Awe Walks in the Wasatch: A Two-Mile Practice
Researchers at UC Berkeley have a name for what happens to your mood when you walk in an awe-inducing landscape. Sandy has them in every direction.
A research team at UC Berkeley led by Dacher Keltner has spent years studying awe — that quiet expansion of the self that happens in the presence of something vast, beautiful, or transcendent. It turns out to be one of the more reliably mood-altering experiences a person can have, and it's available cheaper than most therapies.
Their "awe walks" study was simple. Two groups walked outdoors weekly for eight weeks. One group was instructed to actively look for things that produced awe — vistas, scale, beauty, surprise. The control group just walked. The awe-walk group showed significant improvements in mood, social connection, and inflammation markers.
Awe shrinks the self in a useful direction. The problems don't change. Their weight does.
Sandy is uniquely positioned for this practice. The Wasatch is in every east-facing window. The Cottonwood canyons are 25 minutes away. Bell Canyon trailhead alone produces the kind of vertical scale that pulls people out of their heads within the first half-mile.
The practice is two miles, at whatever pace, with attention pointed outward. Phones away. The active instruction matters — without it, most of us walk while still mentally drafting emails. With it, the body of evidence suggests something genuinely changes.
You don't need a mountain. The Berkeley researchers replicated similar effects with city walks pointed at architecture, gardens, and light. But if you have the Wasatch on your eastern horizon, it would be a shame not to use it.
