Need to get away? Try one of these favorite Sonoma County nature escapes

Had enough?

Does it feel like the news can’t get any worse, or that the political discourse can’t get more heated in the final weeks before the national elections?

Now may be a good time to get outside, before winter settles in and the nation’s mood turns even more foul. ‘Tis the season to log off Facebook for a little while before you fall further into despair over another post in support of the candidate you just can’t fathom is capable of running the country.

Nature can silence the noise and prove restorative. Just ask Ari Hauptman, a Kaiser-Permanente pediatrician who “prescribes” outdoor time for his patients’ physical and mental discomforts.

“Nature calms you and makes you do better what you need to do later,” Hauptman said during a break from seeing patients at his Petaluma office.

Granted, many of his patients are still learning how to tie their shoes. But everyone can benefit from the advice to get outside, and few places on Earth compare with Sonoma County for filling that prescription.

Hauptman, a 54-year-old father of three, is a proponent of “attention restoration theory,” which essentially posits that spending time in nature can renew the spirit and refocus the mind.

The concept is nothing new. In 1798, the poet William Wordsworth observed as he gazed upon England’s River Wye that “nature and the language of the sense” are an “anchor,” “nurse,” “guardian of my heart” and “soul of all my moral being.”

Science is beginning to confirm what many intuitively understand. One recent Stanford University study found that people who strolled along quiet, tree-lined paths showed improvements in their mental health and less blood flow to an area of the brain that becomes more active when a person is brooding.

However, today’s wired world and 24/7 news cycle make it a challenge to disconnect in order to reconnect.

Laken Porter, a 19-year-old who recently withdrew from classes at Santa Rosa Junior College to concentrate on becoming an esthetician, acknowledged she struggles with an “addiction” to her cellphone. As an antidote, she enjoys hiking in remote places where cell service is nonexistent.

“It takes your mind off everything if you’re busy looking at all the beautiful things and taking pictures,” Porter said. “You don’t have time to think ‘I have this due’ or ‘I have this place to be.’ It’s just really nice.”

One of her favorite hikes is to Alamere Falls at Point Reyes National Seashore in Marin County, where those hardy enough to make the 13-mile round-trip journey are rewarded with the sight of a 30-foot waterfall cascading over the cliffs directly onto the beach.

The Seashore’s website describes the site as one for “relaxation, self-reliance, opportunities for solitude and natural quiet.” It’s also, the site notes, a frequent area for search and rescue missions when hikers get lost or are unprepared for conditions.

Sonoma County has a plethora of amazing, out-of-the-way places where people can get their Zen on. Favorites singled out by Press Democrat readers who responded to an online poll included the beaches at Sonoma Coast State Park and Armstrong Woods in Guerneville.

Santa Rosa sales rep John MacDonald said his favorite getaway is The Sea Ranch, where he and his family like to rent a home.

MacDonald spends a lot of time on the road, he said, but he starts to feel a change in himself while driving to the remote coastal development. Traffic thins out. The highway meanders. Often, he and his family are greeted by fog.

“It’s just the aura of the place,” said MacDonald, whose family is planning a return trip to The Sea Ranch for the holidays this year.

“Nobody is in a hurry to do anything.”

Bill Myers experiences that feeling while stretched out on Gunsight Rock, near the 2,730-foot summit of Hood Mountain Regional Park and Open Space Preserve.

Dangling his feet over the rock’s edge, with Sonoma Valley spread out beneath him, the 68-year-old retired engineer and businessman feels joyously removed from the busy world.

“It’s in the middle of nowhere, enough that you can often eat lunch there by yourself,” he said. “It’s not unusual to hike that trail and not see another person.”

But Myers, who along with partner Dave Chalk leads regular hiking excursions across Sonoma County, said a person does not have to travel far to experience nature’s calming effects.

“Happiness is in your head,” Myers said. “It doesn’t have to do so much with externals as it does how you view life.”

Hauptman likely would agree. The pediatrician’s nature “prescriptions” range from taking a walk and paddling a canoe, to sitting quietly and enjoying the sights and sounds of nature.

Hauptman, who is a board member of the Sonoma County Regional Parks Foundation, said he was amazed during a recent visit to Spring Lake in Santa Rosa at how many people were enjoying a picnic or striding along the paved path that encircles the body of water.

In other words, a person doesn’t have to travel far or expend a lot of energy to experience relief from the daily dose of drama carried in news alerts and social media posts.

Hauptman said there’s a particular spot on the Russian River where he enjoys going, not to fish, but to dig up sediment and study microbes.

“You go to that same spot on the river from one season to the next and it’s so different,” he said.

Writing more than two centuries ago, William Wordsworth expressed a similar fascination in “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey:”

“With many recognitions dim and faint,

And somewhat of a sad perplexity,

The picture of the mind revives again:

While here I stand, not only with the sense

Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts

That in this moment there is life and food

For future years.”

You can reach Staff Writer Derek Moore at 707-521-5336 or derek.moore@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @deadlinederek.