From LiveScience.com: Got Nature? Why You Need to Get Out.

We do better physically and mentally when we are regularly exposed to nature, even if it is the somewhat artificial surroundings of a city park. It is true for adults as well as for children.

As Christians, we know something of the value of taking retreats in nature, though in our busyness we sometimes forget:

“I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief… For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.” — Wendell Berry

“When despair for the world grows in me, and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be — I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought or grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.” — Wendell Berry

Grace and Peace