Nature has the amazing ability to restore our sense of inner peace. When was the last time you immersed yourself in the natural world away from the stress and pressure of your everyday life?
I think “unwind” is an accurate description of the effect that nature has on us when we give it a chance. The pace of modern life can easily get us all wound up. We call that stress, right? Well, nature is a great antidote for stress and, in fact, it’s one of my very favorites.
3 Days of active unwinding
Every September my wife and I, along with our daughter and her husband, take a short vacation to Sunriver, Oregon. It’s a beautiful, low key resort community 15 miles south of Bend on the east side of the Cascade Mountains. The setting is pine trees, lava rocks, lots of black tail deer, miles of bike trails, and the beautiful Deschutes River.
We always take our bikes along and on the warm years we also bring kayaks. This year our focus was on biking and I wanted to share one of our favorite trails with you. In Sunriver the Deschutes River is wide and peaceful, but downstream it gets a lot more active.
As it turns out, Benham falls is not a waterfall, but a series of impressive rapids. I love the roar of rapids and feel totally invigorated and stress free whenever I am around them. The ride was about 3 hours and I wanted to share some photographic highlights with you.
Create your own freedom from stress tradition
Sunriver has become a family tradition for us. It takes less than 4 hours to get there and it’s something we really look forward to. I encourage you to create your own freedom from stress tradition so nature can work its restorative wonders on you.
We only go for 3 or 4 nights so the expense of renting a comfortable house with a hot tub and barbecue is very manageable, and the rewards are priceless. We were made to be at peace in nature. If you are feeling a bit wound up, may I suggest letting nature unwind your stress for you. Works for us every time!
There is no doubt that stress is taking a tremendous toll on people’s health, relationships, and quality of life. Doctors now feel that more than 80% of all illness is stress related. I am so surprised that more people don’t take advantage of simple, natural, inexpensive solutions like this one.
