Scottish Natural Heritage: Scottish Parliament Event
12 November 2015
Graham Morgan
“Scotland’s Outdoors – Our natural health service”
Hello, thank you so much for asking me to talk to you today. My name is Graham Morgan. I work with HUG Action for Mental Health among other things and am, in this brief time, going to talk about how the natural world can act as my own health service.
I have a diagnosis of schizophrenia and am detained under a compulsory community treatment order.
I know what it is like to be confined to a ward with only a square courtyard to give some sense of freedom, with its chill air, away from the gaze of the nurses assigned to escort me, to make sure I come to no harm. I know the yearning to walk away from the demands of those that care for me and not being able to fulfil it.
Although I am meant to be talking of health, I am no paragon of fitness. I am on the verge of diabetes, I drink too much and I sweat and pant when I walk up the slightest hill.
But for me projects like the one which we have taken part in with the Scottish Waterways Trust make the world of difference.
There is something so wonderful that happens when I take my occasional walks along the beach in Nairn.
I can be filled with a roar of thoughts and worries that snatch away my peace; make sleep a hasty task rather than the bliss it can be and then I can be walking away: along East Beach, listening to the oyster catchers and gulls, watching the crows hop at the water’s edge, gazing at the red ships in the Firth and the clouds that I never tire of looking at. I hear the sea and smell the salt air and, as I walk, the anxieties that we all have become smoother and softer. As my body warms up with motion, I find that there is a smile on my face; my cheeks feel vibrant in the cold air, my fingers feel old pebbles in my pockets. I pause to take the occasional photo with my phone of the cockle shells in the sand or the ripples left by the tide on the beach.
It may be that the medication that I am made to take keeps me alive but sometimes it is the walk along the beach, the amble besides a river, the seat in the dusty heather or at the mouth of the harbour where the green of the sea mixes with the brown peat of the river that makes all the difference; gives that sense of freedom, of wellbeing, that urge to swing my arms or to do some awkward hop of a dance.
I love these things; I love to sit on a bench and listen to music. I love to walk down the ‘forest track’ with my partners children and collect brambles. I love to wake in the morning and listen to the crows in the trees across the road.
It is a strange that I have to give the message that the seasons, the sound of birdsong, the air on our faces, rain filming our hands or the wheat looking like an ocean in the wind can make a difference to our health, surely what needs said is that their absence makes for a sad and dreary world.
I remember those weeks that I have spent in hospitals, with the stale air and the, oh so clean, surfaces and the telly and that wish to be outside, that craving to feel grass under my feet, to be able to walk without fear of having my way barred. It is the absence of these things that can weigh heavily on me.
It is for this reason that the project we have been involved with, with the Scottish Waterways Trust is dear to my heart; those weekly walks in the woods or along the canal, with flapjacks and tea at the end make such a difference to people cooped up in hospital, or wondering how to make a day pass more quickly now that they are in the community and the days are bare with boredom.
Thank you for listening, when I was told that I had three minutes to speak I thought ‘How on earth can I possibly do that? How can I talk about our natural world in that short time?’
But I am talking about something you all know- you have all walked a street, felt rain on your face, listened to the birds at dawn, felt the wind in your hair, the sun on your cheeks, you know it already, even when life is dark indeed and bed the be all and end all and tele your only occupation; looking out the window to see what they weather is like says all that needs said.
We need the natural world, we are bound to it.
Some of us however have little access to it and have lost the joy we can feel when we spot a squirrel run up a tree. It would be good to help reintroduce us to that joy, to the possibility that we can walk away our worries, that the wind can also be a potent medication, its own tiny antidepressant, its own blood pressure pill and muscle toner.
Thank you.
(Photo Ardmore beach, 10 2020)
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