Why our brains crave beauty, art and nature

I think I must be getting old. I’ve started wanting to know the names of trees and birds and wildflowers. I’ve become enamoured with the changing of the seasons. I find myself in my local woodlands at 6am not because I’m still at a “forest rave” from the night before, but because I want to

get straight out into nature

after waking up, so as to catch the bright morning light, the dew on the leaves and the birdsong in all its rambunctiousness.

Or maybe I’m just tapping into a part of my nature that I have been repressing – or at least failing to recognise – until now; that which predisposes me to love, appreciate and even crave all of these things.