28 Nov A walk in nature can be good for your head, your happiness and your relationship
via ABC by Rebecca Huntley
I’ve just returned, stiff and sniffling, from four days’ walking in the cold and wet wildness of Tasmania. I have never felt better.
Truth be told, I did it the easy way. It was a tour with guides and comfortable huts in the wilderness, meals cooked for you, local wines on offer and luxuries that hardened campers would turn up their noses at.
There were, however, drop toilets and bush showers.
I carried a 12-kilogram pack on my back over beaches, tracks, rocks and other natural obstructions, so I basically felt like Bear Grylls in female form.
If you’d told me 10 years ago I’d be neck-to-ankle in hiking gear, bending over on a dirt track to peer at interesting flora and fungi, I would have laughed heartily.
I never camped as a child. My Australian father had no interest. My Italian mother was adamant: “Wogs don’t camp.”
“What about Julius Caesar, Mum? He used to camp a lot.” Pause.
“He was working. Also, he had great equipment,” she said.
So what turned me from an inside girl to a hiker?
…keep reading the full & original article HERE