This theory focuses on cognitive processes and proposes that our capacity for mental attention can be depleted by activities demanding prolonged, effortful focus — leading to fatigue, frustration, and inability to concentrate. Urban environments heavily tax the top-down voluntary attentional control that is required to filter relevant from irrelevant stimuli adequately. Demands from the urban environment deplete this cognitive resource, and can thereby worsen performance on tasks that rely on this focused, directed attention. According to ART, natural environments invoke a different sort of attention from people – a sense of “fascination,” “being away,” “extent,” and “compatibility” – this results in the replenishment of directed attention because they are less heavily taxed in these alternative environments. This, in turn, leads to improved performance on tests that measure memory and attention.
3. Improve Balance & Proprioception
Proprioception, also known as kinesthesia, is the ability to sense and freely move your body and limbs in your external environment. Having this kinesthetic awareness is important for day-to-day living and vital for sports performance. As you walk along a trail, your leg and core muscles are constantly engaging and contracting to provide stability and balance over uneven terrain. As these core stabilizing muscles strengthen over time, balance improves but it’s not just stabilizing muscles that improve balance. Hiking also helps increase proprioception, which is the mind’s awareness of the position and movement of the body in relation to its surroundings. As you hike, the brain is processing every rock and root and gauging what it will take to step over obstacles. With practice, the brain becomes more adept at judging these obstacles, and as a result, balance improves.
As we get older, it’s really important to keep working on balance in order to prevent falls. Hiking is a fun way to improve balance while spending time in the outdoors.
4. Hiking boosts the brain, mood and self-esteem
City dwellers have a 20% higher risk of anxiety disorders and a 40% higher risk of mood disorders as compared to people in rural areas. People born and raised in cities are twice as likely to develop schizophrenia. Research shows that, people who spend more time in nature, and less time with technology, are up to 50% more creative when it comes to problem-solving tasks. When comparing individuals doing a recreational climb of a forest tree versus a concrete tower of the same height, tree climbers were more relaxed; experienced greater vitality; and expressed reduced tension, confusion, and fatigue.
Hiking is a great way to build community. Not only can it forge new friendships, but group activities provide social support and can offset feelings of doubt, worry, or fear.
The term Shinrin-yoku was coined by the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries in 1982, and can be defined as making contact with and taking in the atmosphere of the forest. The purpose was twofold: to offer an eco-antidote to tech-boom burnout and to inspire residents to reconnect with and protect the country’s forests. Now a tradition in Japanese culture, many people travel outside of the city to walk in forests on weekends which produces both physiological and psychological benefits. It is considered to be the most widespread activity associated with forest and human health. Forest walking participants have higher activity levels in the immune system cells that act to reject tumors and cells infected by viruses, and have reduced levels of stress indicators (including systolic blood pressure and noradrenaline and cortisol levels). For diabetic patients, walking in a forest was more effective at decreasing blood glucose levels than other forms of exercise, such as walking on a treadmill. The results of studies performed on the physiological effects of Shinrin-yoku show that forest environments could lower concentrations of cortisol, lower pulse rate, lower blood pressure, increase parasympathetic nerve activity, and lower sympathetic nerve activity compared with city settings and can aid in effectively relaxing the human body.
May it be hiking, trekking, backpacking or wilderness recreation; good gear will make your experience fun and safe. Be sure to carry high quality equipment on your next adventure.
To rejuvenate the locked down wanderers’ soul
A Prescription of 10 Mountaineering Books by Anindya Mukherjee
My uncle Sujal Mukherjee was one of the first generation mountaineers of West Bengal. His tryst with the Himalaya started in 1961 till he breathed his last in 1994. Instrumental as his passion for the craft was for my own introduction to the mountains, it was his prodigious appetite for mountain literature that showed me the seminal steps to enrich whatever I had begun to learn and extend whatever visage of the art and tradition of mountaineering I had begun to conceive.
There is a wealth of literature about or inspired by mountains and it's easy to see why. One only has to think of a mountain and powerful adjectives simply tumble from your fingertips: solitary, ancient, vast, meditative, and God-like. As rivers often represent the flow of life, the mountains too are a handy metaphor for the insignificance of man or even a looming reminder that ours is a planet built on nature's magnificent brutality.
Below is a list of ten books (in no particular order). They remain as my all time favorite books of mountaineering literature. If classics can be defined in terms of their lasting freshness, then the following books are definitely ‘classics’ of the mountain literature. I strongly recommend them to both our avid mountain wanderers and armchair mountaineers alike.
1. Kamet Conquered - Frank Smythe
Frank Smythe’s fascinating book Kamet Conquered tells of his successful bid to make the first ascent of Kamet (7,756 metres) in 1931.Through Smythe, an experienced high-altitude mountaineer, the reader experiences all the tension, fatigue, discomfort and struggle of a major expedition but is also able to enjoy the sublime descriptions of nature at its wildest and most beautiful. Smythe is a keen observer of light, cloud and colour and his spiritual prose conjures up a palpable sense of the Himalaya.
There is a rich sense of history within these pages; the book is very much of its time. However, the sometimes harsh colonial attitudes do not eclipse the genuine respect Smythe has for his Indian and Sherpa companions, nor what these remarkable men achieved. Through this journey, we are led from the dank, steamy foothills of the Himalaya, to its harsh and inhospitable peaks as Smythe and his team push themselves to their limits.
Frank Sydney Smythe was an extremely gifted and well-traveled mountaineer who wrote many very popular books about mountaineering during the first half of the last century. He achieved prominence in mountaineering circles following two impressive seasons in the Alps in 1927 and 1928. He subsequently climbed extensively in the Himalayas.
(Source: Chessler Books & Google Books)
gear up for world travel2. Annapurna: First Conquest of an 8000-meter Peak - Maurice Herzog
Annapurna: First Conquest of an 8000-meter Peak (1951) is a book by French climber Maurice Herzog, leader of the 1950 French Annapurna expedition, the first expedition in history to summit and return from an 8000+ meter mountain, Annapurna in the Himalaya. Annapurna was the first mountain over 8,000m to be climbed.
mount annapurna first ascent 8000 meters
In late 1950, Maurice Herzog lay in the American hospital at Neuilly-sur-Seine, on the outskirts of Paris, dictating what would become the bestselling mountaineering book of all time, Annapurna, published the following year. The effort was emotionally exacting, as he revisited every twist and agonising turn of one of the most important Himalayan expeditions in the sport's history. With breathtaking courage and grit manifest on every page, Annapurna is one of the greatest adventure stories ever told. It is considered a classic of mountaineering literature and perhaps the most influential climbing book ever written.
(Source: The Guardian & Wikipedia)
3. The White Spider - Heinrich Harrer
The White Spider (1959; with chapters added in 1964; original title: Die Weisse Spinne) is a book written by Heinrich Harrer that describes the first successful ascent of the Eiger Nordwand (Eiger north face), a mountain in the Berner Oberland of the Swiss Alps. Not one for the faint-hearted, the action of this book includes avalanches, rockfall and brutal storms abound in Harrer’s record of a significant period of mountaineering history.
The White Spider (1959; with chapters added in 1964; original title: Die Weisse Spinne) is a book written by Heinrich Harrer that describes the first successful ascent of the Eiger Nordwand (Eiger north face), a mountain in the Berner Oberland of the Swiss Alps. Not one for the faint-hearted, the action of this book includes avalanches, rockfall and brutal storms abound in Harrer’s record of a significant period of mountaineering history.
first successful ascent of mount Eiger north face
From 1935-1958, personal ambitions and national rivalries funnelled climbers from across Europe to take up ropes, crampons and ice axes in pursuit of a glorious new conquest: the first ascent of the North Face. Teamwork, competition, tactical retreats, heroic rescues and desperate tragedies unfold on this unforgiving, icy face. The White Spider takes readers to a place where few can follow. Harrer illuminates the profound lessons that are learned on the severe edges of our world.
(Source: The Guardian & Wikipedia)
4. The Shining Mountain - Peter Boardman (with material by Joe Tasker)
‘It’s a preposterous plan. Still, if you do get up it, it’ll be the hardest thing that’s been done in the Himalaya.’ - So spoke Chris Bonington when Peter Boardman and Joe Tasker presented him with their plan to tackle the unclimbed West Wall of Changabang – the Shining Mountain – in 1976.
Tasker contributes a second voice throughout this story, which includes details of the inevitable tensions on such an expedition as well as a record of the moment of joy upon reaching the summit ridge against all odds. The Shining Mountain, is one of the outstanding works of mountaineering literature, and won the 1979 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for literature.
(Source: V Publishing & Wikipedia)
5. Round Kangchenjunga – Douglas Freshfield
This work by Douglas William Freshfield (1845-1934), enhanced by photographs of the great mountain photographer Vittorio Sella (1859-1943), is considered by many to be one of the best of the classic books on mountaineering. At the time the trip was taken, although the team had the authorization of the ruler of Sikkim, they had none by Nepal as it was then a closed kingdom. The expedition lasted seven weeks, and when they descended into Nepal, the first villagers they met...were astonished to learn that this tattered group had come down from the north. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.
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