Forest Bathing. It’s A Thing. And It’s Not What You Think.

I saw the headline of this article, “Forest bathing takes tree hugging to new extremes,” and immediately pictured these lunatics being naked and hosing themselves down next to trees, you guys.

And I gotta tell ya, that is NOT a visual you want before you’ve had a full cup of coffee.

But thankfully, “forest bathing” doesn’t have anything to do with naked hippies showering around trees. Nope. Forest bathing is, and I’m not making this up, “walking very slowly through the forest – while thinking about walking very slowly through the forest.”

Just soak that in, folks. Because they’re calling it “revolutionary.”

This is our world.

Forest bathing is the hot new thing, and it’s all about “soaking in the wonders of the forest.” And listen, I love nature (except for the bugs.) I love forests. No one would argue that it can be absolutely lovely to walk through a forest. Forests are awesome.

But why we have to have a whole movement dedicated to forest bathing, I have no idea.

The author of the sourcelink participated in a day of forest bathing, and reported:

The idea was to look closely at absolutely everything. Examine all twigs. Inspect all leaves. If you see an ant, stop and take it in. Get up close and personal with your ant.

Forest therapy guide and trainer Amos Clifford explains the practice of “doing nothing” in the woods of Sonoma County.

“It feels good to sit here and not go anyplace,” said Amos Clifford, the man in charge, the fellow who helped dream up very slow forest walking and who just wrote a book about it. His $15 paperback, “Your Guild to Forest Bathing,” has climbed like a trumpet vine to No. 3,726 on the Amazon best seller list.

“The slower you go, the more you experience,” Clifford said. “We’re always in such a hurry to go from ‘here’ to ‘there’ that we never fully experience ‘here.’”

There was a lot to talk about the other morning. There was a long discourse about a hummingbird. Several of us had seen it. The hummingbird had been amazing, we agreed. Also amazing was a wild rose bush, a honeybee, the sound of a distant stream and some purple flowers that nobody knew the name of.

“It doesn’t matter if you do not know the name of the species,” said Clifford. “Learning biology is important but it’s not what we do. We tell people to go find another place to do that.”

What’s important is your relationship to the purple flower. Think it over. Take your time. The flower isn’t going anywhere.

It should come as no surprise that Clifford is a “longtime Zen meditation student” who used to be a hiking guide and mental health counselor before taking up the “forest bathing trade” 6 years ago.

It’s a trade, you guys. A trade. In other words, there are people dumb enough out there who pay this guy $50 a pop for guided forest bathing tours. And if you want to be a forest bathing leader like he is, he’ll teach you how, in a full blown workshop, for the low low price of $3400.

Did I mention that part of forest bathing involves finding a tree and talking to it? Yeah. You’re supposed to find your “twin” tree and get to know it. Ask it questions. Place your hands on it. Court it, if you will. And after 20 minutes or so, you’ll rejoin the other hippie weirdos that are on your forest bathing tour for a debrief about all of your respective tree conversations.

Here’s how one such debrief went down:

“My tree asked me why I was so afraid,” said one forest bather.

“My tree said it thought that we could grow together,” said another forest bather.

One older woman observed that the leaves at the top of her tree swayed in the breeze, but that the trunk of her tree did not move, being thick and solid and stuck in the ground. She called it an interesting contrast — although it could just be the nature of the trunk-leaf paradigm. (This reporter ventured that trees are bloodthirsty, pushy little devils, and there is nothing tranquil about the life-or-death struggle they wage with their fellow trees for sunlight. Hardly a life form to have a friendly conversation with.)

After everyone had spoken his or her piece about their twin trees, Clifford brewed up a pot of tea taken from plants gathered during the walk. This was an iffy prospect, as Clifford had revealed earlier that he wasn’t exactly sure what poison oak looks like — not the sort of thing to pass most nature guides’ lips. But the group sipped, and survived, and at long last the forest bathing was over.

In the grand scheme of things, this is a perfectly harmless endeavor, and it’s fine with me if people want to spend Actual Money on this nonsense. But it just goes to show you how completely wacked out people have become.

And this is how I know we’re probably doomed.