Make space in your life for ‘blue space'

Globe and Mail

16 hours ago

Dan Rubinstein's latest book is Water Borne: A 1,200-Mile Paddleboarding Pilgrimage, from which this essay has been partly adapted.
'Hey! What's the rush? Take a break! Have a beer.'
I'm paddling hard, head down, at the tail end of another sweltering, stormy day of voyaging west along the Erie Canal. The waterside campground I'm aiming for, on the outskirts of Weedsport in upstate New York, is less than a kilometre away. Knackered, all I want is a shower and food, not to hang out with some dude hollering at me from shore.
Looking over my right shoulder, I see a small group on the back of a boat docked at a marina. A man with a big grin is waving me over. Despite what seems like a genuine invitation to join their party, it's not always wise to approach strangers who may be well into happy hour. But one of the main reasons I embarked on this journey – a 2,000-km circumnavigation from my home in Ottawa back to Ottawa via Montreal, New York City and Toronto – was to meet people. So I pivot my paddleboard and beeline to the boat.
Matt Donahue helps me climb aboard and introduces his wife, son and friends. 'Where the hell are you going?' he asks, handing me an icy can of beer.
Leaning back on a bench, I provide a précis. I'm a writer and love stand-up paddleboarding (a.k.a. SUP), and I'm curious about the curative properties of 'blue space,' about what happens when we spend time in, on, or around water. The aquatic equivalent of green space has received increasing attention in recent years from researchers who are interested in its impact on our psychological and physiological health, as well as the health of the planet. Concerned about these things myself, both the world's well-being and my own, I hopped on a 14-foot-long inflatable SUP with a couple drybags of camping gear and some notepads and started paddling down the Ottawa River toward Montreal.
That departure took place early in the summer of 2023, which turned out to be one of the hottest ever on the continent (at least for now). Now it's late July, and nearly two months of immersion journalism, and about 40 self-propelled kilometres every day, are draining my energy and resolve.
But Mr. Donahue and his crew are inquisitive and enthusiastic. They are happy for me. That somebody on an offbeat expedition is passing through their part of the state. There is teasing and laughing, high-fiving and rib-digging. Their joy makes me joyous.
Mr. Donahue gives me another beer for later and we hug. Not awkward, one-armed back-patting. A real hug.
'Where else,' I ponder while paddling away, 'do two middle-aged men who've just met hug like that?'
My obsession with blue space was sparked when I got my first paddleboard a decade ago. I had lived in half a dozen cities across Canada, all on either a river, lake or ocean, but never owned a watercraft of any kind. With a SUP, which can be carried under one arm, or in an oversized backpack if it's inflatable, I suddenly had intimate access to aquatic environments.
When paddling, I could gaze at shoreline forests or the shimmering horizon, or down into the water at fish and plants, the primordial soup our ancestors clambered out of. When it was hot, it was easy to jump in for a swim. Whether in urban or rural areas, being perched atop a SUP always made me feel better. And while we interact with blue space in individual ways, I'm far from the only person for whom water is an elixir.
The science is clear that being in nature is generally good for our bodies and brains. We tend to be more active and less anxious. Although it's difficult to differentiate between green and blue spaces, according to Mat White, an environmental psychologist at the University of Vienna and arguably the world's leading authority on this subject, water seems to uncork a multiplier effect.
Dr. White explores what happens when we do anything (paddle, swim, surf, walk, sit) in, on or near just about any type of water, from vast seas to downtown fountains. After leading several research projects and crunching the data, he believes that blue space has a mostly positive and, compared to other outdoor environments, a more pronounced impact on our mental and physical health.
'The crucial point about that research was that it was the poorest communities and individuals who got the benefits,' Dr. White told me. 'If you're rich, it doesn't matter how often you spend time in blue space. You're healthy and happy anyway. But if you're poor, it matters hugely.'
Water is a double-edged sword, Dr. White cautions. Drowning is the third leading cause of unintentional injury death around the world. Around two billion people don't have access to clean drinking water. Rising seas, intensifying storms, widespread flooding and water-borne diseases are among the deadliest consequences of global warming, and they tend to displace and kill those with the least capacity to escape or adapt.
These realities notwithstanding, people are happiest in marine and coastal margins, a pair of British environmental economists determined, gathering more than a million pings on their 'Mappiness' app. Blue neighbourhoods are 'associated with lower psychological distress,' reports a paper out of New Zealand. And taking the sea air – breathing in 'bioactive compounds that may originate from marine algae,' in the parlance of Belgian biologist Jana Asselman – appears to give our immune systems a boost.
These settings also offer opportunities for social interaction, suggests a Scottish literature review, kindling 'a sense of community [and] mutual support between people.' Moreover, hanging out in blue space promotes 'pro-environmental behavior,' especially among children. In other words, we pay more attention to others and take better care of the planet.
To decipher the mechanisms at play, I contacted another environmental psychologist, Jenny Roe at the University of Virginia. Blue space triggers our parasympathetic nervous system, Dr. Roe said to me before I left home, which basically tells the brain what our bodies are doing and then acts like a brake, dampening the stress response. Water can instill a sense of being away and boundless possibilities, she added, yet also a feeling of compatibility with our location, of comfort and belonging.
Evolutionarily, this makes sense. Our bodies are mostly water and, like all living things, we need it to survive. Even looking at a creek or pool is enough to lower blood pressure and heart rates, a pair of University of California, Davis, psychology researchers concluded, attributing this link, in part, to our forebears successfully detecting drinking water in arid environments.
I was thirsty throughout my trip. Lukewarm electrolytes don't cut in when you're paddling for hours in hot, humid conditions. But the kindness of strangers kept me hydrated.
People in boats and on shore offered me cold water and sports drinks; they shared snacks, stories, local intel about guerrilla campsites and, on several occasions, let me tent on their lawns. Poor and rich and every socioeconomic status in between, Black and brown and white and every blended colour on the spectrum, they welcomed me and looked out for me.
The interviews I had set up in advance were validating my holistic health thesis: in Kahnawake, Que., a Mohawk reserve near Montreal, I saw young leaders re-establishing their community's relationship to the river decades after the St. Lawrence Seaway was bulldozed through their front yard; I met kayakers on the Lower Hudson whose non-profits fight for free access to the river, so everybody can take advantage of its healing power. But it was serendipitous encounters that buoyed me the most. And even academics like Howard University's Lemir Teron affirmed that despite long histories of injustice, waterways such as the Erie Canal hold promise as public realms where a cross-section of people can gather.
Why does blue space seem to encourage connections between strangers? There's no peer-reviewed paper on this topic, but I think it's because of the impact of aquatic places on our well-being, coupled with a latent danger that compels us to watch out for one another, and the fact that we tend to slow down around water, creating opportunities for face-to-face conversation.
Much of my paddle took place in upstate New York, which leans Republican. One muggy morning on the Erie Canal, I pull over and chat with a man sitting on a staircase that descends into the water, feet submerged, below his Trump-flag-adorned RV.
We discuss whether the dark clouds gathering to the northeast will blow this way. He thinks I'll be fine.
Soon, I'm out of sight upriver and it's pouring, but there's no thunder and the rain feels like the best kind of shower. Had lightning struck, my new friend would probably have granted me refuge.