The Nature Principle

Your location has a major impact on your exposure to nature and your happiness and health. Louv introduces two people who both made the decision to get out of the city and move to the countryside to find nature and peace. Citing several studies that look at happiness and health based on location, the results reveal that there are too many factors involved to be based solely off our location, and Louv points out that a person needn’t live in the country to reap natural therapy benefits. Louv refers to the move to rural areas as “green flight.” Acknowledging that we can’t all afford to move to nature destination towns and cities, Louv ponders whether we can discover the same nature benefits in our current towns: “This is not an argument against following your heart to find your special place. But a suggestion that it may be closer than you think” (99).

While conducting “high-carbon ecotourism,” Louv and his wife Kathy learned about “live fences” in Costa Rica, using natural plants and trees. Travel can help us to see our own world, a condition that Louv highlights as “Place Blindness.” Living in San Diego, he and his wife became bored with the natural habitat until they started exploring more nature venues and going on group hikes with knowledgeable guides.