Best of Chicago 2021: Ted C. Fishman’s Personal Best

Photo: Ted C. Fishman

From NewCity

There’s nothing like emptyheadedness to clear the mind. Bobolink Meadow, a lush bit of fields, woods and water in Jackson Park, is where I go for a good lobe scrub. Over the last two anxious, sullying years the way the Meadow purges my intelligence has been just the ablution I’ve needed. I’m not alone. Mental health professionals have been heavily prescribing doses of wilder spaces for the afflictions of our era. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation distilled dozens of studies on the health benefits of exposure to trees and green space and it turns out that nature is a natural remedy science can get behind. Even as little as ten minutes a day out in natural places helps treat stress by decreasing the stress hormone cortisol. It lifts one’s mood by upping the levels of dopamine and endorphins. Spells in nature lower blood pressure and heart rates. They boost one’s immunity, help with healing and somehow both increase vigor and improve sleep. For me, there is one puzzling finding in the research. It holds that nature scenes are associated with mindfulness. I get that. I look closely at what I meet in Bobolink Meadow. But how did the studies overlook the benefits of mindlessness, the state of near complete cluelessness as to ...

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