Nature Therapy

BY BERNICE HALSBAND, TORONTO FIREFIGHTER, STATION 232-C

Brad Hoy’s first hiking adventure was a challenge. To be fair, it wasn’t something he was prepared for. But in typical firefighter fashion, he finished the hike anyway.

La Cloche Silhouette is notoriously hard. Experienced hikers spend weeks planning everything surrounding the trip. Everything is important, from headlamp to footwear. Permits have to be booked, routes planned, sites chosen. The 78km loop that winds its way through the La Cloche Mountain Range in Killarney Provincial Park in Ontario attracts hundreds of visitors from all over the world every year.

As Brad told me the story of his misadventure, salvaged by pure determination, I was impressed and slack-jawed in equal measure. I myself had spent months planning my hike on the Bruce Trail a few years ago, complete with a four day test hike, and I still made a ton of mistakes. I couldn’t believe that he just decided to do one of the toughest hikes in Ontario on a whim, with four buddies (Toronto firefighter brothers) in tow. After all, they ended up hiking with heavy backpacks, loaded with heavy food and equipment and very little research. He told me he wanted to quit every single day!

A few years ago, I was interviewing a crew at Station 421 (oh, those were the days when we could just visit each other) and one of the guys said something that stuck with me ever since. “If you have ten years on this job, you’re cracked. I don’t care who you are. You’re a little bit cracked and you get more cracked as you go on in this career”. I was approaching the ten year mark and his words hit home. We had just run a call earlier that year that affected me in a way no other call had before, and I wasn’t sure what to make of it or what to do about it. This had never happened to me before.

I remember running a motorcycle fatality when I worked at Adelaide, eight years ago. One of the guys from the other shift told me that it was OK to not be OK. Although I really appreciated his concern for me, my issue wasn’t “not being OK”. My issue was being OK. I wondered all week if there was something wrong with me. I felt like I shouldn’t have been OK with a guy scraping his face across 100 feet of pavement. We found teeth and brain like a breadcrumb trail all the way to his body. Why was I OK? If it was OK not to be OK, was it OK to be OK? In a way, hikes are not unlike our careers. We think we go into this line of work prepared, but really

we are just excited to get started, hope that we can muddle along with our ideas of how it’s supposed to go, and once we are on the path, we’ll be damned if we turn back. Some of us do end up having to turn around, but most of us muddle on, meeting obstacles and going under or over top of them, usually with one another’s support at our back, egging one another on to keep going no matter what.

Brad finished the hike. I wasn’t sure if I thought he was nuts or ingenious. Probably a little bit of both. The one thought that did go through my mind, as I listened to his stories, was “typical firefighter”. We run calls this exact same way. We are generally well prepared for everything and nothing all at once, and at the end of the day, it’s teamwork and our wits that get us through our situations. If training was a thing, (and let’s be honest, it’s not…) it would come into play too. But, mostly, it’s good Captains and good crews that make all the difference.

Yes, his approach was unorthodox, but does it matter if you stick with it and finish? It’s the beauty of our job; 3,000 different approaches but at the end of the day something is going to stick. Despite the challenge, this trip was actually the spark of a love between him and the outdoors. He caught a bug on the trail that determination and the gratification of perseverance often gives us; the feeling of something earned through blood, sweat, and facing our fears.

If you have ever been on a hike that takes everything out of you, you know what I’m talking about. The situation where you want to give up, but it’s either just a smidge harder to give up than to keep going, or impossible altogether. The former was a situation I found myself in constantly as I hiked 26 days on the Bruce Trail. Twelve of those days were spent in warm beds at the mercy of gracious hosts and fourteen in a hammock tent that I stealthily set up along the way. Despite months of planning and a four day test hike, I still made a ton of mistakes. It’s a learning curve that takes its trajectory from experience and talking to more experienced hikers, just like our job takes experience and lots of conversation in order to become competent.

It’s no wonder Brad wants to share this experience with other fire fighters. After catching the love of adventure in Killarney, he has discovered his “happy place“ on solo adventures throughout Utah, Arizona, and Colorado. He is no stranger to the therapy that can be found in the woods - alone or in a group. Walking and thinking, then stopping and talking with your peers has a wonderful healing quality. Especially now, after what feels like an eternity on lockdown, when people are on edge. COVID has people feeling a lot of extreme emotions: anger, impatience, intolerance, isolation and loneliness. Parents are feeling overwhelmed to an extreme degree and single people living alone are feeling underwhelmed to an extreme degree. There are no gyms for us to keep ourselves physically healthy, which is affecting our first responder brain in an unhealthy way. We can’t get together for drinks to blow off steam and make sense of our work life the way we used to, and the lack of social interaction between us is making us squirrely (if I can use special psych jargon).

One thing I hear a lot when the subject of mental health comes up is that old “Let’s Talk” slogan.

But how? Everyone is so different in terms of their needs, when it comes to mental health. It’s much easier said than done. Think about any fissures in your mental health eggshell. Do you need to talk to someone right after it happens? Do you need some time to decompress? Do you talk to your crewmates or a few select ones that you trust? Do you call EAP? City EAP? Do you have a therapist you talk to? A nonfirefighter friend? A non-crewmate firefighter friend?

Nature therapy, whether you do it on your own or with others, has a deeply meditative quality to it. There is no pressure. There is only one task to focus on at a time: find water, get to your site before dark, make a fire, set up camp, cook dinner, cook breakfast, purify water, set up a tarp, finish the hike. There are priorities that will find you quickly if you neglect them. Sitting around a fire draws dialogue out of you as it has with other humans since we harnessed fire.

National Geographic published an article in February 2019 that delved into the topic of nature therapy stating that “The idea that humans possess a deep biological need to connect with nature has been called ‘Biophilia’, from the Greek, meaning ‘love of life and the living world’. American biologist,

Edward O. Wilson believed ‘our existence depends upon this propensity, our spirit is woven from it, hope rises on its currents.’ We know this deep in our bones. Science knows it, too. We are hard-wired to affiliate with the natural world.” It describes the steps South Korea has taken in medicalising Nature Therapy. In fact, it is mandatory for many first responders to go on hikes and do team building exercises together. The Japanese call it ‘Shinrin – Yoku’ – Forest Bathing.

Every year, more and more research shows that Nature Therapy is effective in combating PTSD, from abused and neglected children to first responders and military veterans. According to UC Berkeley psychology professor, Dacher Keltner, “time outdoors changes people’s nervous systems.”

Brad Hoy isn’t the only member of the TFS who partakes. Many firefighters, cracked or otherwise, are consummate hunters and outdoorsmen and women. However, Brad is the only one who has thought to create a club that wants to officially take on anyone who is interested in the outdoors, from beginner to expert.

There is already a rafting trip planned from August 13-15. Not only hikes and rafting trips are on the agenda. Cycling, water sports, camping or any other outdoor activity there is interest for are on the table. He wants to hold workshops and have other firefighters come and teach starting fires in difficult conditions (wind and rain) or talk about how to dehydrate food, pack a bag efficiently or discuss which equipment is best for which type of hike/canoe trip.

If you think you have something to offer the Outdoor Club, don’t hesitate to contact Brad!