[by Amy Thomas, BBC Features Correspondent] Engaging with nature on vacation can not only make you feel more rested and restored, it can also enhance wellbeing when you're back home.

It's a cool but sunny spring morning as I step over rocks and past mountain laurel bushes into a wooded Connecticut land preserve. Only the trill of titmice and robins overhead and the crunch of dead oak leaves underfoot punctuate the still air. "We're folding into the forest," says Regan Stacey, a forest ……

photo: Getty Images

The fleet of feathers leaves wakes,

streaks of white waves

against the black surface rippled

with wind. The sun rises over the hill,

giving light to color and form…

It was a cold and blustery afternoon, not the typical day for a beach walk. The floods had come and shifted the sands again. I was down along Long Island Sound, rounding the bend up the Connecticut River, walking past bits of detritus washed up…

Another bang.
This drum beat
loud and resonant
scattered feathers
the flying swiftly…

Breathing in and breathing out,
waves of thought like wind
rise and fall with the
rhythm of cicadas…

For I cannot tell
the flit of birds through
the flailing leaves
which is which
and who is who…

I must confess, I sing to the trees. They don’t judge. I think the nearby squirrel had something to say, but between her and the dense mist dripping from the trees, all was silent between the notes of my voice. Slowly as I walked, I could hear the distant wash of water over stone, where Burnham Brook babbled and had stories to tell…