In the backyard of my childhood home, there was a swamp, a mud kingdom of sorts. For hours each afternoon, we played hide-and-seek behind the ferns and skunk cabbage. Some days we crossed the wooden bridge to my parent’s garden to pick raspberries, blackberries, peaches, whatever the neighborhood kids hadn’t yet stolen. We walked through the creek that marked the border between towns, muddying our overalls. We hid toy parachute soldiers in trees, inside holes carved out in the trunks masking the secret lives of chipmunks. We pranced along the green moss carpet. As evening approached, we were herded like cattle to the dinner table to eat our chicken and carrots and drink a full glass of milk. The faster we ate, the more time we’d have outside before the sun went down.

As a child, my imagination was fueled by this kingdom—the swamp, the gardens, the surrounding woods. We spent hours without a single planned activity, running circles in our swamp playroom, chasing sunlight that cut through the trees. Immersing myself in the natural world awakened my curiosity and prompted my desire to write, to draw, to imagine. This interaction with nature ignited my creativity.

Yet if creativity and imagination are inspired by nature, what does that mean for children—or adults, for that matter—who spend their afternoons inside, perhaps glued to a screen, be it a television, computer, cell phone, or other device? With our tendency to spend more time indoors, more time focused on technology rather than nature, is the future of creativity in jeopardy?

When I was about eight years old, I had a horrible fight with my mother. As I recall, she was being completely unreasonable (although I no longer remember what we argued about). I decided to run away from home and knew exactly where I would go: the backyard. My sister kindly helped me pack. I gathered three pairs of pants, extra socks, and a box of Shark Bites fruit snacks in case I had any difficulty living off of pine needle sandwiches. I took the mobile phone so people could reach me if I received any calls. I planned to live among the squirrels and chipmunks. I would hide under the rocks if it rained. And I would be close enough to home so I could sneak in and steal extra Shark Bites from my parents’ kitchen if things became dire. I planned to spend my days writing and illustrating children’s books that detailed my adventures.

In the end, I never made it to the woods. My mother and I reconciled around dinnertime, and I was pretty hungry by then. But I always knew I had the option to live in my backyard, with only my imagination as my companion. Some days I would venture out alone with my notebook to the rocks near the swamp. I’d sprawl out in the sun and work on my drawings, occasionally jotting down notes for my books. Being in nature made me want to write about nature; it made me want to illustrate nature, to preserve the moments I experienced.

Clocks were of little value to me in the natural world. One of the greatest benefits of spending time outdoors was losing track of it, relying only on the sun to alert me to the day’s end. Seconds, minutes, hours ticked away while I anthropomorphized the bluebirds, the butterflies and honeybees, even the berry bushes. Like Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree, every piece of the natural world had a mind, a heart, a purpose. And I shrank inside the expanse. I was a speck of sand on an infinite beach. My challenge in that world was to document it.

Last fall, the writer Carol Kaufmann published an article in the New York Times contending that nature produces the ideal writing conditions. “Nothing coaxes jumbled thoughts into coherent sentences like sitting under a shade tree on a pleasant day,” she wrote. “With a slight breeze blowing, birds chirping melodies, wee bugs scurrying around me and a fully charged laptop or yellow legal pad at hand, I know I’ll produce my best work.” Like Kaufmann, I believe that the distractions inherent to indoor writing detract from the creative process, the natural flow of ideas. When she placed herself in the natural world, she felt inspired to write, and to write well.

Author Richard Louv coined the phrase “nature-deficit disorder” in his 2005 book Last Child in the Woods. He hypothesized that children are spending less time outdoors, a situation leading to attention and mood disorders, lower grades in school, and even childhood obesity. He also claimed that it is affecting imaginative play. While Louv’s assertions were far from scientific (they were based largely on anecdotal evidence), there may be some truth to his theory. He explained that part of the problem stems from parents’ paranoid fears and safety concerns that drive them to promote controlled activities, such as sports or monitored after-school activities, over uncontrolled, imaginative play.

But what if this relationship between exposure to nature and creativity could be measured? In 2012, Ruth Ann Atchley and colleagues conducted an experiment to look at the effect of “immersion in nature” on creativity by analyzing the results of a written test that measures creative thinking and problem-solving. The researchers separated hikers who were embarking on a four-to-six day hike into two groups. The first group received the test before the hike began, while the second group took the test after four days in the wilderness. The second group performed fifty percent better than the first on the test. Atchley concluded that by surrounding ourselves with nature and disconnecting from technology, we are significantly more likely to be creative thinkers. If Atchley’s conclusion holds and immersion in nature does spur creative thinking, then where does that leave us today?

As a teenager, I decided to earn some extra money by spending the summer living in southern Massachusetts, caring for my younger cousins. Upon arrival, I explored the property. Just beyond the vegetable and flower gardens that surrounded the house, a path led down to the dock in Buzzards Bay, where we could cool off in the mild salt water. The perfectly manicured lawn was perfect for games of soccer, Frisbee, hide-and-seek. I soon realized, however, that babysitting wouldn’t involve such unstructured play. Instead, I would spend the summer driving my cousins to their scheduled activities—swimming, golf, tennis, Spanish lessons, art classes. There wasn’t an unplanned minute until the evenings, after dark, after it was too late for cannonballs into the Bay.

One afternoon, my cousin Lia disappeared, just before her swim class. I found her sitting in the garden hunched over her coloring book. ‘Please, Alix, can’t I just stay here and play outside today?’ But as her mother requested, I lifted her out of that idyllic moment and brought her to the class my aunt had arranged. Lia remained in each of her scheduled classes for the remainder of the summer (and life). Today, she continues to lead a structured life, her days bookended by crew races and discussions of a future in finance, while I have chosen the path of a writer.

As an adult, I have succumbed to the same issues that plague children today. My days are spent glued to my computer screen, trapped indoors, and my time outside is limited at best. I still produce, but my writing is no longer inspired by the natural world, except what I hold in my memory. Perhaps what I need is the discipline to spend more time outdoors, more time seeking inspiration from nature. The next time I feel stuck with my writing, I ought to pause, notebook in hand, and go for a walk in the woods.