taste of normal. But it takes just a few steps to see the daunting work that remains. The building that housed the offices of the sheriff and mayor, as well as other town offices, is still a mess, though most of the mud has been shoveled from the basement. The hardware store is closed. So is the inn where Hampton made one second-story rescue. The flood here was mostly caused when debris turned a bridge on the Spring Creek into a dam. Ask almost anyone here what still needs to be done, and replacing the bridge or significantly redesigning its support beams tops their long list. 'I don't really know whose jurisdiction that is, but it is definitely something that needs to happen,' Rubin said. 'Because, you know, people are saying this is going to happen again.' Hot Springs Mayor Abby Norton met us after taking her first days off since September 27. 'A little recharged,' she said with a smile and laugh. But now she's back to work. 'I would say we are only about 40 percent back.' Norton's initial expectations turned out to be unrealistic. About how long it would take: 'I was thinking months. … At the time, you are just not thinking clearly to see all the damages. We still got a year, two years before we are back.' And about who pays: 'What I thought Washington would do would be to immediately come in and either fix everything or supply the funds for us to fix everything. But that is not how it works.' Norton now knows things she wishes she didn't about FEMA rules and environmental studies and other bureaucratic hurdles. And she knows some in her community might disagree with her take on Washington's role here. Some context first: Mayoral elections here are nonpartisan. Norton is a Christian who says prayer guides her every big decision. She says she voted third-party in November — just after the flood — because she couldn't bring herself to support either Trump or Harris. Her take: 'I'm not a politician. I never have been. But it has been better under the Trump administration than it was under Biden. My opinion.' Still, she says things take too long — like getting a federal check to repair the town offices. And she is troubled when she hears Trump and his team talk about eliminating FEMA or dramatically shrinking the federal role in disaster relief. 'FEMA doesn't need to be eliminated,' Norton said. 'The processes need to be easier, more user friendly. No, I don't think it needs to be eliminated at all.' Or its functions shifted to the states? 'No.' To live in a river town is to know the waters will rise now and then, that you better keep sandbags handy and think twice about how you furnish the first floor. But it is nearly 500 miles east to the Atlantic Ocean from Marshall; more than 500 miles south to the coast along the Florida panhandle. Madison County was not a place on any hurricane watch list. So when Josh Copus woke up early on September 27, he was thinking about sandbags and moving some valuables up to the second floor of his Old Marshall Jail Hotel. Plus, moving or securing the furniture on the restaurant patio that abuts the railroad tracks along the French Broad River. 'I knew it was going to be bad, but I was, like, 'We got this,'' Copus said. 'And at 9 o'clock, the water went over the railroad tracks, which hadn't happened since '77. In an hour, there was 4 feet of water in the town, and you could just immediately know this was a different kind of event.' He went to the top step of the Madison County Courthouse, the highest place with a view of the river and his hotel. But after two hours watching, he had to flee: The water was rushing up the steps and into the courthouse. At the peak, it surged 27 feet up the flood ruler painted on the side of the old jail Copus had painstakingly restored as a hotel and gathering place. 'The first phase is shock,' Copus said. 'Just feeling like floating outside of my body.' He thought the town was finished, and business with it. 'In that moment? 100 percent,' Copus said. 'We were alone. There was no cell service. … And you are in that space, and you are looking at that destruction and it feels like you are done.' But Copus headed to town early Sunday anyway and realized there was one thing the flood could not break. 'No one could talk to each other,' Copus said. 'But we all just had the same idea. I guess we just go to town. And everyone went, and we just started. Started with shovels. Dump trucks came. Backhoes came. Neighbors brought things. I saw a woman walking into town with a mop. Just walking into town with a mop. And I was, like, 'you go, girl.' Bring it. Whatever you got.' 'And we didn't wait on anyone to save us. We just started. And that was the moment. … I changed the way I was speaking about it, and I said, you know, our buildings were destroyed. Our town is not the things. It's the people. And the people are still here. And we've got the best people.' Copus was still shoveling when Election Day came, but he took a break to vote and encountered the parallel universe. 'I remember standing in a line and this woman, you know, from our community, was like, 'I heard FEMA condemned Marshall.' And I was like, 'I just came from there. Like no, we're coming back.' And she was like, 'I saw it on the internet.' …. That stuff is hard, but it is the world we live in.' But it is different here. No one shoveling mud asked anyone whom they were voting for or whether a Democrat or Republican owned that building or business. Now, getting new pipes and bridges and things like the railroad crossing fixed are challenges for everyone in Marshall and Hot Springs. 'It's not like everyone is walking around with a blue hat or a red hat,' Copus said. 'We're just people down here. And some of the beauty of the flood was how it really taught us that, again, we have more in common than we have that separates us. 'We're all Appalachian Americans. That's something that we can all connect with. So regardless of your political affiliation, our culture connects us for sure. Our values systems are actually not that different.' To hear the words 'beauty of the flood' from Copus is telling. He is a potter, a gifted ceramics artist with a studio and kilns in the woods outside Marshall. He organized musicians to record an album at the hotel in the middle of the restoration work. The proceeds will help the recovery. 'I've been looking for silver linings the whole time,' said Copus. 'This is a terrible deal and it's not the deal any of us wanted. But it's the deal we got. Sitting around and feeling sorry for yourself isn't going to help. I think artists are really good at trying to see beauty within the darkness. And that's what I have been trying to do.'
Washington Post
18-06-2025
- Washington Post
We know time in nature fixes our brains. Here's why.
I hiked the Appalachian Trail last week. I hasten to add, for those who remember a certain former governor of South Carolina, that this is not a euphemism. My brother and I really were hiking the trail through Shenandoah National Park, albeit rather slowly and covered in moleskin and kvetching constantly about an expanding catalogue of muscle and joint pains. As we lumbered toward Brown's Gap one day, we heard a commotion behind us, and three men approached us at a speed suggesting they were being chased by a bear. It turned out to be extreme trail runner John Kelly and his escorts. Kelly is attempting to break the record for the fastest traversing of the 2,200-mile trail by doing it in less than 40 days — which requires him to complete between 55 and 60 miles per day, every day. I called out some encouragement to Kelly as he blew past us. 'Enjoy your hike,' he replied. I was enjoying my hike. But was he? Kelly is running more than two marathons each day and climbing the equivalent of Mount Everest nearly every other day as he runs from Georgia to Maine, enduring rain and hail and stealing a few hours of sleep here and there in the back of an SUV that his crew drives to rendezvous points. True, he's achieving a superhuman feat, and possibly a world record. But I seriously doubt he's feeling the sense of awe that I felt walking that same path. Kelly had no time to pause and gape at the mountain laurels in full bloom, which turned the path into a colonnade of pale, pink blossoms that gave the illusion of a June snowfall. He had no time to stop and listen to the flutelike call of the wood thrush, or of the otherworldly veery, which sings descending trills as if through a metal pipe. He didn't have the luxury of pausing to smile at the wobbly fawns following their mothers, or to laugh at the wild turkeys breaking awkwardly into a run when they saw us. I wandered happily along the trail last week spotting the colors of the forest in spring: the red columbine, the lavender wild geranium, the lacy maple-leaf viburnum, the tiny daisies of the Philadelphia fleabane, the ubiquitous white petals of the blackberry, and the little pink bells of the Eastern beardtongue. I found myself talking back to the birds that seemed to be following us: the Eastern towhee (drink-your-TEA), the red-eyed vireo (Here I am. Where are you?) and the occasional chestnut-sided warbler (Pleased, pleased, pleased to meetcha.) Turning one bend, I found acres of wild hydrangea blooming delicate and white. Around another, I spotted a mourning-cloak butterfly on a rock, then watched the shy forest creature flutter into the canopy to join half a dozen of its brethren in a twirling dance. I stopped and admired the American chestnut saplings, doomed to succumb to the chestnut blight but still persisting, determinedly, in resprouting. A stand of sweet birch presided over a forest floor of hay-scented fern, followed by an old-growth forest of northern red oak above a spicebush understory. Looking up at various times, I saw shagbark hickory, black cherry and, improbably, white ash that hadn't yet been felled by the emerald ash borer. Looking down, where my hiking poles kept sinking into vole tunnels under the path, I saw the tiny white teardrops of Virginia waterleaf and a carpet of dainty bluets. I stumbled upon a patch of puffy white flowers garnished with lily-like leaves. Stumped, I checked my iNaturalist app and identified it as fly poison. I saved the observation and, with my phone already out, checked my progress on All Trails. It had taken me 37 minutes to walk a single mile. I put my phone away and continued dawdling in the forest. This is what keeps me going during this terrible time for our country, for our world and for our planet. Each morning on the farm, I sit on the porch and listen to the birds. Each evening, I sit on the porch and watch the fireflies. On clear nights, I gaze into the blackness until my eyes adjust and the Milky Way appears. Thus restored, I am ready to face whatever man-made (or AI-made) calamity the next news cycle brings. 'We need the tonic of wildness,' Thoreau wrote nearly two centuries ago. He knew what all human generations have known, intuitively. Time in nature improves our mood and clears our head. Now, we have a rich reservoir of experimental science to prove it. Study after study has found that a connection to nature enhances our hedonic well-being (sense of happiness) and our eudaimonic well-being (sense of worth and purpose), while lifting us from anxiety and depression and boosting our physical health. Contact with nature lowers our pulse, reduces cortisol levels, improves immunity, lengthens our attention span and reduces stress. Walking in nature, or even viewing pictures of nature or hearing nature sounds, improves our cognitive functioning, measured by tasks such as repeating strings of numbers backward. Less understood is why nature has such a profound effect on our well-being — but this, too, is coming into focus. Time in nature often involves exercise, which has its own benefits. Being in nonthreatening natural environments, by reducing stress, improves mood. But the benefit goes much further than both of these. One idea, called attention restoration theory, holds that nature captures our involuntary attention with 'soft fascination,' which allows our brains to recover from all of the screen-driven things that demand our attention and bombard our minds for much of the day. 'It helps reduce that cognitive fatigue,' says John Zelenski, a psychologist at Carleton University in Canada who studies nature's effects on well-being. 'It's an optimal flow of information, where there are things to be curious about but not constantly demanding all our attention, so our minds can restore.' Another idea, the perceptual-fluency theory, holds that natural forms — non-straight edges, less color saturation, more variation — are inherently easier for the human brain to process. Studies have found that people are better able to solve puzzles after being shown images of visually complex natural environments than after viewing images of human-built environments. Researchers are also finding that experiences in nature enhance feelings of well-being by giving us a sense of awe. A view of nature's vastness — a starry night, a mountain vista — make us feel that we are part of something larger than ourselves. All of these ideas, in turn, are compatible with a much deeper hypothesis: that a connection with nature is innate, programmed into us by evolution. Four decades ago, the great naturalist E.O. Wilson termed this the 'biophilia' hypothesis. 'For more than 99 percent of human history people have lived in hunter-gatherer bands totally and intimately involved with other organisms,' he wrote. 'In short, the brain evolved in a biocentric world, not a machine-regulated world. It would be therefore quite extraordinary to find that all learning rules related to that world have been erased in a few thousand years, even in the tiny minority of peoples who have existed for more than one or two generations in wholly urban environments.' Rachel Carson, credited with launching the modern conservation movement, said much the same thing in 1954: 'Our origins are of the earth. And so there is in us a deeply seated response to the natural universe, which is part of our humanity.' The evidence for this is all around us, from the common fear of snakes and spiders that can be found in all cultures to the ways in which we design our parks and gardens. We like to be near water, and we like landscapes that give us a clear field of view while also providing trees or other elements of shelter. In other words, we are re-creating the savannas on which our ancestors chose to live for 2 million years. 'People seem to have an inherent, and I would argue hardwired, preference for nature scenes over a metropolis or a built landscape or geometric patterns or something abstract,' says Cindy Frantz, a professor of psychology and environmental studies at Oberlin College. 'We really gravitate towards natural stimuli. When you're trying to run a study and you want to expose people to nature or something else, it's very hard, in fact I would say impossible, to find a controlled condition that people like as much as nature.' Research backs this up. Office workers without windows are far more likely to have plants and nature pictures at work than workers who have windows. Study participants who take nature walks with expansive views gain more cognitive benefit than those who take walks with limited views. Even in restaurants, our preference for booths over tables in the open seems to have an origin on the savanna. Whatever causes our need for the tonic of nature, we now know how to maximize the benefit. Those who know more about the plants and animals they are viewing, those who interact more with nature or those who simply are more mindful about their nature experiences tend to derive more cognitive and mood improvements. Rich nature environments, with greater biodiversity, also tend to provide more mental lift than depleted green spaces. Yet even the most hardened urban dweller can get the sense of well-being that comes from contact with nature. 'We know that spending as little as 15 minutes in nature, a 15-minute walk in the park, can help people restore their cognitive function,' Frantz argues. And if even that is too much, you don't have to leave your apartment. Zelenski says a minute-long nature video 'is enough to give a pretty substantial mood boost.' Because of technology, we as humans have never been more disconnected from nature — yet, paradoxically, that same technology makes it easier than ever to reconnect with nature. This is encouraging not just for human happiness but also for the planet, for those who maintain some connection to nature are more likely to embrace conservation and to join the struggle to arrest the collapse of biodiversity. That is the truest expression of biophilia. As E.O. Wilson wrote: 'It seems possible that the naturalist's vision is only a specialized product of a biophilic instinct shared by all, that it can be elaborated to benefit more and more people. Humanity is exalted not because we are so far above other living creatures, but because knowing them well elevates the very concept of life.' I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue. Israel attacked Iran. President Donald Trump attacked Los Angeles protesters with the National Guard and Marines. A maniac targeted Minnesota lawmakers for assassination, killing two people. And, as the country and the world continued to spiral into chaos and violence, Trump celebrated the Army his birthday with a parade. But even this level of mayhem didn't breach the calm of the trail. Our plan had been to do the 107.5 miles of the Appalachian Trail that runs through Shenandoah National Park in six days. We started out strong — too strong, it turns out. My brother's knee gave out early on Day 4 and we called it quits after 63 miles, with plans to finish in the fall. Though we failed to reach our goal, the hike was a triumph in other ways, some of them unexpected. I only started learning bird calls this spring, but after a couple of days in the woods, I could identify all of the usual suspects of the forest: the towhee and the ovenbird, the American redstart and the indigo bunting, the eastern wood pewee and the tufted titmouse. Whenever I heard an unfamiliar call, I opened my Merlin app, which uses AI to turn any novice into an expert birder. It alerted me to the presence of a scarlet tanager and a blue-headed vireo and all manner of warblers: worm-eating, chestnut-sided, cerulean, hooded and black-and-white. After a couple of years of practice, even my aging brain can now identify many of the trees and shrubs of the forest, the oaks and hickories, the witch hazel and striped maple, the tulip trees and the black locust. The rest I could identify with iNaturalist, which is like carrying a biologist in your pocket. Here, it told me, was the mayapple and the hairy-jointed meadow parsnip. There was the black cohosh and the waxy meadow-rue. The tiger swallowtail butterfly I knew by sight, but the app told me that the huge blue insect I found was an oil beetle, the large snail was an eastern whitelip, and the tiny snake with a yellow collar the northern ring-necked snake. The furry scat I found told me there were larger carnivores — coyotes? bobcats? black bears? — who weren't allowing themselves to be seen. There was a time when I would have worried with every step on the trail that a bear or a copperhead was about to strike. But as I have spent more time in the woods and in the meadows, I have come to understand that, while some critters are capable of hurting us, virtually none of them mean us harm. I was in the forest, and I was among friends. Before I left the trail, I paused at an overlook. From there I could see the Shenandoah Valley and, before that, massive outcroppings of the 1.2-billion-year-old granite that once pushed the Blue Ridge as high as the Himalayas. I felt that sense of awe that the researchers talk about — and I was ready to go back to work.
The Independent
16-06-2025
- The Independent
Midway along the Appalachian Trail, weary thru-hikers find refuge and an ice cream challenge
Sam Cooper had just trekked 7 miles (11 kilometers) through a rain-sodden stretch of the Appalachian Trail when he sat down outside a little country store in Pennsylvania to take on its ice cream challenge. Nearly 40 minutes and 2,500 calories later, the dairy farmer from Chapel Hill, Tennessee, was polishing off the final titanium sporkful of chocolate chip cookie dough on Tuesday and adding his name to the list of 'thru-hikers' who have celebrated the trail's halfway point by downing a half-gallon of ice cream. By the end Cooper, 32, whose trail name is Pie Top, was calling the experience 'pure misery.' 'I don't think anybody should be doing this,' Cooper said cheerfully. 'This is not healthy at all.' The ice cream challenge is thought to have begun more than four decades ago at the Pine Grove Furnace General Store in Gardners, a few miles north of the current true halfway point on the 2,197-mile (3,536-kilometer) trail. Thru-hikers, as they're known, are the fraction of the trail's 3 million annual visitors who attempt to walk its entire length in a single, continuous trip. As they slog their way north through Virginia and Maryland, the ice cream challenge is a regular topic of conversation among thru-hikers at shelters and campfires, said Stephan Berens, 49, a psychiatric nurse from Nuremberg, Germany. Berens, whose trail name is Speedy, polished off his black cherry and vanilla in about 25 minutes after completing 17 miles (27 kilometers) on the trail that day — and with seven (11 kilometers) more to go that afternoon. 'The most free I've ever felt' Trail experts say hikers can need up to 6,000 calories a day, a practical challenge when food needs to be carried up and down rocky terrain. The slender Berens figures he's lost about 20 pounds (9 kilograms) since starting April 8. 'I thought it would be worse, but it's OK,' said Berens, smiling and patting his stomach after finishing the half-gallon. 'Such a crazy idea.' Zeke Meddock, trail name Petroglyph, didn't bother timing himself but finished his choice of a quart and a half carton of chocolate chip cookie dough and a pint of strawberry. The diesel mechanic from North Amarillo, Texas, began his hike on March 27, two months after finishing a stint in the U.S. Army. 'You're basically walking away from life,' said Meddock, 31. 'It's the most free I've ever felt.' So far this year, about 50 thru-hikers have finished the challenge, earning the honor of having their photos posted on a store bulletin board. In a notebook to record their thoughts, Chicken Louise wrote on May 24: 'Life choices?' The next day, Seagull weighed in with, 'I feel bad," and Hyena issued a cry for help: 'It was very fun for the first 15 minutes. Now, I (and my family) want to die.' The ice cream challenge record, less than 4 minutes, was set two years ago by a man with the trail name Squirt. Two decades ago, the mark to beat was about 9 minutes. Thru-hikers who want to attempt the record may only allow the $12 worth of ice cream to start to melt in the sun for a few minutes. They must be timed by a store employee. 'It's called the half-gallon challenge,' Cooper said. 'Very appropriately named.' Bragging rights and a spoon Bruce Thomas, a 41-year-old disability support worker from Medicine Hat in Alberta, Canada, passed on the ice cream challenge, opting instead for a breakfast sandwich and another one for the road. 'It's early morning and I'm pretty sure I cannot do it,' said Thomas, trail name Not Lazy. Those who do finish in a single sitting are awarded a commemorative wooden spoon — and bragging rights for the rest of their hike. Some people get sick. Others wash down the ice cream with a hamburger. The ice cream challenge is one of several quirky traditions and places along the trail. There's a shelter in Virginia where hikers confess their sins in a logbook, a two-hole outhouse in Maine with a cribbage board between the seats and a free canoe ferry across the Kennebec River that's considered an official part of the trail. And at Harriman State Park in Tuxedo, New York, hikers encounter the renowned 'Lemon Squeezer,' a narrow rock formation. About one in three people who launch a thru hike take the roughly 5 million steps required to go the distance. They most often walk from south to north, starting in Springer Mountain, Georgia, and wrapping up 13 states later at Maine's Mount Katahdin. The trek typically takes six months but the current speed record is about 40 days, according to the Appalachian Trail Conservancy. Meddock said there's talk that a man on the trail behind him may be on pace to break it. There's also been a lot of discussion among hikers about the extensive damage along the trail in southern states from September's Hurricane Helene. But mostly they think and talk about walking. 'It's always hard,' Thomas said. 'It's going to be hard. I never think about quitting. I only think about how I can do it.'
Associated Press
16-06-2025
- Associated Press
Midway along the Appalachian Trail, weary thru-hikers find refuge and an ice cream challenge
GARDNERS, Pa. (AP) — Sam Cooper had just trekked 7 miles (11 kilometers) through a rain-sodden stretch of the Appalachian Trail when he sat down outside a little country store in Pennsylvania to take on its ice cream challenge. Nearly 40 minutes and 2,500 calories later, the dairy farmer from Chapel Hill, Tennessee, was polishing off the final titanium sporkful of chocolate chip cookie dough on Tuesday and adding his name to the list of 'thru-hikers' who have celebrated the trail's halfway point by downing a half-gallon of ice cream. By the end Cooper, 32, whose trail name is Pie Top, was calling the experience 'pure misery.' 'I don't think anybody should be doing this,' Cooper said cheerfully. 'This is not healthy at all.' The ice cream challenge is thought to have begun more than four decades ago at the Pine Grove Furnace General Store in Gardners, a few miles north of the current true halfway point on the 2,197-mile (3,536-kilometer) trail. Thru-hikers, as they're known, are the fraction of the trail's 3 million annual visitors who attempt to walk its entire length in a single, continuous trip. As they slog their way north through Virginia and Maryland, the ice cream challenge is a regular topic of conversation among thru-hikers at shelters and campfires, said Stephan Berens, 49, a psychiatric nurse from Nuremberg, Germany. Berens, whose trail name is Speedy, polished off his black cherry and vanilla in about 25 minutes after completing 17 miles (27 kilometers) on the trail that day — and with seven (11 kilometers) more to go that afternoon. 'The most free I've ever felt' Trail experts say hikers can need up to 6,000 calories a day, a practical challenge when food needs to be carried up and down rocky terrain. The slender Berens figures he's lost about 20 pounds (9 kilograms) since starting April 8. 'I thought it would be worse, but it's OK,' said Berens, smiling and patting his stomach after finishing the half-gallon. 'Such a crazy idea.' Zeke Meddock, trail name Petroglyph, didn't bother timing himself but finished his choice of a quart and a half carton of chocolate chip cookie dough and a pint of strawberry. The diesel mechanic from North Amarillo, Texas, began his hike on March 27, two months after finishing a stint in the U.S. Army. 'You're basically walking away from life,' said Meddock, 31. 'It's the most free I've ever felt.' So far this year, about 50 thru-hikers have finished the challenge, earning the honor of having their photos posted on a store bulletin board. In a notebook to record their thoughts, Chicken Louise wrote on May 24: 'Life choices?' The next day, Seagull weighed in with, 'I feel bad,' and Hyena issued a cry for help: 'It was very fun for the first 15 minutes. Now, I (and my family) want to die.' The ice cream challenge record, less than 4 minutes, was set two years ago by a man with the trail name Squirt. Two decades ago, the mark to beat was about 9 minutes. Thru-hikers who want to attempt the record may only allow the $12 worth of ice cream to start to melt in the sun for a few minutes. They must be timed by a store employee. 'It's called the half-gallon challenge,' Cooper said. 'Very appropriately named.' Bragging rights and a spoon Bruce Thomas, a 41-year-old disability support worker from Medicine Hat in Alberta, Canada, passed on the ice cream challenge, opting instead for a breakfast sandwich and another one for the road. 'It's early morning and I'm pretty sure I cannot do it,' said Thomas, trail name Not Lazy. Those who do finish in a single sitting are awarded a commemorative wooden spoon — and bragging rights for the rest of their hike. Some people get sick. Others wash down the ice cream with a hamburger. The ice cream challenge is one of several quirky traditions and places along the trail. There's a shelter in Virginia where hikers confess their sins in a logbook, a two-hole outhouse in Maine with a cribbage board between the seats and a free canoe ferry across the Kennebec River that's considered an official part of the trail. And at Harriman State Park in Tuxedo, New York, hikers encounter the renowned 'Lemon Squeezer,' a narrow rock formation. About one in three people who launch a thru hike take the roughly 5 million steps required to go the distance. They most often walk from south to north, starting in Springer Mountain, Georgia, and wrapping up 13 states later at Maine's Mount Katahdin. The trek typically takes six months but the current speed record is about 40 days, according to the Appalachian Trail Conservancy. Meddock said there's talk that a man on the trail behind him may be on pace to break it. There's also been a lot of discussion among hikers about the extensive damage along the trail in southern states from September's Hurricane Helene. But mostly they think and talk about walking. 'It's always hard,' Thomas said. 'It's going to be hard. I never think about quitting. I only think about how I can do it.'
