To return to Rachel Kaplan’s argument I began to explore a while back – really to revisit my walk (not really very adventurous) up Old Rd in Headington to the Hollow Way down into Wheatley.
The Kaplans (Kaplan and Kaplan 1989 p182) suggest four key elements to the outdoors as as restorative experience: Being Away; Extent; Fascination; Compatibility. And I saw the first two today, most powerfully evidenced in the diminution of background noise. It isn’t just that urban rumble itself disturbs, surely? This article suggests it is, and I present the link without comment. It just makes me think that “Away” is possibly away from the urban stressors of background noise, this allowing greater fascination, itself requiring extent and compatibility.
Are they all so mutually interdependent for everyone- or is it just that in the quiet on Shotover I became so much more aware of my internal chatter and my need to still it? It was just a personal thing I’m sure, how I felt stilled on the other side of the hill, looking out at the smudge of trees in the rain, and the red kites wheeling over a ploughed field.
nicktomjoe 