Me and Nature. An autist’s connection to Nature
19th February 2022 - Guest Post by Therese-Åsa Karl Lynx
Autism and Nature - a connection that some have said is stronger in autistic people than in neurotypical people. Others say that it’s the sensory input imbalance that neurodivergent people often experience that makes a connection with Nature stronger and more profound once you find it. Others yet point to the many studies showing that everyone, no matter how your brain is wired, benefit from being in and close to Nature.
They might all be true, and more studies need to be done for conclusive, hard-fact evidence. In the meantime, however, I prefer to revert to personal, anecdotal evidence based on human, autistic, experience. Here is one such account.
Nature with an N
You might have noticed that I wrote the word Nature in the headline with a capital N. It’s because She is that important to me and the love I feel for Nature is something that I still struggle to explain to others and it puzzles me that not everyone feels the same way.
She’s my lungs and my breathing organ. She’s my antidepressant and stress reducer and I truly believe that I would become clinically depressed if I didn’t get to live close to her.
I’ve been lucky enough to be able to live close to Nature for many years. In the countryside with a piece of land attached, a small town five minutes walk from us, and, although we can see the neighbours below our house, they are over a hundred yards away.
That’s “close to Nature”, right? It should be enough, no? Everyone that comes to visit tells me what a wonderful and peaceful place this is. And don’t get me wrong, compared to the city it is peaceful. But somehow my stress level never reduces fully. Somehow I never feel a hundred per cent relaxed. But why?
“I’ve been living close to Nature”, I said at the beginning of this article. And it’s true, I have. But with time I’ve realised that what I define as “close to Nature” is very different from how most other people define it.
This became clear to me when we wanted to move to a different house. Me and my partner live in the south of Spain, and although we’ve been lucky enough to live in the countryside for many years, we wanted something different. Something more in Nature.
So we began to search for another house to rent. And we searched for ‘countryside’ and ‘rural’ and ‘not town’ and we found what other people considered to be the perfect match.
“Only 3 (three) minutes to the forest” they said.
“Such a perfect place for you, there are only 15 (fifteen) houses in the village”, and
“This is what you’re looking for, a tranquil little town with nature all around it. Only ten minutes drive and you’re in it.”
And my whole being screamed that this is not Nature. It’s a town, it’s civilisation, it’s man-made and I will have neighbours around me.
But it also got me thinking, and I realised that these people really did believe it’s in Nature. They considered a small town to be in Nature. And I began to ponder what Nature means for me.
I first came to think of what Nature is not. And it’s not a house in the countryside with neighbours you can see. It’s not a house with a big plot of land five minutes from town. It’s not a place in the countryside that’s been civilised to the point where you don’t feel Her any longer. With a patio right outside the door so you don’t need to step on the grass. With a porch so you never have to feel the soft ground underneath your feet as you relax.
Instead, Nature for me is the wilderness. It’s the absence of human noises and the presence of birdsong. It’s the green grass and the tall trees and it’s there, right outside your doorstep. It’s the feeling of the elements and the knowing She’s there, right next to you.
That’s where my stress levels reduce. That’s where I feel at home. That’s where my being sings.
In a perfect world, I would live in a yurt or a treehouse. I would sleep outside in the summers and feel the wind howling outside wooden doors in the winter. I would enjoy the silence and absence of any humans close to me because the place would be far away from any civilisation. That, for me, is ‘living close to Nature’.
The autist connection with Nature
So how come, you might ask, that I have such a strong connection with Nature? If you’re a neurotypical, you might argue that it’s a coincidence, that my autism and experience of Nature is not connected. And you might be right.
But I feel that the truth, for me, lies in both my sensory sensitivity to the world and how Nature, even from a scientific standpoint, helps humans relax and calm down. But my sensory sensitivity is also connected to something else, a branch, if you like, of a heightened sensitivity to the world as a whole. Of strongly feeling, both the good and the bad. And I believe, and feel, that it connects me to my surroundings on a deeper level than what we, in today’s world, normally see. And it manifests itself as a deep love for what I deem almost an extension of humans, Nature. An extension I wish more people would be able to feel.
I still believe it’s possible to find my perfect piece of land to live in. I just need to find it myself, not ask others to help me find a place close to Nature.
If you would like to learn more about the importance of terminology, then read this article on “A Shift from Autism Acceptance to Appreciation”.
If you are autistic or neurodiverse and interested in collaborating with me on further research and writing about neurodiversity and nature connection, please get in touch by emailing me at hugh@silvotherapy.co.uk.
Hugh
