The Secret of Shelter Island

If you’ve never been there, do yourself a favor and put it on your To-Do List. It’s one of the most gorgeous places I’ve ever visited.

One Saturday afternoon, for instance, a few of my colleagues and I hiked the canyon trail up to Shirley Lake. With the weather warming up, the snow on the peaks was rapidly melting. That means the waterfalls were enormous—and spectacular.

Two and a half miles up we reached the huge granite face known as the RockPile, behind which looms Squaw Peak. The view down the valley from here is breathtaking.

Too bad more people weren’t around to enjoy it. We only passed about one hiker every half hour.

On Sunday, we drove around to the eastern side of the lake where there is virtually no development. We took an easy beach trail along the shoreline to Skunk Harbor. The scenery is almost beyond description.

Imagine the snow-capped Sierra Nevada rising up over 6,000 feet from the clearest, bluest lake you’ve ever seen. And the weather was perfect, 65 degrees and not a cloud in the skies.

Yet, even though it was Sunday, we only saw two other hikers the whole afternoon. We were a week or two ahead of the peak season. But I think there’s another explanation.

According to a study conducted by The Nature Conservancy and published by the National Academy of Sciences last year, people worldwide are giving Mother Nature the cold shoulder and spending more time indoors.

Thanks largely to “videophilia”—the love of sedentary activities involving electronic media—the typical American now spends 25 percent less time in nature than in 1987.

This is unfortunate for a couple of reasons. Number one, it’s hard to imagine people feeling strongly about conserving our natural heritage if they can’t be bothered to get outside and enjoy it.

Second, scientists say that getting out of our everyday artificial environment promotes mental health. For example, Dr. Howard Frumkin of Emory University Rollins School of Public Health has found that exposure to the natural environment actually prevents and helps treat certain illnesses. Furthermore, studies show that “videophilia” is contributing to obesity, lack of socialization, attention disorders, and poor academic performance.

Personally, I don’t think there’s a better way to spend an afternoon than tramping through the woods, the scent of earth and pine in the air, and not a sound to be heard but the rustling of the leaves and the sound of your own footsteps. No phones ringing. No horns honking. No television blaring.

How can you put a value on a few hours in the woods with nothing pressing to do and nowhere in particular to be? The combination of exercise, fresh air, and solitude is unbeatable. And it’s invigorating.

Naturalist E. O. Wilson says, “To the extent that each person can feel like a naturalist, the excitement of the untrammeled world is regained. I offer this as a formula of re-enchantment.”

Architect Frank Lloyd Wright agreed. “Nature is my manifestation of God. I go to nature every day for inspiration in the day’s work.”

So put on some comfortable shoes and get outside. There are plenty of easy trails out there, even if you huff and puff on two flights of stairs. Spending time in the Great Outdoors is exhilarating—and the ultimate stress reliever.

A couple years ago, I was spending the summer with my family in the Shenandoah Valley. But it was a working vacation—and I was up to my eyeballs in deadlines, projects, and conference calls. One afternoon, on sheer impulse, I grabbed my daughter Hannah, who was 8 at the time, and told her we were going up the Skyline Drive to White Oak Canyon, one of the best waterfall hikes in the Shenandoah National Park.

We threw some binoculars and a couple of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches into a backpack and headed out. Two hours later, we were sitting at the bottom of the falls, nibbling on our sandwiches, our bare feet dangling in the water.

We were alone, except for a curious chipmunk, some crayfish scuttling along the bottom of the pool, and a noisy kingfisher on a branch overhead. Hannah, who loves to hike, was drinking it all in, looking around at the falls, down at the water, and then up at the wind in the trees.

After a few minutes of contemplation, she looked up and asked with the sincerity that only an 8-year-old can muster, “Daddy, can we do this every day?”