Mental Health as a Vision of Ecological Safety

Safety in Rituals of Mental Health

The Adventure of Discovering Health

In this essay I would like to present an example of what an ecological vision of mental health can involve, and how the result is life experienced with deep, full meaning and maximization of health. The example I provide diverges from a clinical setting and instead turns to the type of activity that often characterizes the pages of Outside magazine. It is a story that focuses on an adventure that leads to fulfillment. In this instance, the story involves Andrea Wulf, a historian and journalist whose writings over the past two decades on gardening and nature have enjoyed wide acceptance around the world, and Alexander von Humboldt, a renowned scientist of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries whom Wulf has made the subject of her historical writing efforts.

In telling the story of Wulf’s rediscovery of Humboldt, I focus on the theme that Wulf has engaged in ritual discovery through her writings. It is a special type of adventure writing because it is as much intellectual as it is a physically intense engagement with the environment. It is also teeming with mental and physical health, with the energy of discovery and fulfilment. It can be said to be the story of discovering the world you want to live in while at the same time creating this world within yourself. To engage in this activity in the most fulfilling manner, the journey involves self, other, and the environment. Our inspiration motivates us to relate to the environment in a renewed manner, and create and affirm value in what we discover, experience, understand, and communicate.

Before reading further, to glimpse the mental health exploration at the heart of this essay, it might be helpful to review a section of this essay that focuses on A Review of Ritual Discovery. However, if you want to continue on and reach the section in due course, as part of the journey, that works also.