1171: One Poet’s Journey: Discover the Healing Power of Nature with Retired Physician and Author James C. Glassford

Robert Plank 0:04 Hey, welcome back to the podcast. We're chatting with James Glassford, who is a retired physician. He lives on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada, and he grew up in a small, isolated Hamlet in the Far North. And James has spent many hours discovering and exploring the great wilderness, and he has developed an understanding of and a love for the nature outdoor world, because nature is a place to enjoy solitude, reflect, meditate on its wonders and on life itself. And so what does this have to do with you and how you benefit? Well, James has created a series of amazing books called one poet's journey, a picture book of poems. So we're going to find out about those books, about James himself, about the complexity of emotions, connecting with nature, finding yourself, and all those exciting ideas and concepts. So James glad to be speaking with you.

James Glassford 0:59 Good to talk to you.

Robert Plank 1:02 Yeah, so we kind of introduced you a little bit with your bio, mentioning your books. But what did I leave out here? What are you all about? What has you passionate and excited these days?

James Glassford 1:13 Want to bring awareness of the opportunities that present people in the outdoors, which is a way of not only enjoying nature, but helping with people that are stressed out and and trying to find themselves

Robert Plank 1:39 well, wonderful. And you know this whole idea of trying to stress out, it can be counterintuitive, can't it, especially if you're stuck in the hectic day to day of life, right? If you're you're busy at work and you have like 15 and a half tasks to do, if someone says, Hey, you know what you should do to feel better is do less, calm down, meditate, walk in nature. I can understand how someone might kind of fight that recommendation, even though someone like you knows that like it's it's built in, right? The nature and what's around us and the the lakes and the rivers and the animals and the trees and the smell and all that good stuff, it's there to calm us, and it's the the indoors and the hustle and bustle big city that's fake and so. So what have you learned? Or what kind of message do you have for us about the the beauty and the relaxation of nature?

James Glassford 2:30 Well, I think nature has a tendency to just let you unburden yourself and bring in the outdoors and and helps melt away all the stressors that are affecting you at any given point in time.

Robert Plank 2:51 Well, great. Well, melt away the stressors and then so as far as what you do, like these outdoor activities, like, what do you like to do? Are you a kayaker? Are you a climber, hiker. What are your activities?

James Glassford 3:04 I'm primarily, I would say a hiker, although and and a biker. I like to take my E bike and go through the wilderness, and I also have spent a lot of time in the national parks, and just wandering for miles and miles, enjoying the out great outdoors

Robert Plank 3:31 wonderful and so you've done the all this great outdoors, the E bike, the hiking, the calmness, the quietness, and then That has led to you to be inspired to write this book of poetry, which I also understand it is a picture book. So what led you to expressing yourself in this way? Why did you create this book?

James Glassford 3:54 It's kind of a long story. I grew up in a small hamlet, as you said, when I was I was there for the first 10 years of my life, even when and I was somewhat of a savant. Maybe I was reading high school level textbooks in second and third grade, for example, I remember reading Hannibal and his invasion of Rome through the Alps. Anyways, one of my teachers, Audrey McClellan, had a thing with a class, would we'd get up and recite things from memory, like poetry and so on. And I we, she had a bristol board for every 10 lines, you got a star. And that was a, I don't know, a challenge, I guess to me, I started, I quite liked Robert service. Wrote the songs of a sourdough about the Yukon. And I got up and recited some of his poems, creation of Sam McGee, the and and and so on. And eventually that she had to put up a second piece of Bristol board, because the number of lines that I was able to recite from memory was went right off the end of this bristol board onto the next one. So, so that's how it started. Then in I'm when I moved to got into some philosophic, say, discussions with friends of mine, and I kept a little diary of phrases and poems that I liked. And that sort of when, then when I went to university, I started writing a little bit. And then it sort of went to a quiescent period for quite a while, till a couple of years ago, and then a friend of mine, actually a classmate, contacted me, and we got somehow, rather got on the business about writing poetry, and he wanted me to write some poems. So I and he was had a interest in the Far East, where he had traveled, and some of the Eastern languages and religions. And so I started writing, and he said, Hey, this is I really enjoying this. It's helping me out. You should publish. And I said, Well, I don't really think I want to publish, but anyway, so he said, Okay, then I'm going to publish. Well, he wasn't that well off. So I said, Okay, all right, I'll do it. So I that's how I ended up publishing, really. So the poems themselves are sort of two phases. The earlier ones are sort of some of my adolescent things. And then I got more into the nature and philosophies of the Eastern philosophies, particularly in the idea of meditating and and helping bring nature into your your clearing your mind and letting nature in

Robert Plank 7:16 Wonderful and there. So there's a lot of good stuff in there, right? And I like how you're saying that your book kind of has these snapshots of you in different parts of your evolution. And there's some great stuff in here, just about being open to ideas and reading, and also like stretching yourself a bit, right? You mentioned about with the Bristol board and reciting the poetry you broke a record. And many times there are when we push ourselves, both mentally and physically, we can kind of go through this period of difficulty and then achievement and feel a lot better and feel very accomplished. And so when you are out there in the great outdoors, do you sometimes push yourself? Do you sometimes say, Well, you know, today I'll go on a on a 10 mile bike ride, a five mile hike. Do you sometimes kind of push your limits?

James Glassford 8:07 Always just my nature to push my limits, I would say. So, yeah, like when I was in doing my part of my medical residency, I was in Calgary, and there are four national parks, actually, five, right close by. And at that time, you could, didn't need a permit, or you had to, didn't have to sign into the trails, and I would go for just miles and miles and miles, often by myself, which isn't really recommended, but and I would just take all the stuff in. I would see all kinds of animals and nature and waterfalls, and just found that just distressing myself that way

Robert Plank 9:02 It sounds like a wonderful lifestyle, and I can imagine that someone might come up with excuses for not doing this right, like you think about like, like Steve Jobs. They bought him out of Apple, and then he went to India and found himself, and he said, when he came back to America, then that's when he realized, like something was off about America, not the rest of the world. But that's easy enough for someone like Steve Jobs to, like, get a big payday and go on vacation. But if someone says, Well, you know, I'd love to go and hang on the great outdoors for a while, but I still need to earn a living. I still need to make money. So what would you say to someone who says, I'd love to pursue this lifestyle, but I need to earn money. Still,

James Glassford 9:46 it doesn't have to be a long trip. I mean, every day we take our dog for a walk, which takes about half an hour. Fortunately, I live in a area where there's a great availability. Quality of parks, and it's all wooded. It's not a it's a sort of rural living, but close enough to the urban things that we have all the conveniences of that. But it doesn't have to be a five or 10 hour trip. You can go out for five minutes, you can sit in your garden and and take in the flowers and the butterflies and the birds songs and all that kind of stuff. And you don't, doesn't take a lot of time. It's you can easily work it into any workday.

Robert Plank 10:39 I love that stir it small, because that way it can stick more as a habit. And you know, in this day and age of GPS and Google Maps, we can probably look at our surrounding area and say, hey, you know, there's that garden I didn't know about, there's that park I didn't know about, there's this wilderness area that's closer than I thought. So look into it and make the effort and start small and pursue this sort of activity. And so you've written these poems and such, and when you're in nature, you've had these thoughts, these ideas, you've had this relaxation. So is there anything of note where you were out there in the great outdoors and you had a realization? And Aha, did that ever happen?

James Glassford 11:24 Yes and no. For example, one of our walks just down the street from me takes us out to the to in the woods, to an area where there's a huge granite rock. And that particular rock was deposited there by the Ice Age. It's called an erratic that formation. And you can look at that and think, you know, sort of lose your your your thoughts under how that got there. Excuse me how marvelous it is as a sun shining on it from the right angles and and so on. And while you're watching that, it might be an orca go by or or humpback whale, or seals, sea lions. I mean, we have a great variety of nature around here, and you just take in the moment, so to speak

Robert Plank 12:28 I can imagine that there's quite a bit of perspective there, right when you we usually you see this rock, and you say, Man, this has been around for who knows how many millions of years. And then it's quiet, but then you hear the little chirping, and there's like, uh, that's what mindfulness is all about, right? Of noticing things and thinking about the bigger picture and then realizing that, well, hey, my current stresses are not so bad, and life is just gone in the blink of an eye, and it is insignificant. And so we do need to enjoy the small moments and love the people in our lives, and express gratitudes and things like that. And so as far as as putting out a message into the world, right? Because it's easy for people to to not discover what you have about nature and about relaxation, like, do you have either a message for the modern day, or is there some area where people are just like, missing the boat as far as their own, like their own life and happiness? Like, what do we need to know?

James Glassford 13:30 I think you need to know that the world is bigger than than your problems, and if you let yourself into the bigger aspect of things that your problems are pretty small compared to what there is, and if you let yourself heal from within, I would say, just by taking this in and putting yourself in perspective, putting your problems in perspective

Robert Plank 14:00 I like it. So put your problems in perspective and let nature do its thing. And that has been curious about your own personal transformation, right? Because we're hopefully, we're all working on things, right? We're all evolving and growing, and so were you always this chill of a person, or do you used to let the stress get to you? Or just what has your own start to finish been like,

James Glassford 14:26 I guess I don't, I don't try. I try not to let things bother me too much, and I try to keep myself in perspective. Part of my my medical career, I was an internist and an anesthesiologist. So people would come to the or, as you could imagine, quite stressed out, and they would face the possibility of having someone else, namely me, looking after their consciousness as. To speak for the next two or three hours, and here's a complete stranger that's going to sort of take over things, and gives you a perspective on on how people generally are, as in when they're facing stress or emotional problems.

Robert Plank 15:22 And so it with everything that you've experienced and you've seen, would you say, Is there, like, either, like a number one piece of advice, or is there something that you wish you'd known 1020, years ago?

James Glassford 15:36 I would just say, don't try and internalize all your problems, that there's a bigger world out there, that you're part of it, and you should take it in and put your put a perspective on where you are in things, and realize that your your problems are small compared to what other people are, and that if you, if you let, uh, relax and let's nature help heal you, if, if you feeling stressed and out of sorts,

Robert Plank 16:19 I love it, and It seems like a recurring theme in our conversation is this term perspective. But I think that we could all use their perspective, especially when life seems so overwhelming and so you have this amazing book of poetry. Are several amazing books of poetry, right? I see there's volume two. Like, how many volumes are there?

James Glassford 16:38 There's two. There's two volumes, Volume One and volume two.

Robert Plank 16:44 Okay, and it looks like they are on Kindle, paperback and hardcover. And with everything that you've accomplished, especially internally, what's next for you, like, what's the next project or goal you're after?

James Glassford 16:58 Well, you know, I'm getting older. So one of the things I've I did recently was I purchased a farm for my niece. You know, kids starting out can't afford, there's no way they could ever afford several million dollars for a farm. So I laid out the money for them, and I go up there and help them. It's an organic farm, so I've helped them with little repairs and things that go on like that. So that's my current project right now.

Robert Plank 17:31 That sounds like a lot of fun and a lot of rewarding work. I don't know much about farming, but you hear that there's always waking up early and things, oh, there's always problems, right? There's always things breaking down, or are things that need to be gotten to in a timely fashion. So it's and you know, many times it's easy for us to think, hey, you know, I wish, I wish life was so easy. I wish things were handed to me. But it seems like there's a lot more fun in in going out there and getting it, whether that means buying the farm for the niece and fixing that up, or going out there in nature and finding ourselves. And so you've learned all these things. You've written all this poetry, would you say, like in all your like your readings and your writing, is there like a favorite quote or lesson that you've come across in all your travels?

James Glassford 18:17 Well, yes, my favorite quote actually on in the book I is a quote from Lord Byron, which is, there is a pleasure in the pathos woods. There's a rapture in the lonely shore. There is a society where none intrudes by the deep sea and music in its roar. I love not man the less, but nature more.

Robert Plank 18:40 And what does that mean? Exactly?

James Glassford 18:46 It basically what I'm saying in the book, which is that you know, nature has so much to offer that you should take it in and and ignore the stressors that sort of put on you by yourself or fellow men and and live your life accordingly.

Robert Plank 19:11 That's a wonderful message, especially because life is too short, and there are just all all these things that we do as kids or teenagers, right? We go out and we have fun. We play in the woods. And then when we become adults, we forget a lot of these things, right? We think I have to get in the car and go to the office. So there's definitely value in revisiting, recapturing the fun of youth, especially the outdoors, of nature and all those activities. And so if someone says, Man, this guy, James Glassford and one poet's journey. That's a message that I need for myself. I need to check out this picture book of poems. So where can they find it?

James Glassford 19:48 Well, I hope they do that. They can find it on Amazon is probably the best source if you go to. Them and look up one poet's journey. My name will come up, and then the various editions are available. It's also available on some of the audio only things that are available,

Robert Plank 20:22 very cool. So go to Amazon, type in O, N, E, that's one poet's journey, and you'll find one poet's journey, a picture book of poems written by Mr. James C Glassford. That's G, L, A, S, S, F, O, R, D, and just like you said at the beginning of our discussion here, James, when you were a kid in school, you were reading things, you were learning poetry, you were reciting poetry, and it really helped in your own evolution and shaping you as a person that you are. So there's definitely value in us reading these books, seeing nature, reading the poetry, and then ourselves being motivated. So then go out, get out of the house, get up off the chair, off the couch, and go do some of these things. So we need to check out one poet's journey, a picture book of poems on Amazon by James Glassford. And as we wrap up our conversation here, James, do you have any final parting words or devices, or any like one last tidbit to fit in, or is it just time to say, Go get the book.

James Glassford 21:26 I think if you get the book, you'll get the message more clearly than I can elucidate in a brief conversation here. And basically, go out and enjoy yourself. Life is a gift to be used every day, and if you use it properly, it will reward you

Robert Plank 21:49 100% so a picture is worth 1000 words. So good, good that picture book, and we all have that same 86,400 seconds every day. And it's up to you to make the most of it or to squander it. And I think the choice is pretty clear. Go out there and enjoy nature. And thank you very much. Mr. James Glassford, author of one poet's journey, for showing up, blowing our minds, giving us some helpful life lessons. I really appreciate it.

James Glassford 22:13 Thank you very much.

Robert Plank 22:17 This is Robert plank from dfy podcast.com, forward, Slash Free. Me and my team are super excited to jump into your podcast, whether it already exists, whether it's brand new, whether it's just in the idea stage, set up a call and contact us today. Claim your free gift at DFI podcast.com/free, and we will see you there. Transcribed by https://otter.ai