According to WHOOP, each person should spend at least 69 minutes a day outside in nature. Yesterday I spent 113 minutes and it was glorious. WHOOP produces a wristband that my eldest son loves. For Christmas, his grandparents paid for a subscription for the year. He tracks the quality of his sleep, his recovery, his temperature, his heart rate, and his physical activity, to name a few metrics. It is an area of tremendous interest to him. It was my girlfriend in Germany, though, who told me about the 69 minute a day mandate. Thereafter I was reading the BBC and there was a whole article about how your mood elevates when you spend time in nature. I can attest that after a long hike in the woods yesterday, I was in a sunny frame of mind for the rest of the day.
KIVI Park in Sudbury is a 480 acre nature reserve. The initial tract of 300 acres was donated by Lily Fielding on her 100th birthday. She was a philanthropist who loved living in the Long Lake area of Sudbury and was passionate about the outdoors. Since then, it has expanded to include another 180 acres and three lakes, Crowley Lake, Linton Lake and Kivi Lake. Kivi means rock in Finnish, and confirms Sudbury’s presence as the northern gateway to the Canadian Shield.
My eldest daughter’s Bernese Mountain Dog named Rory absolutely loves the snow. She frolics, rolls, spins, puts her snout in it and stretches out her whole body so everything is touching the cold. In contrast, the two Yorkshire Terriers owned by my other three children have had to adapt to the cold. To their credit, they walk with me at least 40 minutes each day no matter the weather. Although their KIVI Park excursion was longer than usual, they enjoyed it and there wasn’t a shiver in sight.
One thing I notice about the north, having come from the city, is the complete lack of people. While hiking, I encountered two groups of two women, all four walking with ski poles; one fellow with an older dog; and one intrepid fellow who had spent three hours on his fat bike tooling around the lakes. That is all, and I was there for almost two hours. That sense of wilderness when you are alone with nature is serene and relaxing. There is a peace and calmness that settles in. The expression “commune with nature” is heard often, but when you actually experience it, it is so good for all aspects of your health.
69 minutes per day outdoors may seem like a lot, but then consider that each waking day contains 960 minutes if you assume 8 hours of sleep. 69 minutes out of 960 is only 7% of the time…that doesn’t seem like so much all of a sudden. I read an article on Medium about the power of spending one hour a day for a year doing something new. That is a total of 365 hours in a year. That is ample time to truly learn something or create a lasting habit or change your health or fitness or uplift your mood.
Living intentionally is about choosing when you will have relaxation, when you will incorporate a new activity and when you will keep to your routine. As we start 2025, the objective of at least 69 minutes outdoors every day is one I will embrace. I already love to hike outdoors, but now I have a specific time objective. My sister-in-law told me over Christmas that as long as we are dressed properly, winter walks are wonderful. Taking that advice and a page out of Rory’s book, I will also embrace the cold…even the negative 17 cold…because if she loves it that much, I have no doubt I can too.
