Years before strolling among beautiful trees yet staring fixedly, blankly, into a tiny electronic device wouldn’t seem all that weird – which is to say, long before the world would dearly need it – researchers at the University of Michigan coined the term “soft fascination.” 

It describes nature’s subtle power to draw our attention to the delight of birdsong, the caress of wind in treetops, the idle drift of clouds overhead. Calming sounds and sensations, so quietly inviting, so different from the hypnotic screen or insistent digital chirp. 

“We don’t have to intentionally focus in nature,” Kathleen Wolf says, but simply open ourselves to the wonders of the natural world and their gentle tug. “Nature brings us to it.” 

Spreading the gospel of forests’ restorative properties has become the focus of Wolf’s work as a research social scientist in the University of Washington’s College of the Environment. The Rolling […]