It can take a strong will and a sense of purpose to unplug from our screens, put away our checklists, and enjoy time in nature. One award-winning writer did just that, taking four trips to Rocky Mountain National Park to hike a single trail in every season. I ask him how we can be more intentional about planning time outdoors and what we can gain from leaving our desks and learning how to focus.
Study after study has shown that time in nature enriches us mentally and physically. Just a couple of hours outdoors each week can improve our mood, reduce our stress, boost our immune systems and deepen our sleep, among many other benefits. But life has a way of distracting us from simple pleasures like hiking and camping. The demands of work, school and family can overtake our best intentions and our waking hours.
Award-winning journalist Nicolas Brulliard devised a plan to get himself into nature on four camping trips on the same trail, all taken on work nights over the course of a year — one in each season. He wrote about his experiences in a National Parks magazine article, then returned to the trail and reflected on his adventures with host Jennifer Errick. He shares some of his main takeaways, including the value of attention, the significance of sitting instead of walking, and how to hike like a kid instead of an adult.
The Secret Lives of Parks is a production of the National Parks Conservation Association.
Episode 47, Parks and the Art of Paying Attention, was produced by Jennifer Errick, with help from Todd Christopher, Bev Stanton and Linda Coutant.
Original theme music by Chad Fischer. Sound effects from Rocky Mountain National Park by Nicolas Brulliard.
Read Nicolas’ award-winning National Parks magazine story, “Four Walks in the Park,” at npca.org/fourwalks
Learn about the book that inspired the journey, “A Year in the Woods: Twelve Small Journeys into Nature” by Torbjørn Ekelund, at goodreads.com/book/show/57731687-a-year-in-the-woods
Learn more about this podcast and listen to the rest of our stories at thesecretlivesofparks.org
For more than a century, the National Parks Conservation Association has been protecting and enhancing America’s national parks for present and future generations. With more than 1.6 million members and supporters, NPCA is the nation’s only independent, nonpartisan advocacy organization dedicated to protecting national parks.
You can join the fight to preserve our national parks. Learn more and join us at npca.org
Episode 47
Parks and the Art of Paying Attention
Jennifer Errick: It can take a strong will and a sense of purpose to unplug from our screens, put away our checklists, and enjoy time in nature. One award-winning writer did just that, taking four trips to Rocky Mountain National Park to hike a single trail in every season. I ask him how we can be more intentional about planning time outdoors and what we can gain from leaving our desks and learning how to focus.
I’m Jennifer Errick, and this is the Secret Lives of Parks.
[Music break]
Before we begin, I wanted to let you know that, sadly, this will be my last episode as one of the hosts of the Secret Lives of Parks. After more than four years of sharing these audio stories and more than 14 years at the National Parks Conservation Association, I’ve made the difficult decision to return to grad school full-time, but I will continue to fight for public lands and the people who care for them, even as I step away from the mic. I hope that you will too and that you’ll continue to look forward to future episodes of the Secret Lives of Parks as much as I will. It’s been an honor to help build this award-winning podcast and to share this space with you month after month. Thank you.
Now, on to our main story.
[Fade in sound of footsteps]
Study after study has shown that time in nature enriches us mentally and physically. Just a couple of hours outdoors each week can improve our mood, reduce our stress, boost our immune systems and deepen our sleep, among many other benefits. But life has a way of distracting us from simple pleasures like hiking and camping. The demands of work, school and family can overtake our best intentions and our waking hours.
My colleague Nicolas Brulliard, senior editor of National Parks magazine, found himself struggling to build meaningful outdoor experiences into his schedule, and he devised an experiment, which he wrote about in a thoughtful story last year, called “Four Walks in the Woods.”
“I know about the countless benefits of spending time in nature,” he writes, “but work deadlines, grocery shopping and carpools to kid activities have a way of taking precedence over walks outside. What I lacked was intentionality, so the idea of setting aside a few dates to be out in nature was appealing.”
Craving solitude and fresh air, Nicolas planned a series of weeknight camping trips, traveling to the same trail in Rocky Mountain National Park four times in the course of a year, once in every season. He resolved to leave a little early each time on a workday and return before work the following day, fitting that slice of nature into his busy life. The story reflecting on his experiences won a Gold Award earlier this year from the North American Travel Journalists Association.
Finding the resolve and the time to make park trips and outdoor adventures a part of my regular life is a struggle that I grapple with, too. So, I asked Nicolas if he would take one more walk on his now-familiar trail, record some of the sounds from his time in the woods and share what he learned with me.
The inspiration for his year of adventures began with a book, so when we finally sat down to talk, that’s the first thing I asked him about.
Nicolas Brulliard: It's a small book that I got as a gift from my wife's Aunt Jane. And readers of the magazine might remember her because she appeared in the magazine a few years ago. She and I went to Voyageurs National Park in Minnesota and —
Jennifer Errick: And played Scrabble.
Nicolas Brulliard: — and played Scrabble. And I won, for the record. And it was just a wonderful trip. We went canoeing, and we went camping from one island to the next, and she gave me this little book by a Norwegian author, Torbjorn Ekelund, and it's a wonderful little book where he explains that as a child, he was in touch with nature, as many of us are. And he kind of lost that connection along the way, you know, with his work and with his family, his kids. It just got too busy. And he sought to reconnect with nature. And I also noticed a few similarities between him and me, I guess. We're about the same age. He had small children. He's a writer. He works from home mostly. So, it really resonated with me that even working from home, he was not able to kind of go out into nature the way he wanted to. And so, he came up with his plan where he would go to a forest near where he lived in Oslo, and he would leave right after lunch one day a month and come back the next day before his workday started.
And the goal was not to go on a long hike. The goal was not to go to an unknown place. The goal was rather to go to the same place and kind of notice the differences between one trip and the next, between one season and the next. I thought, oh, wow, you know, I'd like to do something like this and write a story about it. So, I'm within an hour's drive of Rocky Mountain National Park, so I thought that I might be able to kind of replicate what Ekelund did, and I thought about, you know, how to tailor this for a magazine audience, a magazine format, and I came up with one trip in each season.
Jennifer Errick: So, once you realized the scope and had the idea, what were your next steps? How did you plan this?
Nicolas Brulliard: So, I had camped in national parks before, but I had camped in campgrounds, but I also knew that there was such a thing as camping in the wilderness of the national park. I just didn't know how you went about it. And so, I went on the park’s website, and they actually have a lot of information about wilderness camping. I think they really want you to do it right — I mean, for your safety, for their safety. Because if you get in trouble, then they have to go look for you. But you’re also in the wilderness, so you're closer to wildlife. You don't have access to a trash can. You don't have access to a bathroom. And so, there are various rules and regulations that go with that. You can't just pitch your tent anywhere you want in the park. You have to pitch it in one of these places, and you have to reserve it.
And so, I had several criteria for how I would pick a campsite, and one was, it had to be not too far from where I live. Rocky Mountain National Park is a very popular park. You know, I think they get more than 4 million visitors every year. And it turns out that the part that is closer to me is also a lot less crowded than those other parts. And it's a region called Wild Basin, which lives up to its name. And I had never been to that part of the park. And so, I kind of selected that area sight unseen.
Jennifer Errick: So, you would travel further to go to the more popular parts.
Nicolas Brulliard: Yes, that's right. So, within Wild Basin, there are two dozen wilderness campsites, so. You know, booking a campsite in Colorado, it's kind of a — it’s almost like a competitive sport. You have to be on the computer at the right time, when the reservation opens and then hope for the best. And so, I decided to pick a campsite that was not right by a lake, where there would be maybe less competition for booking the site. So, I settled on a place called Campus Creek, which was a little more than two miles from the trailhead. It's located on the trail to Sand Beach Lake, and the trail itself is 4 1/2 miles, I want to say. And so, the campsite is about halfway between the trailhead and the lake.
Jennifer Errick: So, full disclosure, I've never been to Rocky Mountain National Park. As part of the story, you not only wrote the piece, but you took all of these photos as well, and they're just stunning — the flowers, the trees, everything. Was this kind of typical of a Rocky Mountain experience, aside from the crowds not being there?
Nicolas Brulliard: So, I don't want to be insulting to the trail. I love this trail.
Jennifer Errick: I thought it was beautiful, what I saw of it.
Nicolas Brulliard: Well, it is, it is beautiful, but it's somewhat unremarkable within that larger Rocky Mountain trail universe because you don't get the sweeping vistas. You don't get the waterfalls. You get the lake at the end of the trail. But for 4 1/2 miles, it's mostly walking in the woods. The trail goes up and up and up and up. It's almost never flat or downhill. But it goes up along a wooded valley, and so occasionally, you get a glimpse of that valley. But mostly you're hemmed in by trees. So, it is beautiful. I really appreciate every bit of the trail, but it's maybe not what people might expect when they go to Rocky Mountain and they want to see beautiful lakes and mountain peaks covered with snow. And you see very little of that until you get to the lake at the end.
Jennifer Errick: As you kept going back, it comes across in the story that you're developing this relationship with this trail, with this campsite, with this place. What was that like for you?
Nicolas Brulliard: I mean that that's kind of the point of the exercise, or one of the points. Even that relatively unremarkable trail is beautiful in so many ways, but you have to pay attention to the little things and the small details and the things that change. One way that made this very clear to me was the fall hike, because the aspens did change color. To see the change in color in that section of the trail, you really had to pay attention to the little shrubs, the little leaves on the ground, the mosses. And once you do, it's just this festival of colors, just like you would expect in New England, but on a more minute scale. So, what I loved about the trail was, in a way, that it did not offer these vistas and it kind of forced me or helped me to focus on the small things. It did offer these opportunities to kind of focus on things that you might ignore otherwise.
Jennifer Errick: Was there also a kind of meditative quality to it? Like, what were you thinking when you were out there on the trail?
Nicolas Brulliard: At times I was able to be, maybe not meditative, but definitely I had my radar focused on these little things and these details. But at other times, I had work problems that I was thinking about. I had trips that I was planning that I was thinking about. I mean these thoughts, they come and go, and it does take some amount of discipline, even when you're on the trail to kind of push them away and focus on the moment and what is before your eyes.
I will say that every time I started a hike it was very easy to focus on the hike itself and what was around me. Part of it was I was really attentive to the changes from one hike to the next, and you could see these changes every season, in the vegetation and the new wildflowers that had popped up, in the change of color of the leaves, the changes in the smells and the sound of the grasshoppers, for example, in the summer, and the hummingbirds. I remember hearing hummingbirds before I could see them.
Jennifer Errick: Like, their wings?
Nicolas Brulliard: Yeah. It's a buzzing sound. I didn't know what it was, you know, at first, until I saw one. I thought it was an insect, and I did not expect hummingbirds to be in the mountains like that. But the beginning of the hikes, it was always fairly easy for me to pay attention to these things. After a little bit, the work stuff, the dropoffs, the pickups, the carpools and all that stuff started to kind of come back. And so, I had to chase that away and try to go back to paying attention to what was around me, and that was not always easy.
Jennifer Errick: Were you taking notes while you were walking?
Nicolas Brulliard: At first, I was taking notes, and then I figured there was easier to just talk to my phone.
Jennifer Errick: Was that a little ironic that you're, like, pulling your phone out on the trail in, like, a wilderness area in a national park?
Nicolas Brulliard: Yeah, I mean, it was a little ironic, but you know, I took all my photos with my phone, too. So, it was a tool that I used, and actually, during the winter hike, I was really nervous about it, because I had noticed that when it gets really cold, my phone tends to freeze up. So, I actually brought an actual camera, just in case. But yeah. So, I was taking notes of my impressions, just trying to remember how it felt, what struck me, if I was lucky enough to see wildlife, you know, I made a note of that. So yeah, I used the phone for those purposes. But you know, otherwise, it was in my pocket.
Jennifer Errick: Were there particular sites that were really unexpected or quirky — like, things that stand out in your memory from those first four hikes?
Nicolas Brulliard: There were landmarks that I kind of looked forward to reaching because that meant that I was closer to my goal, you know, especially when it was a little painful physically — when it was hot, when my pack was too heavy. And so, there is this one ponderosa that was hit by lightning and has this very particular coloring and shape, and I always looked forward to reaching that landmark because I knew that I wasn't too far from my campsite.
But there was also this one place that I really loved, and it was very unexpected, again, because the woods were kind of closing in on you for the whole hike. There was one spot where there was a meadow to the side, and it was not a big meadow. It was maybe 30 yards across, but all around were these beautiful aspens with boulders of granite kind of speckled throughout, and I always expected to see a moose in that meadow, and I never saw any. But the meadow itself was just such a beautiful sight, and you had to take a slight detour, like, a small trail to it. But I always made it a point to visit that meadow, you know, each season, and during the spring, with the snow melt, there was actually a pond there. And then summer, it had mostly dried out. And then in the winter, it was covered in snow. And so, it was one of those places where the changes were actually quite apparent and noticeable.
Jennifer Errick: Coming up after the break, we talk about the challenges of winter camping, the value of sitting instead of walking, and the difference between hiking like an adult and hiking like a kid.
Nicolas Brulliard: At first I was thinking, wow, we're never gonna make it to the end the trail if we stop every two minutes.
Jennifer Errick: That's such an adult thing to say.
Nicolas Brulliard: It is such an adult thing to say. But then, I had to chase away that thought and really appreciate these little stops — these many little stops.
Jennifer Errick: That’s next. Stay with us.
[Music break with promotion]
Jennifer Errick: Nicolas began his year of park trips in the spring and ended them in winter. During his last trip, he set up camp near his regular spot just as the biggest snowstorm of the year was gathering overhead. He opens his story with the moment he woke in his tent to a landscape transformed by snow.
“Ice crystals on the inside walls of the tent shimmered in the light of my headlamp,” he writes. “I checked my phone, which I had kept in my sleeping bag so that the battery wouldn’t freeze: 5:30 a.m. I sat up and tapped the nylon, expecting a layer of light snow to glide down, but instead the fabric felt heavy to the touch. Uh-oh. I anxiously unzipped the door, and a mini-avalanche tumbled into the tent.”
What followed was two days of digging out from waist-high snow and spending the night with a kind couple who took Nicolas in when his car was marooned near the trailhead. So, I ask Nicolas if he would do things differently, knowing what he does now.
Nicolas Brulliard: Oh, that was my favorite hike, the winter one.
Jennifer Errick: Really, the winter was your favorite?
Nicolas Brulliard: Oh, yeah. Definitely. Yeah. Yeah. And I kind of knew it would be from the beginning. You know, I learned about winter camping shortly after we moved to Colorado. I mean, I knew that people climbing Mount Everest, for example, might pitch their tent in the snow, but I did not know that people willingly took their tent to a snowy place just for the sake of it. And so, that was very intriguing to me. And when I read Ekelund's book, I started thinking, is this something that I can do? I've never camped in the snow. That sounds kind of scary and difficult. And so, I knew I had to plan very specifically. I had to up my game quite a bit there.
Jennifer Errick: You bought special equipment.
Nicolas Brulliard: Yeah. The other three hikes, I didn't feel like I should allow myself to buy special equipment, because it was supposed to be kind of an easy thing, you know, that you do after work. And so, I took my old sleeping bag, old tents, old backpack and all these things. The only thing I had to buy for those hikes was a bearproof food canister, which is required by the park, but otherwise, you know, it was all the stuff I had. But I knew that stuff wouldn’t cut it, in part, because I was cold on all these nights — even the summer night in August, I was cold. And, you know, I kept bringing more blankets every trip, but I was still cold, and so, I prepared a lot for that trip.
Jennifer Errick: Why was the winter hike your favorite?
Nicolas Brulliard: Well, I like setting these small challenges for myself, although I did not expect it would be as much of a challenge as it was. But I had one of my best nights in the tents. I was not cold, actually, and it was beautiful, and I've always loved snow, and this was magical to be in the park by myself — and I knew I was by myself in that part of the park because the ranger had told me you're all alone out there. So, I knew that there was not a soul, and it was both a little bit scary, and it was just such a privilege.
Jennifer Errick: What was it like going back for the fifth hike after more than a year, and that winter hike being your last experience there?
Nicolas Brulliard: You know, it was interesting, because it was very familiar, because it looked exactly or almost exactly the way it did on my summer hike two years ago. So, the smells and the sounds and the flowers and the sights were very similar. But the last time I was there, as you said, was when the thing was covered in snow. And so that was weird because I remembered all these places where I struggled, and I cursed these sections. I was like, this is hard enough. Why do I have to go uphill here? And I remembered all of them, and even going back on this fifth hike without the snow, I could spot these sections where I really struggled on the way out, except the snow was gone.
Jennifer Errick: Did you feel like you had that same attentiveness? Did you feel like you were still able to be really focused on where you were and the things you were seeing around you?
Nicolas Brulliard: I tried to see both the familiar and the slight differences. For example, the aspens that I was talking about, earlier that year were not doing well, and the leaves even in the summer were kind of pockmarked with these kind of black stains, and I noticed how vibrant they were this time around and how healthy they looked. And I did pay more attention to sounds, you know, for obvious reasons. And to capture the sounds, I actually sat down for 10 minutes at a time, which is something that I had not forced myself to do on these other hikes. For example, when I was sitting by a small creek, I started looking around and noticing all these tiny, tiny little things like these little insects that walk on the water, tiny pine tree that was growing on a patch of moss on the roots of another pine tree. And I noticed all these things that I would not have noticed if I had not sat down for 10 minutes in that particular spot.
So it was a different experience for sure. Otherwise, I have to say that it was a little more difficult for me to kind of slow down. I left a little later than I intended that afternoon, and there were clouds that were getting grayer and grayer. And so I was starting to maybe walk faster than I originally intended. And there was not a big storm or anything like this. There was just a few drops of rain when I was at the lake. But I was wondering if I would be able to kind of make it all the way to the lake and back. And so, these were some of these concerns that kind of get in the way of really taking in the trail and the sights and the smells and the sounds. But I tried repeatedly to kind of go back to that mindset.
Jennifer Errick: Did you find that some of that attentiveness crossed over into your life?
Nicolas Brulliard: Well, for me, I think the main takeaway was really to try to be present. So, it includes paying attention to small things, but it also means fully listening when one of my kids tells me about their day at school or, you know, when I conduct an interview. In the past — well, still now, but you know, more in the past — sometimes I was already thinking about the next question.
Jennifer Errick: For the record, this is exactly what I was doing at this moment in our conversation. And yes, I feel seen.
Nicolas Brulliard: We’re constantly kind of focusing on almost anytime but now. And so, I took away from these hikes, I guess, a resolution to be a little bit better at really being present in the moment, whether I'm making coffee or cutting tomatoes, or doing anything really. And I'm certainly not perfect at it. Far from it. But I feel like it does something to push the stress away. And so, that's something that I can do on the hikes. It's actually easier to do on the hikes because you do have fewer distractions.
Jennifer Errick: Do you plan other micro adventures for yourself or for your family, like, to get yourself into nature more frequently?
Nicolas Brulliard: You know, life has a way to get in the way of these resolutions. But this year, one thing I did was to go with one of our daughters, just the two of us. And so, we've been able to go on a couple of hikes. And those were nice also because kids have more facility to notice these small things, you know. They notice the little spiders and the little flowers, and they stop, you know, more frequently. And so, I kind of got back into that mindset, simply because I was there with my daughter. And at first, I was thinking, wow, we're never gonna make it to the end of the trail if we stop every two minutes.
Jennifer Errick: That's such an adult thing to say.
Nicolas Brulliard: It is such an adult thing to say. But then, I had to chase away that thought, too, and really appreciate these little stops — these many little stops. And at the end, that particular trail, it was not a very long trail, but we were at somewhat of a summit, and all these butterflies started kind of twirling around us. And she wanted to stay — for hours if possible. We had it to ourselves for maybe 10 minutes or so, and it was just us and the butterflies. And it was one of these moments where you do feel privileged, and you don't want it to end. So, you know, I try to make room for these outings. And I also tried to pay attention to nature, you know, either in our backyard or in our neighborhood.
You know, one of our traditions is to go on what we call bunny safaris because there are so many bunnies in our neighborhood that we either go on walks or on a bike ride and we count the bunnies that we see at dusk, and it's just such a wonderful way to take in nature in our urban environment. And our record is 59, by the way. 59 bunnies.
Jennifer Errick: 59 bunnies. Oh my goodness. So, what do you recommend for folks who are looking to reconnect and be attentive and mindful?
Nicolas Brulliard: You know, one thing I did recently. I had about an hour to kill where I had taken one of our daughters to her afterschool activity, and I went to a trailhead, and I thought, well, you know, in an hour I could do this trail, and then I thought, or I could just stay there. And I stayed at the trailhead and sat down and kind of looked at everything that was around me, and I did that for one hour, and I think that's kind of the key for me, is to sit down. When I walk, I don't notice as many things, and when I stop, I do notice a lot more. You know, my daughters, when they were younger, they made these, what they call, these fairy houses. And I saw one at the campsite, actually, on my first trip.
Jennifer Errick: That pinecone throne!
Nicolas Brulliard: That's right. So, you know, they took everything that they could find. Little twigs, little bits of moss, you know, little rocks. And so, it's very tactile, but that's the way that, in my view, you are more in touch with nature is if you actually touch it. And that requires sitting down and staying in one place for a little bit longer. It really allowed me to pay closer attention and to actually touch the log that I was sitting on and touch the water that was, you know, running by. And I feel like I got more out of it than, you know, even like a mile of walking.
Jennifer Errick: One of the things that you particularly were looking for and enjoyed was that sense of solitude. But then you got home, and you'd been gone for days, and you'd like, had this adventure shoveling yourself out. And your family was just like, oh, yeah. Hi, Dad. You know, like, nothing had happened. And then you were like, but wait. But they're not asking about my adventure. But then you're writing about it. So how does that desire for solitude kind of change, either in your writing process or once you get home and are like, no, I had adventures.
Nicolas Brulliard: Yeah. I mean, I realize you can't have it both ways. If you want to be alone, then people are not going to be there to appreciate your valor and your bravery, and so after the hike, I, you know, I realized pretty quickly as my family was not that interested in all the details of, you know, my travails, that it was cool that I was there by myself, actually.
Solitude is something that I realized over the years I need — I need a certain amount of, and I need it regularly, and everybody around me feels better if I do get some solitude regularly. So, that's maybe the main reason I looked forward to each of these hikes was the possibility of being by myself and not feeling too guilty about it because I planned those hikes a long time in advance and my wife could arrange her schedule around those hikes. And so, in this case, I was by myself for the hikes, mostly. Then, I was by myself as I wrote the story. And then, there's that moment when it kind of flips, where you share the story with your editor. But for most of it, it is a solitary exercise that is filled with frustration and procrastination at times, and I like that part of it, too. I like to be alone and wrestle with the structure of the story and wrestle with the words and try to put it into shape. I enjoy that challenge.
Jennifer Errick: It's a beautiful story and such a wonderful experience to go back after a year and read it again and know that we were going to get to talk about it. So, thank you.
Nicolas Brulliard: I want to go back on what I said about it being an unremarkable trail. It is maybe not the most spectacular trail, but once you get to Sand Beach Lake it is even more spectacular because you have been in the woods for 4 1/2 miles, and you get to that destination, and it all opens up, and you have the whole sky front of you. You have peaks all around you. You have this beautiful lake surrounded by willows, and you have an amazing granite beach. It's just a magical place.
[Music break]
The Secret Lives of Parks is a production of the National Parks Conservation Association.
Episode 47, Parks and the Art of Paying Attention, was produced by me, Jennifer Errick, with help from Todd Christopher, Bev Stanton and Linda Coutant.
Special thanks to all the people who have allowed me to share their stories over the years and who have shown so much support for this podcast. I really appreciate you.
Original theme music by Chad Fischer. Sound effects from Rocky Mountain National Park by Nicolas Brulliard.
Read Nicolas’ award-winning National Parks magazine story, “Four Walks in the Park,” at npca.org/fourwalks
Learn more about this podcast and listen to the rest of our stories at thesecretlivesofparks.org
For more than a century, the National Parks Conservation Association has been protecting and enhancing America’s national parks for present and future generations. With more than 1.6 million members and supporters, NPCA is the nation’s only independent, nonpartisan advocacy organization dedicated to protecting national parks.
And we’re proud of it, too.
You can join the fight to preserve our national parks. Learn more and join us at npca.org
Nicolas Brulliard: You know, on that last hike — and I want to thank you for this — I doubled the number of moose than I've seen on all the other hikes combined. You know, I was able to see two moose this time. It was a treat.
Jennifer Errick: Thank you for telling me about it. It's such a joy.