Key points

If you're not used to it, nature can feel intimidating or even unpleasant.

It takes time and experience, sometimes in baby steps, to feel comfortable in nature.

Once you find your corner of nature that you like, it can be an emotional refuge.

I hadn’t yet encountered nature when I flew from NYC to visit my friend who had moved to Menlo Park in California. On the day after I arrived, she and some friends took me for hike in Humboldt Park, a nearby nature preserve. It sounded great, then there we were in this vast landscape with fields that went on forever and hills I couldn’t imagine ascending.

Of course, we were high. We were in our 20s. We were high a lot. That made things worse. My mind spun. What if I were to get a mile out and didn’t have the strength to get back? I’d n

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