The Wilderness Within: How Nature Forges Mental Resilience
- Nathan Burns
- Aug 27
- 9 min read
Long-term travel offers more than ever-changing landscapes—it can mould the mind in profound ways. After three months on the road with his family, Nathan Burns has felt subtle but intense shifts: a steadier mind, a calmer heart, and a resilience that rises and falls with the landscapes he travels—especially when the bustle of crowded cities highlights the calm and clarity he’s found in the wild.
It’s 5:45am in Karijini National Park. The air is cool and dry, tinged with eucalyptus. My daughter stirs beside me in the tent and whispers, “Daddy, can we snuggle? The sun’s coming up.” We unzip the canvas window frame and bury ourselves beneath the covers. A kookaburra cackles in the distance, the landscape gently shifts from purple to gold, and the whole scene seems to exhale.
I exhale too. My body is calm, my mind rested yet excited for the day ahead. I feel
entirely present. There is no looming alarm, no background traffic hum, no to-do lists or emails to draft.
Just space. Just silence. Just life, unfolding.
Three consecutive months of travelling with my family through some of Australia’s wildest landscapes has gifted me this feeling again and again: a nervous system reset, a return to calm, and a surprising sense of strength.
However, the thing that has fascinated me most is the clear juxtaposition I have noticed every single time the necessities of life on the road have ‘forced’ us into urban areas. Despite what may have been weeks of wide, open skies and leisurely days reviewed around a crackling campfire, suburban bustle is immediately accompanied by a shorter temper, less positivity, a more time-oriented focus and–dare I say it, before my ever-patient wife does– a less personable version of ‘me’.
Whilst I’ve known from a relatively young age that my happiest surroundings are natural, the difference during this journey has felt, well, deeper— almost neurological. Each time we immersed ourselves in nature, I became calmer, clearer, and more resilient. Each time we returned to a city, the tension came rushing back.
Naturally, I wanted to get to the bottom of the science behind this, given how stark the contradiction has been. Somewhere, deep in my mind, I also hoped to find an antidote to that lingering urban itch.
In my mind, I started to pose a few simple questions: Why does the wilderness feel like a forge for mental resilience? Why does the city affect me so immediately? Is this purely perspective, or is there some inherent biology in there somewhere?
Before continuing, however, I need to clarify something: whilst I am fortunate enough to live in a beautiful, semi-remote rural area nowadays, I am no stranger to dense city life. I was born in Australia’s most populous city (Sydney), I lived in Japan for over 6 years and have worked in cheek-to-jowl metropolises such as Kathmandu and Rohingya refugee camps. I find cities intriguing, colourful and even inspiring at times. It is, perhaps, through this lens that I have found the juxtapositions of this journey so intriguing.
The Science of Natural Restoration: It’s Not Just a Feeling
Those moments of deep presence I have continually felt over the past few months
are not unique to me. Almost everyone has felt it: the relief of stepping into a park after a long day, the calm that comes from watching waves roll in, or the clarity found on a forest walk. Scientists have been asking why for decades, and the answers are now remarkably clear.
One of the strongest pieces of evidence comes from a landmark UK study (Depledge et al., 2014) that followed thousands of people over several years. It found that those who moved to greener areas experienced sustained improvements in mental health—and crucially, it wasn’t just happy people self-selecting into greener suburbs. Even miserable people who relocated showed significant increases in baseline wellbeing. Evidently, it was the move itself that made the difference.
This kind of discovery, obviously, leads to more detailed questions, such as: how much nature is enough?
A 2020 review (Meredith et al., 2020) pulled together dozens of experiments and concluded that even 10–20 minutes in a natural setting can significantly reduce stress biomarkers like cortisol and heart rate, while boosting psychological markers like mood and focus. That’s good news for all of us—it means you don’t need a six-month road trip to reap the benefits. A daily walk in a park, or even sitting under a tree, can begin the reset.
However, nature’s benefits stand in stark contrast to the modern default. During the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers compared two powerful forces in our daily lives: screen time and green time (Camerini et al., 2022). They found that screen time was consistently linked with poorer mental health, while time in nature acted as a protective factor. In other words, our devices and our green spaces are pulling us in opposite directions.
And so, with a little digging into the research, I was able to put a framework around what I had so vividly experienced in the outback—calm in the bush, stress in the city—wasn’t just in my head. It’s measurable. It’s biological. It’s real.
Instinctively, though, I knew there was more to this phenomena. There has to be something innate in the power of nature that tilts the balance so heavily towards positive human effect.
The Neuroscience of Awe: Wilderness Can Rewire Your Brain for Resilience
One evening in the Kimberley, we pulled off the road and camped beside a
billabong. As the sun set, the sky above blended from molten orange, through paisley pink and into deep fuschia. Tiny pin-pricks of stars began to emerge and a pair of cockateels screeched and wheeled across the sky. Whilst I amateurishly tried to photograph the scene, my daughter sat quietly, staring upward. After a while, she simply said, “Wow.”
In my mind, that small word captured something profound: awe. Neuroscientists now know that awe isn’t just a pleasant emotion—it’s a neurological reset. When we encounter vast, beautiful, or mysterious environments, our brain shifts gears in ways that actively build resilience.
Here’s how it works.
In city life, our prefrontal cortex—the executive control centre of the brain—is constantly in overdrive. Emails, deadlines, traffic lights, pings from phones. Parallel to that, our default mode network (DMN)—continues to hum. This is the system that spins our inner narrative and fuels rumination. We often hear the combination of these mechanisms described as ‘noise’ and they are a bona fide recipe for mental fatigue, anxiety, endless overthinking and, ultimately, a lack of resilience.*
When we immerse ourselves in what I’ve come to think of as ‘natural awe’, this cycle is immediately disrupted. Again, it’s something that most of us know intuitively, however this concept also has foundations in a number of scientific theories, namely:
Attention Restoration Theory (ART): Instead of demanding focus the way screens and traffic do, natural environments offer “soft fascination.” Watching water flow, leaves rustle, or clouds drift requires almost no effort. This gentle attention allows the prefrontal cortex to rest and recover.
Stress Reduction Theory (SRT): Even brief exposure to green landscapes reduces cortisol, lowers blood pressure, and activates the parasympathetic nervous system—the body’s “rest and digest” mode. It’s like flipping a biological switch from survival to recovery.
Biophilia Hypothesis (BET): Evolution may be part of the story too. For 99% of human history, we lived in natural settings. Our brains are wired to interpret greenery, running water, and open skies as signals of safety. In that sense, stepping into nature isn’t escapism—it’s returning home.
Whichever name you give to stargazing and tales told around the ‘Bush TV’, the result is a quieter mind, a calmer body, and a brain better able to think creatively and regulate emotions. In other words: Resilience. Not just the grit to push through, but the mental spaciousness to adapt, solve problems, and recover from stress, exactly as we like to frame it at The Resilience Lab.
A Personal Example
Travelling for long periods with an ever-inquisitive, adventurous and intelligent 8 year-old is many things—rewarding, messy, unpredictable, mentally taxing—but never boring. As we continue to traverse this wild, ochre country of ours, one thing is becoming clear: as a father and ‘role model’ to this amazing young human, it is infinitely easier to set a good example when my mind is calm, my breathing controlled and my baseline set to the rhythms of nature.
A case in point: as we barrelled down a remote highway in the Northern Territory, my
wife (who was driving at the time) noticed billowing clouds of acrid smoke pluming in our wake. “That can’t be good”, we concurred as she guided the car off the road onto a dusty, sooty (an Indigenous management burn had just been through) shoulder.
After a little inspection, we found that the right-hand leaf-spring on our little camper trailer had sheared through, dropping the entire wheel hub onto the tyre, lending the unforgettable smell of burning rubber and a very unnatural looking lean to the whole scene.
Now, with an urban-frazzled mindset, it would have been very easy to gather the grey mental clouds of doom and drag the whole situation into negativity.
Having just emerged from a brilliant week in Kakadu National Park, however, I am still amazed (and, also, just a little proud), of how my wife and I instinctively made light of the situation, reassured our daughter that challenges within a journey are actually the fun parts and made a plan to head back into phone reception and organise a tow.
No hysteria. No profanity. No negativity. No drama. Just a simple plan, a few laughs and the space to think proactively.
As the girls drove off into the distance, I set up our trailer awning, pulled out my guitar and serenaded the passing motorists amidst the smoky surrounds. Before too long, I saw the signature pink foamie on our roofracks roll around the corner, followed by the requisite grimy tow-truck and Brian, our mechanical saviour.
As it turned out, we ended up stranded in Katherine whilst the unbelievably busy annual Rodeo and Country Show rolled through town, sans our home on wheels. The silver lining though…? Well, that came about a fortnight later when our daughter contemplated around the fire: “You know, Dad”, she said, “If our trailer didn’t break, then we never would have got to go to the Katherine Show, so that’s pretty good, isn’t it…?”.
Ahhh, another proud parent moment. All thanks to the power of Mother Nature.
Conclusion: Cultivating Your Inner Wilderness
Resilience isn’t about bracing yourself against life’s pressures. It’s about creating a mind and body that can bend, adapt, and recover. For me, the wilderness has been– and will always be– a powerful teacher: showing me how calm leads to clarity, how awe fuels problem-solving, and how presence strengthens connection.
Not everyone can spend half a year travelling remote Australia with their family. But that’s not the point. The point is that nature’s resilience-building power is always available, wherever you are. A walk at dawn. A tree outside your window. A quiet moment with the sky.
When I think back to those mornings in the outback—the golden landscape at first light, the kookaburra’s laugh, my daughter’s whispers at dawn —I’m reminded that resilience almost never comes from pushing harder.
Sometimes, it comes from stepping outside, letting the wilderness in, and remembering that we are part of it too.
An Afterthought…Prescribing Nature: How to Weave “Green Time” into Your Life
After three months on the road, it is tempting to believe that resilience requires grand, extended adventures and epic landscapes. But the science—and our lived experience—says otherwise. You don’t need the Flinders Ranges or Kakadu to feel the reset. You just need consistency, even in small doses.
Think of it as a prescription:
The 20-Minute Nature Pill: Research shows that just 20 minutes a day in a green space can lower stress and lift mood. That might be a walk in the park at lunch, sitting under a tree with your coffee, or gardening at dusk.
Quality Over Quantity: A single mindful encounter with nature can be powerful. Watch the sway of branches. Listen to the birds. Notice the colour of the sky at twilight. It’s not about escape; it’s about attention.
Digital Sunset: Screens pull us away from restoration and into stimulation. Try creating a “digital sunset”—turning off devices an hour before bed—and spend that time outdoors, even if it’s just on a balcony.
Engage All Senses: Let nature in through more than your eyes. Feel bark under your fingers, smell rain on warm pavement, taste the salt in the air, listen to the subtle layers of sound in a forest. Sensory richness deepens the restorative effect.
These practices actively create the mental environment where resilient qualities can thrive. Just as exercise strengthens the body, “green time” strengthens the mind.
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*A reminder: at The Resilience Lab we define resilience as: The ability to remain calm, functional, cognitive and to actively regulate your Nervous System when faced with challenges, disruptions or dynamic environments.
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References
Alcock, I., White, M. P., Wheeler, B. W., Fleming, L. E., & Depledge, M. H. (2014). Longitudinal effects on mental health of moving to greener and less green urban areas. Environmental Science & Technology, 48(2), 1247–1255.
Camerini, A.-L., Albanese, E., & Marciano, L. (2022). The impact of screen time and green time on mental health in children and adolescents during the COVID-19 pandemic. Computers in Human Behavior Reports, 7, 100204.
Meredith, G. R., Rakow, D. A., Eldermire, E. R. B., Madsen, C. G., Shelley, S. P., & Sachs, N. A. (2020). Minimum time dose in nature to positively impact the mental health of college-aged students, and how to measure it: A scoping review. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 2942.
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