What More Can Trees Do For a Writer Than Make Paper?

By Pat Baldwin, B. Sc. F. (Bachelor of Science in Forestry)

Keep that red-headed girl of yours in the open air all summer…until she gets more spring in her step…. She [Anne] walked, rowed, berried and dreamed to her heart’s content; and when September came she was bright-eyed and alert, with a step that would have satisfied the Spencervale doctor and a heart full of ambition and zest once more. From: Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery1

In 1952 after WWII when Japan was looking for pro-western and uplifting literature to introduce into

their culture, the L.M. Montgomery classic, Anne of Green Gables (translated as Anne of the Red Hair)

became a part of the school curriculum. Even now, Anne is popular in Japanese culture2. Many would

attribute her popularity to the fictional Anne’s feisty character and flaming red hair. But, as a lover of

nature, I can’t help but wonder if L.M. Montgomery’s own love of trees didn’t influence the

reconciliation of nations in the aftermath of war due to the common emotional connection of humans

with nature. An innate connection of humans and nature is a theory referred to as the biophilia effect34.

Maud describes this innate love when she writes about the pine trees on the hill she views from her

Norval home,

“…I passed by the pine hill and looked up at it, lying there in its dear silence. There were those god-like

trees rising majestic out of the white sweep of snow with the pale fallen banners of sunlight between

them. I know that pine grove well. It is as old a friend of mine as the spruces on the hills of home. How

and when I first became acquainted with it I know not [my emphasis]. All I know is that when I first saw

it a year ago I came to it as no stranger[my emphasis].”5

The love of nature seems to be universal, and the author expresses her deep love so eloquently. The

Japanese have always loved their forests and viewed them as enhancing to health, especially their

ancestral trees6. So it is no surprise that in 1982, the Japanese Secretary General, Yoshitaka Akimoto, of

the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, recognized that to promote the forest as a healing

environment as did the fictional doctor from Spencervale in the Anne of Green Gables novel, there was a

need for more scientific and medical data to support this experience. Japanese scientists began to look

at the forest environment in earnest with respect to human health.

They have since developed their own medical therapy known as Shinrin-Yoku or forest bathing. Studies

have found that many bodily functions such as blood composition, stress hormones, heart rate

fluctuations and more can be affected in a positive way after prescribed visits into a forest or natural

environment. In addition, the modern urbanized world has been found to be overloaded with many

stress-causing elements. Thus, forest therapy is being used to encourage better health and prevent

disease. Japan has built 100 forest therapy bases and invested more than $4 million into research7.

Japan is not alone in this emerging branch of health care known as forest medicine. Dr. Won Sop Shin is

the Secretary of Forestry for the Republic of Korea. He is also the Vice President of the International

Society of Nature and Forest Medicine (INFOM). Dr. Shin received his undergraduate degree in forestry

at Chungbuk National University in Korea. He continued his education in Canada earning his Master’s

degree at the University of New Brunswick and his Ph. D. in the University of Toronto. Dr. Shin says that

Korea works under the idea of “creating a green welfare nation where forests bring happiness to our

people.”

Since 2003, the Korean Forest Service has been promoting their policy of “From cradle to grave: Life

with forests”. Many programs have been developed to do this job: Forest Kindergarten, Youth Forest

Education, Forest Healing Program, etc. In conjunction with a German medical resort company, the

Forest Service has undertaken to build a $140 million forest therapy centre, the National Baekdu-daegan

Forest Healing Complex8.

Since the 1980’s, scientists in Asia have led a more universal surge in studies in various

countries dealing with the effects of nature in general, not just the forest. Nature has been found

to reduce fatigue and anxiety with a restorative effect that cannot be found in any other setting.

Mrs. Montgomery certainly seems to have found nature to be very restorative. For example, in

her Monday, April 25, 1910 journal she writes: “Tonight I walked over the hill and washed my

soul free from dust in the aerial bath of a spring twilight9.”

In studies where people were given a window to look out, versus a video screen with a nature

scene or a picture of nature after being given a stress producing activity, only the subjects with

the window view with actual nature showed a significant ability to destress10

.

Scientists have also recorded an increase in creativity when subjects were given either a view of

natural areas or in photos. They have concluded that the colour green is the common factor in

increasing creativity10

. Is it any wonder that L.M. Montgomery wrote eleven novels while

overlooking the fields outside her Leaksdale, Ontario home11

?

Even in P.E.I., the author showed a creative mind when she attributed human-like characteristics

to nature through her character, Anne, as in the opening chapter of Anne of Green Gables,

“I just love trees…If you were out in a great big wood with other trees all around you and little

mosses and Junebells growing over your roots and a brook not far away and birds singing in

your branches, you could grow, couldn’t you? But you can’t where you are. I know just exactly

how you feel, little trees.1”

L. M. Montgomery was certainly not restricted to the religious thinking of her time by considering only

humans to be destined for heaven when she writes in her 1911 journal in Cavendish, P.E.I.:

God be thanked for trees. I shall always be grateful that my childhood was passed in a spot where there

were many trees—“old ancestral trees”, planted and tended by hands long dead, bound up with

everything of joy and sorrow that visited the lives in their shadow.Dear old trees! I hope you all have

souls and will grow again for me on the hills of heaven…12

1. Montgomery, L. M. Anne of Green Gables. (Penguin Group (Canada), 2008).

2. Montgomery’s Impact Globally. at

<http://lmm.confederationcentre.com/english/tourists/tourists-3.html>

3. Felps, P. Spending time in nature is important for our mood--and our health. (2014). at

<http://www.livehappy.com/self/wellbeing/naturally-happy>

4. Selhub, E. M., MD & Logan, A. C. Your Brain On Nature: The Science of Nature’s

Influence on Your Health, Happiness and Vitality. (John Wiley & Sons, 2012). at

<https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=CFd_7ujLlwgC&pgis=1>

5. The Selected Journals of L. M. Montgomery Volume III: 1921-1929. (Oxford University

Press, 1992).

6. Selhub, Eva M., Logan, A. C. Your brain on nature: the science of nature’s influence on

your health, happiness and vitality. (John Wiley & Sons Canada, Ltd., 2012).

7. Li, Q. Radio Broadcast: ‘Heal Your Heart and Body with the Power of the Forest!!’

(2010). at <http://infom.org/resources/no02.html>

8. An Interview with Republic of Korea Secretary of Forestry Won Sop Shin. July, 21, 2013

(2013). at <https://hikingresearch.wordpress.com/tag/forest-therapy-bases/>

9. The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery Volume II: 1910 - 1921. (Oxford University

Press, 1997).

10. Lidwell, William, (University of Houston). How Colours Affect You: What Science

Reveals. at <http://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/how-colors-affect-you-what-

science-reveals.html>

11. Tour of Leakdale Manse. (2008).

12. The selected Journals of L. M. Montgomery Vol. II: 1910 - 1921. (Oxford University

Press, 1997).