The Stranger in the Woods_ The - Michael Finkel

signals that are fired directly into the auditory cortex of the brain.
The body responds immediately, even during sleep. People who live in cities experience chronically
elevated levels of stress hormones. These hormones, especially cortisol, increase one’s blood pressure,
contributing to heart disease and cellular damage. Noise harms your body and boils your brain. The word
“noise” is derived from the Latin word nausea.
You don’t need that much quiet to change things, or even have to be alone. But you do have to seek out a
soothing environment, and you must do it often. Japanese researchers at Chiba University found that a daily
fifteen-minute walk in the woods caused significant decreases in cortisol, along with a modest drop in blood
pressure and heart rate. Physiologists believe our bodies relax in hushed natural surroundings because we
evolved there; our senses matured in grasslands and woods, and remain calibrated to them.
A Duke regenerative biologist, Imke Kirste, working with mice, found that two hours of complete silence
per day prompted cell development in the hippocampus, the brain region related to the formation of
memory. Studies of humans in the United States, Great Britain, Holland, and Canada have shown that after
passing time in quiet, rural settings, subjects were calmer and more perceptive, less depressed and anxious,
with improved cognition and a stronger memory. Time amid the silence of nature, in other words, makes
you smarter.
For Knight, the quintessence of serenity was a late-summer heat wave in midweek, when nearly every
cabin was unoccupied. This happened maybe once a year. Then, deep in the night, he’d leave his camp and
walk until the trees abruptly ended and the waters of the pond swayed before him. He’d drop his clothes and
slip into the water. The lake’s top few inches, after cooking all day in the sun, would be nearly bath warm.
“I’d stretch out in the water,” he said, “and lie flat on my back, and look at the stars.”