By Solana Kline [Honorary four-legger, dog rescue advocate, and US public lands/trails researcher]
Golden hour is thick this evening, sunset’s dense embrace of way-too-early spring warm. The trees and grasses aren’t awake yet. They know better—after all, it’s only mid-March. Descending from our hike, me and the hounds have one more stream to cross, sleeping willow branches dancing with the breezes, dipping in and out of the babbling waters.
Betts is tiptoeing across, avoiding the frigid flow on her delicate princess paws. There is pure peace in the air up here, the calm before the storm of Spring flurry and life and growth. A quiet that perhaps only exists at the change of seasons, like that unmistakable silence of first snows. Betty stands there mid-stream, balancing on boulders, sunbeams haloing her white hairs.
Micks has already flopped down in the soft tufts of last year’s creekbank grasses, rolling around scratching his back, nestling his nose into the earth down. I sit beside him. After a hectic year of man-made mayhem and unnatural human hustle, I sit with this boy in the sunset. Betts braves the creek passing again to re-join the pack chill. We all breathe deep and exhale, palpable shared calm.
of a granite couch
Out here there is no mile-long to-do list, no phone service, no traffic, no people. Just our wild pack communing with our real home, where we get to be feral and free. Where our respective amygdales rest, where our respective past traumas are carried downstream and upwind, down into the earth to be reborn as wild rose blossoms. Where all that matters is deciphering the next sniffer that floats across our faces.
Out here, we remember our natural state as animals, unincumbered by societal pressures to be a good dog (i.e., don’t sniff butts/crotches, don’t pee there, don’t romp around or bark too loudly) and be a docile woman (i.e., don’t sniff butts/crotches, don’t pee there, don’t romp around or speak too loudly). Out here, we just are, our stress responses calm, and we nap in the grace of sunbeams on an early Spring day.
Nature heals us because it is home, it is where Homo sapiens (humans) and Canis lupus familiaris (domesticated dogs) have lived for hundreds of thousands of years, up until industrialization and urbanization, mainly the last one or two hundred years. For the first time in dog-human coexistence, we are living in concrete, artificial noise, and constant nervous system stimulation.
Now nature, our home, is out there, away from the city development and norms of polite society. And with it is one of our most immense healing sources for both canine and human healing. In nature, our minds, bodies, psyches, and souls heal. They regenerate via rest and peace and connection in and with nature.
Most of my research focuses on this, the non-monetary value and worth of our US public lands, especially trails. I’ve experienced this exponential healing firsthand. US public land trails have literally saved my life more than once, but, more importantly, I have seen and felt the immense impact outdoor time in nature has for our pups, especially our adopted pups who may have some difficult past traumas and lingering responses.
Mickey and Betty both came from human-urban landscapes. Ms. Betts as an ex-street dog from Sacramento, littering from her first heat, healing broken wrists and ribs in alleys, fending off bums and other street dogs. Eventually being separated from her litter by the puppy police and thrown in the high-kill clink and death row.
Thank goodness Oregon Friends of Shelter Animals swooped her up, with so many other survivors, in their old gutted out RV and fostered her up in Oregon where I could find her. Mr. Mickey was born and prodded to fight, caged and chained, scarred skins and broken bones, waterless, no space to run or play, tortured with fire and famine, ears assaulted with guns and constant onslaught of noise and aggression. Thank goodness some good human reported his conditions, and he ended up in the Nevada Humane Society where me and Betts could find him.
The first place I brought both of these wagglers was to the trails in the woods. Where their trauma and fear responses could calm, where the fabricated human constraints and controls melted away. Where they could sprint and sniff and explore the ways that their biology told them they were destined to. It is out here in nature, on the trails together as a pack, that I’ve seen these two learn how to be dogs, learn how to be a pack.
In our human societies, we call this ecotherapy or nature-based therapy. Humans across the globe are practicing this to heal and manage PTS and other high trauma/high stress responses. There isn’t much research or programming on how we can employ these strategies for helping our pups heal and be healthy as well, so let’s go ahead and change that right now.
The researched benefits of nature-based healing for humans are: reducing stress hormones like cortisol, physical grounding and reconnection to the body, coming out of fight-flight response and regulating the nervous system, using sensory experiences to restructure our brain’s neural pathways into calm positive possibilities, restoring trust and safety, fostering safe connections to ourselves and nature, re-learning relationships with self and others, learning/remembering how to play and adventure, and remembering that life is more than the trauma we experienced.
Betty and Mickey have experienced all of these benefits during our trail time together in nature. The changes were both immediate and long-term. Betty had only been in concrete and pavement, she went from being a novice tottering off-road explorer to bounding around as the nimblest of mountain goats, beasting across any terrain with ease should she get that zoomy inclination. Shifting from flinching at any little creak or critter to becoming the stout warrior staring down bear and elk and human and cattle.
On Mickey’s Freedom Day, our first stop was Brown’s Creek Trail up in USFS lands above Reno. Slow and hesitant at first, he delighted in the soft texture of the dirt trail, Tigger-springing around, unsure of this new environment, promptly falling into the creek- not yet understanding thin ice and flowing water. A completely different pup from the terrified and highly reactive boy I’d met hours earlier in the humane society.
Over the years, our daily trail adventures have brought peace, confidence, play, and grounding to each of these hounds. They truly have become fully themselves and fully a pack through the healing of trails in nature.
We prioritize nature trail time for exploration and peace. For healing and bonding. For remembering that we are here on earth to connect. To give and receive unconditional love. To play and laugh and wag together as pack families. To remember our birthright and roots as animals of this earth. To be and feel the goodness of nature and ourselves.
Until next time, here’s to the healing powers of happy tails and happy trails of Spring!
