Forest bathing
By Jonathon Howard As we emerge from isolation during the Covid pandemic, now is a good time to exercise both your body and soul. Something that might take your fancy is ‘Forest bathing”. The concept of forest bathing emerged in Japan in the 1980s as a physiological and psychological exercise called shinrin-yoku. Contrary to the name, …
Sustainable Mental Health
By Lauriston Muirhead If you don’t look after your mental health, it can’t look after you. I am no mental health expert but, being an older person, I have picked up some tips along the way. Exercise – a lot of walking will do, but even better, try to get too breathless to talk – …
A different Christmas?
By Karen Bowley, WATCH and Wooragee Landcare member It is great that we can spend Christmas with family and/or friends again. But does that mean your Christmas will be exactly the same as before COVID? Will we buy the same kinds of gifts and food for our festive feast? I would like to think that will …
Greening our suburbs
By Jonathon Howard I have begun to wonder if property developers have the future of our region at heart. The economic incentive to reduce property setbacks and encourage gutter-to-gutter medium density housing appears to compromise our understanding of a traditional streetscape. Large, healthy street trees are one of the main differences between a suburb with …
Wild. Life.
By Kirsten Coates Every morning, despite the season or the weather, groups of women come together at various locations around the world to go swimming. They swim in the oceans, the rivers, the lakes and the dams of the world in an act that many people consider crazy and is called “wild swimming”. There are …
Community web supporting environment
By Anne Stelling, Parklands Albury Wodonga Ever since the Albury Wodonga Corporation gifted environmental lands to the community in the 1990’s, local people have demonstrated the value of that gift. Individuals young and old, University and TAFE students seeking to apply their knowledge, school classes from pre-school to U3A, local businesses large and small and community …
When less is much, much more
By Chris McGorlick These holidays I had the great pleasure of baby-sitting 8 baby quails for a week. Tiny, fluffy and adorable, they would spend their days scrambling over each other, scratching, exploring or huddling together for warmth. Remove one from the group, however, and instantly they would start screeching distress. Clearly, they relied on …
Ditch the car and lighten the impact
By Chris McGorlick
Getting a driver’s license and a car is a rite of passage of sorts in Australia.
I remember getting mine at 18, and finally having the world (as far as a tank of petrol would take me) at my fingertips.
However, increasingly, I’ve come to see my car …
Nature observations for fun and science
By Karen Retra, Wodonga Urban Landcare Network Have you spotted the delightful purple flowers of Hardenbergia recently? It is also known as purple coral pea, false sarsaparilla and happy wanderer, among other names. Hardenbergia typically flowers in our region from mid-winter. Like several other species, some plants seemed to take an ‘early mark’ this year and have …
There’s something better than the old ‘normal’
By Chris McGorlick In times of crisis, governments of all persuasions are wont to encourage citizens to focus on the future and the response to the crisis, rather than the circumstances that led us there in the first place. The words ‘now is not the time’ have been used so frequently in response to shootings in America, and …
Search
About Living Lightly …
Living Lightly is a column in the Border Mail newspaper on Wednesdays featuring local stories about sustainable living.
Here you can browse previous articles.
Keep up to date by joining our email list to receive each Living Lightly article the morning it is published.
