Reconnect with Nature! Your Reminder to Get Outside

Jason Gaskill from Davey's Wilmington, Delaware, office shares his personal experience connecting with nature through work, traveling and leading hikes, as well as why it's important to get outside, enjoy the outdoors and connect with nature.

In this episode we cover:  

• When did Jason's appreciation for trees start? (1:12)
• Leading nature hikes (4:19)
• Suggestions on how to reconnect with nature (6:41) (17:23)
• Everyone walks through the forest differently (8:50) 
• Working outdoors (11:29)
• Planting a tree as a memorial (13:10)
• Star gazing (20:12) 

To find your local Davey office, check out our find a local office page to search by zip code.  

To learn more about forest bathing and connecting with nature, check out our other two podcasts, "Benefits of Trees for Human Health + Forest Bathing" and "Healing Gardens - How to Create Your Own & Enjoy Nature."

Connect with Davey Tree on social media:
Twitter: @DaveyTree
Facebook: @DaveyTree
Instagram: @daveytree
YouTube: The Davey Tree Expert Company
LinkedIn: The Davey Tree Expert Company 

Connect with Doug Oster at www.dougoster.com. 

Have topics you'd like us to cover on the podcast? Email us at podcasts@davey.com. We want to hear from you!    

Transcript

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Doug Oster: Welcome to the Davey Tree Expert Company's podcast, Talking Trees. I'm your host, Doug Oster. Each week, our expert arborists share advice on seasonal tree care, how to make your trees thrive, arborists' favorite trees, and much more. Tune in every Thursday to learn more because here at the Talking Trees podcast, we know trees are the answer. I am joined again by Jason Gaskill. He's an assistant district manager in the Wilmington, Delaware office of the Davey Tree Expert Company. Jason, normally, we come up with the topic, but this week, you came up with the topic. What are we talking about? [chuckles]

Jason Gaskill: We're going to talk about our connection to trees, nature, and maybe what you could call a disconnect to nature and trees as we become an urbanized society and as we've grown into city habitat and how our civilization has gone, I started thinking about, how can we better connect to nature and trees, mainly?

Doug: Is this something that goes back to your childhood? Was this a thing for you growing up or did this come later, this appreciation of nature and trees?

Jason: It's always been a part of me. I know that my stress levels have always been reduced when I have taken walks through the forest or been out in nature. I can remember turning my life around a lot when I took a one-month sabbatical out of college before I became an arborist. I had a month where I circumvented the Sierra Nevadas. I put 3,003 miles on my mother's Jeep. I realized what a spiritual thing that was and how it really changed, refocused my mind. You can connect that to being in nature and increasing positivity.

I started thinking about this the other day when I was watching an archeology show that was talking about light pollution and pollution itself and how the ancients had so much thought in astronomy. Now we're disconnected from astronomy because we can't see stars, we can't see constellations. Then I started pondering that when talking about what to talk about today. I was like, "That's the same thing with trees and nature as well, isn't it?"

Doug: Interesting. How did it go over with everybody when you said, "You know what? I'm not going right to work. I'm taking some time off to explore. Guess what, mom? I'm going to put 3,000 miles on your Jeep."

[chuckling]

Jason: It went over well. I had the job set. It was a matter of the job. They weren't ready for me until more closer to the spring. I had the time, I had a couple of months. I borrowed some money from my really good grandmother and managed to-- $1,000 got me around. I live cheaply in tents and I visited, spent some time in Bryce Canyon. It was really cold. I went to Death Valley and fell in love with that place. Stayed there for about seven days and found my way around to the Mojave Desert, checking out the Joshua trees and moved around, and then checked out Sequoia trees at Sequoia National Park and ventured into Yosemite. It was a great trip.

Doug: I'm going to see all that stuff in August and I'm excited because I've never seen it.

Jason: Oh, wow.

Doug: Very much looking forward to that. If I'm walking through the forest with you though, am I hearing all the arborist stuff like, "Oh, that's an American hornbeam, and actually, that one doesn't look too good," or am I appreciating nature with you or a little bit of both? [chuckles]

Jason: Possibly a little bit of both, I guess. I do like to talk and my background is leading nature hikes. I was a national park ranger and did interpretation. I'm very comfortable leading hikes and discussing and being a naturalist that way. If we were just enjoying, then we would just enjoy.

Doug: No, no, I want to hear this. Geez, if I've got a naturalist who's done this before, that sounds like a fun hike to me with you leading it. Even though I do this podcast, even though I love the outdoors, even though I love to garden, I don't know half the trees. It's nice to know that. It'll be the same thing if you're walking with a birding expert, They're going to hear something, not even see it, and tell you what it is.

Jason: Funny that you say birding because I used to-- One of my naturalists walks in Theodore Roosevelt National Park in Western North Dakota, which I was an East coaster. I had to learn a lot of different ecology and geology and birds and stuff. I did a birding hike.

I would guess my first venture on a birding hike came birders from all over the country and the world that knew lots more than me. I took the appreciation of learning from them. I kept the birding hike going because it was a venture for me. I was able to talk ecology and talk about Theodore Roosevelt and talk about the land while we were looking at and recognizing birds. It was amazing how birders can hold out their ear and say, "This warbler or whatever it is." It's amazing how in tune birders can get with nature.

Doug: Do you have some suggestions on how to reconnect?

Jason: Oh, yes. I was in this venture of thinking about some of this was people go hiking or go walking and they might walk in the city or they might walk on a treadmill. There's a lot of studies shown that if you're walking in a city, you're going to hear sirens and there's going to be an emergency and fight or flight responses that's going to build adrenaline and cortisol, which is a stress hormone. What benefit are you getting out of exercise if you're doing it in a stressful environment?

Studies have shown that you can increase dopamine and happy and reduce stress hormones by doing those kinds of ventures in nature. They call that, 'forest bathing,' just spending time in a forest or surrounded by trees and nature where you don't have the natural stresses of urbanization where you got the five senses. You can smell the trees and smell the cedar and the leaves and you can listen to the birds and you can listen to the trees blowing in the breeze and the leaves whispering. You can touch and feel and you got the senses, forest.

It's amazing if you're standing in the middle of a field on a 100-degree day, it's much different than being in a canopy of trees. That's not just because of shade. Trees are transpiring and that transpiration process is almost just like us sweating. It cools you off. The trees are cooling the air itself as well aside from just the shade. You're going to feel more pleasant and more alive and it's going to bring happiness.

Doug: Everybody walks the forest a little bit differently. My wife is a fast walker and I'm a, "Oh, look, a pine cone. Oh, look, another pine cone." [chuckles] What hiker are you?

Jason: Very slow as well. I am not on a mission to the end. I'm on a mission for the journey. I love to ponder. My wife will also be way ahead of me while I'm stuck back, as you know, 100 feet, 100 yards looking at a mushroom or picking up a leaf that just looks cool, that's got interveinal colors from fall colors and things like that or picking up a stone. I'm always looking like closely right around my immediate surroundings.

Doug: I think you and I would be on one hike and our wives would be on another hike if we went into the forest.

Jason: Oh, absolutely. Yes, absolutely. I used to do a game with children when I was a naturalist where you would take a hula hoop and and we would be in the grasslands. You put that whole hoop down in the grasslands and focus, not just on the big picture, but something small like that, and count how many species of plants and things that you could find. It's amazing that you if you're just looking out at a field, you might think that there's only one or two species of grass, but then once you get down there and look at the prairie, you're finding different cactus. You're finding all sorts of different types of plants and habitat and things like that.

That's what I enjoy about taking my time through nature is appreciating how much there really is to see versus walking quickly and just seeing things in a more, fast-forwarded type of vision.

Doug: You get any of this from work or not really? Work is one thing and nature is another. I'm just thinking, when we're looking at it from the outside, we're looking at somebody who works outside all the time, who is seeing trees all the time, but a job is different than a hike. That's for sure. You're getting the nature stuff from work or not so much?

Jason: I do. If I'm in the office too long, that's a stir-crazy type of environment for me. I don't like being in rectangles and squares and corners. You get me in someone's yard, I can find myself quickly enjoying people's trees, even though I'm solving a problem of what might be wrong. When I go on someone's property the first time or I've been on someone's property for a long time and I see a tree that I really enjoy, it is a great experience. I can put myself into that realm.

Of course, there is the customer service part of it and problem-solving. Yes, it's a little more demanding, than just pure enjoyment of. I think that's part of the enjoyment experience for me too, is helping people connect to those trees and the problems and solving that.

Doug: When you were talking about going through a forest using your five senses, I've got young grandchildren and I have a huge dawn redwood. Feeling that bark for them is, "Whoa, that's really cool. That's soft. That's really amazing." I think we can get jaded to it sometimes. You know that dawn redwood has soft bark but you've walked through it, walked by it for 20 some years, but with fresh eyes, they're just like, "Whoa, that tree. It's so straight and it's so tall." [chuckles] Talk a little bit also about-- We're going to get into tree planting season here, the special things we can do planting a tree.

Jason: Honoring somebody or something, I think, can also be a way to connect. If you just plant a tree for the sake of planting a tree, that's fantastic. One of my favorite trees in my yard is a swamp white oak that I planted when my son was born.

I have a deep connection to that tree. I couldn't stand to, even sell this house without having to put in some writing about the care for this tree going forward [chuckles] because I have-- It's deep in my connection to that versus-- I've planted some other trees in my yard where I-- In retrospect, because I maybe didn't plan it in honor or for or to memorialize or just say it's an anniversary tree for my wife or something like that, it doesn't have as deep as meaning. I can see myself maybe not caring for it as much as something like the white oak.

Doug: That's interesting. I've got an American horn beam that I planted for my brother who passed away, but I wasn't even thinking that when I was putting that American horn beam in. My wife was just walking by and actually helping me get it out of the container because it was so ripped off and it's huge. She said, "This should be for your brother." It's like you said though, if you leave the house-- I was thinking the same thing you were thinking.

I think I would have to put a little plaque on here or something. I also worry, not in my case, but I worry about people sometimes because I hear this a lot from people who want to do this and are asking for suggestions, I want it to be a tree that is tough and pretty much bulletproof because it would be like you have that special tree. I've got my special tree, but I know an American horn beam is tough as nails. I'm going to be fine with it. I wouldn't want to put something in that was like, I don't know about the zone. If it's going to make it during a polar vortex. Do you get that? Do you get questions about that? You suggest how about this? How about that?

Jason: Oh, certainly. Especially dealing in a world where we guarantee expectancy to make it through a year or two when we plant a tree. I'm looking to plant trees that are going to be tough. We've talked about some of my favorite trees before, the black tupelo being on that list, that's a tough-as-nails tree too. It doesn't care if it's soggy, dry and it has very low insect pressure disease. Things like that are going to be recommendations that I make just because for the layperson, easier to care for.

Now, for myself, yes, I could plant. I planted a hemlock. I know it's probably going to get adelgid mites and scale and possible Phytophthora problems. [chuckles] I know how to care for that. Now, as I age and let's just say that we moved out, that tree might go into disarray and go downhill because it's not going to have that care.

Doug: I've got a whole forest of hemlocks and I know what I'm doing and they're going to disarray even though [chuckles] I'm here. I need a polar vortex for that hemlock woolly adelgid. That always helps me. Last year, we had one from 40 to 20 below and, man, that was the best spring, no hemlock woolly adelgid.

This has been great, Jason. Before I let you go though, more suggestions for people, just recommendations to spend some time outside. I'm as guilty as the next guy stuck on the computer doing this, doing that, like you said, in this big rectangle I'm sitting in. Just give us some encouragement to get out there and see what we can see.

Jason: Put on the coat. Just because it's wintertime, doesn't mean that you can't bundle up and be warm. Once you start getting the blood flowing, you're going to be fine and you can enjoy nature now in the winter, just as much as you can in the spring or summer. We've become a people where we can complain when it's hot, complain when it's cold, and it's like, how many perfect days really are there?

Get out and sweat. Get out like our ancestors and be in the cold, bundle up. There's something about being in a forest when there's snow on the ground and there's just a peace about that where it's just super quiet and you can really feel. I like little data points too. The average home, the footprint of the house, the average home is a three-to-one ratio of land to home footprint. Your backyard, you have more trees than you probably even know. Go out and count how many trees that you have. You might say, "Oh, I only got one tree."

Next thing you know, you start pawing around and you start counting. You're like, "Oh, I got--" If I just pictured my landscape right now, I would probably count like a dozen trees, but if I got there and started counting the stuff at the borders and the edges, I come up with about 50 trees in my-- Not even an acre. I got four-fifths of an acre. I got about 50 trees in my yard. [chuckles] Appreciate what you have because it's also right in front of you. You can just sit on your back porch or look out your window. Open the blinds up and let the light in. There's probably a bird or a tree or something like that that's right in front of you that you can enjoy while you're sitting inside, even.

Doug: One more thing, when you're on your sabbatical, tell me about seeing the stars out there on the west when it's [unintelligible 00:20:17] that darkness. There's nothing like it to me to look up at those stars.

Jason: When I worked in North Dakota as a park ranger, it was a [unintelligible 00:20:32] airshed. It surpassed Arizona at that point as the best night sky in the United States, the continental United States, because Los Angeles and light pollution. Arizona was famous for star gazing. When I was in North Dakota, you could see satellites. Going across what we put up into the sky, you could see the space station going over at night. You could see meteorites every single night.

There wasn't like, oh, you needed August, the Leonid meteor shower, and all that kind of stuff. You would see them every single night just by laying on a hammock and looking up. You see pictures of what the Milky Way looks like and all of that stuff. You just don't see that here. In a place like that, it really is intensely amazing. It was first time I saw it, and I'm an adult, and my eyes were popping out of my head. I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

Doug: I'm going to leave it right there. Laying on a hammock in North Dakota doing some sky bathing instead of forest bathing.

Jason: Sky bathing and surrounded by bison.

[chuckling]

Doug: Hey, Jason, thanks so much. It was so much fun. I really enjoyed our time together. As always, we'll talk again soon.

[music]

Jason: All right, great. Thank you, Doug.

Doug: I have to say I really enjoyed talking with Jason about our shared love of nature. Now get out there and have some fun under those trees. Tune in every Thursday to the Talking Trees podcast. From the Davey Tree Expert Company, I am your host, Doug Oster. As always, I need you to do me a favor, [chuckles] subscribe to the podcast so you'll never miss an episode. We would love to hear from you. Got an idea for a show, maybe a comment, send us an email at podcasts@davey.com. That's P-O-D-C-A-S-T-S@D-A-V-E-Y.com. Just as Jason, we like to remind you on the Talking Trees podcast, trees are the answer.

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