For all of us with a tech addiction, calming ways to destress with nature

How My Device Addiction Progresses

I have a confession to make – I’m deeply addicted to my phone. No, any sort of technology or device. Since I was a toddler, I played on computers and phones starting with the Windows ‘98 clunky desktop computers. My dad was an engineer for a phone manufacturer and I grew up seeing how cell phones evolved from the prototypes he brought home. I IM-ed my friends every night during middle school, and Facebook came out when I was a freshman in high school. Devices were woven into my existence and I simply cannot live without them.

Devices are fascinating as fuck and the fact that we can do SO MUCH on them (writing, art, videos, community, socialization, work, meditating, bookkeeping) makes them all the more welcome in my life. Being an artist, writer, musician, and author I’ve always got a reason to be on my phone, computer, iPad. Even if I’m not doing any activity, it’s fun to sit around and scroll pretty ideas on Pinterest or watch videos about wildcrafting something.

Despite all the good things technology brings us, some of us are sensitive to too much and get… sick. Sometimes my device usage and the amount of pressure I put on myself to “put myself out there” with my creativity gives me migraines. If I switch from share to scroll, my jealousy and resentment flare up seeing others where I want to be in life. Too much news and world information ramps up my anxiety and fear and my chest starts closing in. Being sensitive, I need to keep a balance or I get out of wack physically, mentally, emotionally and even spiritually.

Which is… where I be been for a while – feeling lousy about life and my nervous system zapped from too much stimulation. I’m caught between wanting to feel rested and relieved to feeling entertained and numb. Life isn’t always easy, and since I’m helping run a small business and do the labor I get so burnt out during our busy seasons. I run to the quickest thing to help me chill out and that’s my phone. An activity I can do lying down.

Then, I start to forget about life. Adult things like cooking and cleaning get shoved in a closet. Unfinished tasks pile up into more overwhelm. Next, I tarry into the pits of doom and despair.

Dramatic, but true! Devices are an addiction and I literally can’t stop sometimes, even when I’m hurting myself by skipping dinner or giving myself a migraine with information overload.

I had to get real with myself otherwise I’d contract some kind of disease of self pity. New ideas came to me, well old ones I always practiced, and I slowly incorporated them into my life again. Like any new habit, it takes some effort in the beginning until the momentum gets rolling. Momentum can carry us far if we want it to.

A Solution!

What’s the one thing opposite of technology?

Nature!

Nature is a huge part of my life and I pretty much live in nature by calling a camper my home. I purposely do this… live on this edge of comfort and rustic living. It was a way for me to find peace within myself while still being “modern.” In the past, I went totally off grid with my lifestyle, making it a chore to use my devices so I’d find out who I was without them.

This “self” is my happy place and I can always turn toward it when I’m feeling overwhelmed. Being one of those people who always has to do something, I can always keep myself busy offline with the array of hobbies and chores I have to do to keep my life stable. I’m fidgety, my mind is always interested in something, and I’m goal oriented always working towards my dreams.

Using our tech for relaxation purposes doesn’t always work since the apps we use are made to stimulate us even more. Dopamine highs are a real thing, and something I struggle with.

You know, that feeling that you’re short circuiting a little bit? Eyes twitch, the head buzzes. Pretty soon, we can become a zombie.

Turning to nature when I’m feeling zapped, overwhelmed, overstimulated is my solution.

I am another human experiencing life alongside of you in our evolving world. It’s so easy to be overwhelmed these days with everything stimulating us.

Between being addicted to technology and always needing to do something, I’ve compiled a list of all my favorite nature activities to do instead of rotting my brain and overworking myself.

This guide is for those who always need to keep busy, who may fidget a lot and need to be occupied. For those who have an addiction to the shiny things of the internet.

I for one have a hard time not doing anything, but this list of “doing nothing” to help calm my nervous system has worked great: some of us don’t like sitting still for too long. These activities are calming and serene and can give one that inner peace they’re looking for.

The Ideas

Try a technology detox. Commit to a day, a weekend, a week of minimal tech use. Sometimes, it’s as simple as turning it off for a day to make you feel better. Sometimes, I need a week! During your technology detox, do your favorite hobbies or anything on this list.

To help me in my day-to-day life with checking my phone less, I keep all notifications turned off from apps except for text and phone calls. If I’m really trying to keep quiet, I’ll keep “Do not disturb” on. I use a VPN to block ads and to hide my location. All my devices live in a backpack that sometimes gets stored under my bed for weeks on end so I don’t use them.

I also delete all apps from my phone that are the worst for my tech addiction. YouTube and Instagram are the worst so they can only be accessed from my desktop. It prevents me from incessantly checking YouTube for stats or getting lost in a rabbit hole. Or consuming the complete biography of peoples’ highlight reels on Instagram. If I need to redownload the app to post something about my blog, that’s fine. I’ll just delete it when I’m done in the fifteen minutes I allow myself lol.

Pack a picnic with your favorite snacks. Think, meat, cheese, crackers, jam, fruit. Or if you’re vegan – hummus, crackers, veggies, fruit, popcorn. Vegetarian? Maybe a nice dill dip, crackers, veggies, fruit. In colder weather, pack a thermos of fresh soup and another for hot (chaga) chocolate. Find a lovely place in nature to unwind on a blanket, lawn chairs, or the grass. Stay for three or so hours and bring a hobby to play with.

Get a hammock and take yourself into a forest. Lay in the hammock and look up at the trees. Dedicate an afternoon to this. Don’t use your phone for anything except a few photos if you need to. The last time I did this, I ended up staring at the fern leaves swaying next to me. The intricate patterns weaving to the ends of the leaves were captivating.

Find a creek and hop rocks. We like to take our dogs to the creek and together we hop across the rocks peeking out of the flowing water. It’s relaxing and fun to hop barefoot on the cool rocks, and to put our feet in while we’re relaxing. I’m not a huge fan of swimming and I’m terrified of deep water, so this gets the job done for me when I need to cool off by the creek.

Write poems, haikus, prose about your experience in the woods, ocean, prairies, lakes. What do you see? Hear? Smell? Sense? If you could make up a story about the place you’re in, what would it be? Austin and I wrote a haiku while sitting in the aspen forest one day, then the whole weekend became haikus where ever we went.

Bring a local guidebook for the plants/trees/mushrooms in your area and every time you go out in the forest, look up anything that catches your eye. After many years, you’ll become quite acquainted with the forest and turn into an amateur naturalist.

Add to your sketchbook pencil drawings of the plants you see and practice your skills. Getting deep into the details of a drawing can help you learn about plants, what the different types of leaves and flowers are, and will lead you to new connections between plants you didn’t know were related.

Learn how to forage & use the plants/trees in your area and try out a craft. Example – pine needle basket, agave cordage, basket weaving with willow, making stinging nettle yarn. For food, there’s fried chicken of the woods mushrooms, wild apple-sauce, stinging nettle soup, mugolio (pine cone syrup) and prickly pear jam. I use dried greens from the forest (like ramps, garlic mustard and nettles) as herbs in most of my dishes, it just adds this element of the forest to food that my heart loves.

When you get better at plant identification, make a goal to create an entire foraged meal. There’s tons of recipes in libraries and online (heh heh) that you can look up and begin your quest. If foraging for the whole meal is too intense, try foraging for some things like nettles, berries or ramps and visit the local farmer’s market for the rest of the ingredients. Create your food masterpiece and taste the different flavors from the earth.

Always be 100% sure of the plants/trees you’re identifying. There are poisonous plants out there that can hurt you, so always be safe! If you’re unsure, don’t use the plant, or take a local foraging class to get better at plant identification.

Go on a scavenger hunt! Create your own “quest list” or find one in a book. Spend the day in nature hiking to find the items on your list. If it’s good foraging season, I’ll do this for picking wild food or… photographing wildflowers! Back in Wisconsin where I’m from, I’d go on photo scavenger hunts on a quest to capture and catalogue the plants of the prairies.

Create art with things you find. Have you ever seen people creating intricate geometric designs with leaves, shells, rocks, sticks… I’ve always wanted to try this out and I imagine it takes a few hours of searching for the perfect items to put into a design. Wouldn’t it be a calming mental break to create your own?

Write music. If you’re a musician, bring your guitar, flute, ukulele, drum out in nature with you and write a song! Just like the tip above about the haikus/poems, write a song about your surroundings and how you’re feeling. Let the music write itself as you listen to nature’s symphony. Maybe crickets chirp for you to find the tempo, or the birds show you which notes to play. Let your intuition guide you in what wants to be written!

Go rockhounding! When Austin and I lived on the Oregon Coast, we spent many days scouring the beach for rock treasures, even in the relentless rain. Jaspers, agates, bloodstone, quartzes and even fossils washed up in the tide everyday, resetting the coastline with new gems. On some days, dozens of people joined us looking for their favorite rocks.

We rockhound in the desert too, sauntering around with our heads down looking for druzy quartz and stark jaspers. Rocks are literally everywhere and they are beautiful in their own diverse ways. Some people collect heart shaped rocks. The possibilities are endless of what you can find!

See insects as entertainment. What bugs are around you? What are they doing? What’s the grand plot in the insect world? Quickly you’ll realize you’re surrounded by ants, grasshoppers, aphids, butterflies, moths, flies, spiders and they’re playing out a grand silent drama. Use your imagination! Or just watch them.

Practice photography with a DSLR or an old SLR film camera. Or… buy a disposable camera! Use the area around your picnic to practice using manual mode and capture what you notice. This brings you into the present moment and an activity that makes you think deeper about lighting, composition, and color. I love photography and always lose myself in it so it’s the perfect activity for me.

You could also try doing a photoshoot of you in nature! This is super fun for me too – I’ll thrift a dress or an outfit and plan to take pictures all day in the “costume.” Sometimes, just normal clothes will do, it depends on how far you want to go with this. If you’re into photography and manual mode, capture the mood you’re feeling with the different settings – a lower f-stop means more details of the subject and a blurred background, but you could easily take it out of focus just a hair to make the photo look like it’s blurring between dimensions. Just some haunting and whimsical thoughts. 😀

Sketch/paint/*art* a scene. Are you sitting somewhere pretty? Create it on paper. Or get a sketchbook just for your nature drawings and fill it in. When you’re finished with the sketchbook, you’ll have beautiful memories to look back on and inspire you to keep going on weekend adventures. Each time you *art* something, you’ll get better and better, so not only will you have a book of wholesome memories, but a portfolio of how you’ve improved your skill over time.

Pick a plant nearby and really study it. Look deeply into its leaves as the segments get smaller and smaller, like you can see the individual cells of the leaves. Imagine the plant (especially ferns) growing and evolving in the spans of time. Hold a leaf and imagine the essence of the plant, its memory, its wisdom. Try drawing the plant and capturing all the details. Don’t worry if you think you can’t draw – you can, and it’s worth sitting down to do.

Learn the symbolic meanings of nature. Found a feather on your path? What bird did it come from, and what’s that bird symbolic of? Cultures from all around the world have seen different animals, plants, trees in nature as messages from the spirit world. Use what cultures have noticed for hundreds of years, or make up your own special meaning for finding plants or coming across a certain animal. It’s nice knowing we’re not alone on this planet and someone, somewhere is sending us signs of love and wisdom.

Connect with your feelings in nature’s silence. While you’re out in the forest, commit to no music, no podcast, no noise. Just listen to your thoughts, even if for a short time. Pretend you’re listening to a friend and be kind and compassionate with yourself, sort of like giving you space to be unconditionally yourself. Hear yourself, see yourself, try to understand what’s going on and then tell yourself it’s “okay.” Bring a journal and write about it if you’d like, or just brain vomit on the page, get everything out.

Long hikes and walk slow! Look at AllTrails or your local resource for finding hikes and pick a long one, like 5-10 miles (if you’re physically able to do so, if not maybe pick a 2-3 mile hike to get started with this practice!) It’s not so much about the valiant task of completing a long hike – it’s more about slotting out a few hours to a whole day of walking in nature. After about an hour of hiking, the mind seems to go quiet… like… nothing is there! Nothing to worry about. Thoughts will come and go, but the act of hiking and exercising is enough to move them from your mind. I always feel accomplished when I get done with a long hike and transformed spiritually. Like the forest cleansed my soul, filtering out all the bs I pick up in life.

Camping – go camping! If you’re on a budget, look for dispersed camping and either sleep in your car or bring a tent. We started using our truck for camping in the back, but in the past we had a sedan with seats that folded down, perfect to make a small bed of the back seat and trunk. Of course we’ve tent camped (and lived in a tent twice…), but because of the latter we opt for putting the camper cushions in the back of the truck for a cozy bed. Camping means a whole weekend away from modern life, connecting with more primal ways of cooking and doing menial tasks.

Go on slow walks everyday. After I left my year of (literal) off grid living on the Oregon Coast, I needed some time to process what tf just happened. I went for long, slow walks everyday. Took my dog with me and we’d be out for 2-4 hours wandering the neighborhood. Some days I’d walk eight miles just wandering. This time was so good for me to process *life*, exercise, and was the void space that created the seeds for Adventures Across and all the creative quests I’m on nowadays. Slow walks are just nice. An activity to do that alchemizes life experiences into something useful.

Set up a chill station somewhere and just look at the scenery. Watch the sunrise, the sunset, the ocean waves, the trees swaying in the breeze. Don’t do anything during this activity besides watch the scenery. Try for 15 minutes, then 30 minutes, an hour, an afternoon. On some of my camping trips lately, I’ve sat and watched some mountains for 3-5 hours. It was simply glorious to do nothing and watch nature change with the day. This was something great for me to unwind my brain – it was so filled with nonsense and stuff that wasn’t mine. Wide open spaces seem to do that for us.

Save activities that require tech use for bad weather days. This might not be possible for everyone, but if you’re in the middle of summer and the wilds are calling your name, answer! Save big projects and indoor activities for rainy, snowy, cold, blistering hot, or sleety weather. Sometimes it’s fun to go out during that sort of weather too, but I find it better for me to save indoor projects for bad weather days than to use the good ones stuck inside.

Other Thoughts

Some of these activities you can do during a break at work, or afterwards. Some, you could do in your neighborhood without going far from home. It’s really up to you on how far you want to go with these practices.

If you decide to have an outing somewhere remote, text a friend or a family member that you’re going out and give them your location. In the past I didn’t do this, but I do now for it makes me feel safer knowing someone knows where I am. My mom always thanks me.

When I get home from an outing, I go through my SD cards and sort my photos & film. Flip through my journals to see if there’s thoughts I’d like to elaborate on in an essay or poem. While out in the wilds I don’t use my tech much and I feel refreshed, but I do admit that I’m back on it ready to work on some project when I get home! This is a part of my balance – go full rustic and feel better about using my tech when I am home stuck inside.

If you’re not much of a “capture and share” type of person, go through what you’ve created anyway and display it in your home somewhere. Make a photo album of all the photography you practiced and keep it on your coffee table (yes, actually get the photos printed!). If you collected feathers or rocks, display them on your bookshelf. Frame your art. Put your wildcrafted projects on a shelf. Bring nature into your home and celebrate life with it.

Sometimes, we just need to sit and scroll because life can be hard or busy or too much sometimes. I get it, I really do. Let us be gentle in making small steps into living a healthier lifestyle though. It doesn’t do us any good to shame ourselves in excessive tech use in an effort to make us stop – rather, it’s easy to recognize when we’re taking it too far and remind ourselves we can sit on the porch, or go for a short walk to actually wind down.

It could take awhile, but if you make visiting nature a habit you do once or twice a week you’ll for sure start to feel better. This list is about balancing your free time between being on your devices and spending time doing something relaxing for your brain.

Since I started escaping to nature as a habit around ten years ago, my life has opened up like the Wild West. Being a feral forest fairy is now a part of my identity and inspires much of the creative work I put out into the world.

Not only do I feel some relief from the stress of life, but I found *my-self* out there in the wilds. Because nature is such a huge part of my life, I can easily tell when *life* is getting to be too much and I have to leave for a weekend to feel better. It’s all a balance, being in the modern world and escaping to the woods to meet my soul again.

I hope this guide inspires you to get out into nature to feel better. To balance your use. Because let’s get real – we’re all enjoying our tech and don’t want to quit using it completely. Just… less.

Which one of these ideas will you try next? What am I missing from the list?

Thanks for reading!

Ashley