This month's cover illustration shows two people walking through the Hockomock Swamp in southeastern Massachusetts. It's a place nurse Pamela Sturtevant wrote about as an escape from the realities of COVID-19 in her July Reflections article, "Of Swamps and Pandemics" (see https://journals.lww.com/ajnonline/Fulltext/2021/07000/Of_Swamps_and_Pandemics.3). She described the Hockomock as an otherworldly setting known for "legends and sightings of wonderfully scary things"; as such, with Halloween spookiness in mind, we decided to repurpose her article's illustration on our October cover.
Also on our minds-and symbolized in the artwork-is the need to find respite as the pandemic continues. Sturtevant pointed to nature as a soothing refuge: "The deeper into the swamp we walked, the greater the stillness. Negativity and angst dissolved," she wrote. "Silence seeped into our spines, relaxing our amplified neural conversations and untying cranky muscles." With COVID-19 still not under control in many parts of the country and nurses struggling to shoulder its burden, turning to nature continues to be a therapeutic option for self-care.
One nurse who wrote to AJN in response to Sturtevant's article echoed its sentiment. "I agree with Pamela Sturtevant's lovely words. They tell the importance of decompressing in the outdoors and nature from a profession that depletes the psychic energy of the soul. Nurses need to replenish their emotional reserves more than ever in these times of uncertainty."-Diane Szulecki, editor