Forest bathing in Whistler offers a powerful reminder to slow down and connect with nature. Photo / Talaysay Tours
In Whistler’s wilderness, forest bathing offers a powerful reminder to slow down, breathe deep, and find clarity in nature’s most elemental form, writes Tatyana Leonov.
The birdcall cuts through the forest, clear and insistent, and for a moment I believe it. Then I see Carmen Diagle lowering her hands from her mouth, her face serene, and the eight of us scattered through the dripping forest gather back silently, almost reverently.
It’s 1C in Whistler today, and the rain is unforgiving. Not a dramatic downpour, but a persistent mist of water that finds every gap in your supposedly waterproof jacket. A few degrees cooler and this would be snow. We gathered earlier at the Squamish Lil’wat Cultural Centre for forest bathing – the irony of seeking immersion in nature when we’re already drowning in it isn’t lost on anyone.
Carmen is our guide with Talaysay Tours, an indigenous-owned company operated by a second-generation mother-and-daughter team, Candace and Talaysay Campo. Based in Vancouver and the Sunshine Coast (the one in Canada), the company serves the Sea-to-Sky corridor, blending Squamish and shíshálh storytelling with land-based connection. While many of Talaysay’s experiences explore the cultural layers of Coast Salish territories, this Whistler Forest Therapy offering focuses on something quieter – inviting us into a different relationship with the living landscape itself.
Forest bathing, or shinrin-yoku, emerged in Japan in the 1980s in response to rising urban stress. Indigenous cultures have long understood the grounding power of walking through forests, listening to wind in branches, or simply being still among living things.
“We’ll be moving through a series of invitations,” Carmen explained at the start, her voice carrying the calm of someone completely at home in weather that makes the rest of us miserable. “Most of them are inward, but the first requires a partner.”
I end up paired with Carmen herself. The invitation is simple: share a moment when you felt truly connected to nature. I speak of childhood summers at Pearl Beach on the NSW’s Central Coast. Carmen listens with complete stillness, then speaks of water too – its clarity and calm.
The next invitation sends us deeper into the forest alone, focusing on a single sense. I watch the others disperse: one woman trailing her fingers along rain-darkened bark, a man crouching to examine moss with the intensity of a jeweller studying diamonds. I choose to listen. With two small children at home and Sydney’s constant hum filling my days, listening feels like the sense I’ve most neglected.
At first, I heard only rain drumming on leaves. But as I stand still, the forest unfolds its layers. The soft scuff of gumboots on mud. Water dripping from cedar branches onto stones, each impact distinct. Wind threading through the canopy above. And underneath it all, something harder to name – the forest’s own breathing, perhaps, or just the absence of human noise so complete it feels like presence.
Between each invitation, Carmen uses that birdcall to gather us back, her voice mimicking the forest’s own language.
We’re carrying small mats to place on the wet ground. I choose a low stump after I hear her bird call, and crouch awkwardly, one hand gripping my umbrella, the other steadying myself against rough bark. Forest bathing, like most things worth doing, isn’t supposed to be comfortable.
In our loose circle, Carmen asks us to share what we noticed. A quiet woman speaks about the smell of wet earth, how it transported her to her grandmother’s garden. A man mentions the cold, how he’d been fighting it until he decided to just feel it instead.
Through each subsequent invitation, I realise I’m waiting for some grand insight. But the forest isn’t interested in consoling anyone. It hits you with the now, through the sharp clarity of water dripping off a branch onto your hand, the weight of saturated air, the bright green of moss that seems to glow despite the grey sky.
Standing by a stream swollen with rain, gushing over rocks with a force that drowns out everything else, Carmen invites us to imagine catching whatever we’re holding on to and releasing it downstream. I mime the gesture, hands cupped over the rushing water, then open my palms and watch the current flow past. Eventually, I stop waiting for the experience to transform me and just inhabit it: the discomfort, the beauty, the strangeness of standing in the rain with strangers by choice.
When we gather after the final invitation, Carmen produces tea she’s made from foraged ingredients – cedar, rose hips, spruce tips – and we pass around the thermos like a peace offering. Steam rises as we share what the forest has shown us. Someone speaks about grief, another about joy, and Carmen simply holds space for it all.
Something has shifted in me. My body feels awake in a way that goes deeper than coffee or cold water could manage. The forest has reminded me what it feels like to be fully present, even when the present is cold and wet.
Back at the Fairmont Chateau Whistler, peeling off sodden layers, I still feel the forest clinging to me. Not the dampness, but something less tangible. I’d wanted serenity… and maybe a little Instagram-worthy peace. What I got was sharper, stranger, and more honest. The forest didn’t wait for me to be ready. It just was – utterly, absolutely, perfectly itself. And for a morning, I was too.
The writer travelled as a guest of Whistler Tourism.