I’m sitting outdoors. That’s the idea, right? To be outdoors. I will, in fact, be outdoors most of the day. The sun is shining, the temperature is hovering in the mid- to high-70s. The breeze is light, if present at all. There’s a family gathering later today that will be staged in a lush and spacious back yard hedged in by fragrant, blooming lilac bushes. We can expect the usual visitation of bees and mosquitos (it’s Minnesota, after all), along with the occasional inch worm spinning its tiny ladder down from the skies. But for now, I am in that more classically suburban outdoor venue, surrounded by asphalt and concrete and except for the scrubby grass patches in the median, the only visible green space is confined to the oversized umbrella hovering over my table on a tiny caged patio.
In its broadest interpretation, nature includes the material world and all of its objects and phenomena; by this definition, a machine is part of nature. So is toxic waste…On its face, New York City may not appear natural, but it does contain all manner of hidden, self-organization wild places, from the organisms secreted within the humus of Central Park to the hawks that circle above the Bronx. In this sense, a city complies with the broadest laws of nature; it is natural (as a machine is part of nature), but wild in its parts. (Last Child in the Woods, p. 8)
One spring and summer I sat on my deck most mornings. The daily ritual wasn’t extensive or elaborate, just enough time for a pot of tea to steep. I followed the seasonal cycle of the red-leafed tree that overhung the deck. I used an Internet app to try to identify the tree’s scientific name. The app tried to persuade me it was a dogwood. The app was wrong. To this day I still call it the flowering-whatever tree, but it didn’t stop me from writing a series of poems about the tree.
It would make sense, I suppose,
to learn the proper names
of the trees in my yard.
It suits me better not to know,
but to learn the way they behave
[College professor Elaine Brooks] believed people are unlikely to value what they cannot name. “One of my students told me that every time she learns the name of a plant, she feels as if she is meeting someone new. Giving a name to something is a way of knowing it.” (p. 41)
The season I sat on the deck was one of those with the harder type of days that can be common to the human experience. Those few minutes outdoors each day watching the flowering-whatever tree bud, then blossom, then produce plump red berries that glistened in the morning dew became more than a momentary respite, but provided the space for a healing of sorts.
Many studies credit exposure to plants or nature with speeding up recovery time from injury. [Howard Frumkin, M.D.] pointed to a ten-year study of gallbladder surgery patients, comparing those who recovered in rooms facing a grove of trees to those in rooms with a view of a brick wall; the patients with the view of trees went home sooner…Roger Ulrich, a Texas A&M researcher, has shown that people who watch images of a natural landscape after a stressful experience calm remarkably in only five minutes: their muscle tension, pulse, and skin-conductance readings plummet. (p. 46)
We’re reading Last Child in the Woods together in our book club this month. In parts I and II, author Richard Louv lays the groundwork for the need for both children and adults, for both body and mind, to engage in physical activity in the green spaces of nature. In addition to the quotes highlighted above, here are some other favorites from this week’s reading…
A Few Favorite Quotes from This Week’s Reading
Pediatricians now warn that today’s children may be the first generation since World War II to die at an earlier age than their parents. While children in many parts of the world endure hunger and famine, the World Health Organization warns that a sedentary lifestyle is also a global public health problem; inactivity is seen as a major risk factor in noncommunicable diseases, which cause 60 percent of global deaths and 47 percent of the burden of disease. (p. 47)
Adults, too, seem to benefit from “recess” in natural settings. Researchers in England and Sweden have found that joggers who exercise in a natural green setting with trees, foliage, and landscape views feel more restored, and less anxious, angry and depressed than people who burn the same amount of calories in gyms or other built settings. Research is continuing into what is called “green exercise.”
“Our brains are set up for an agrarian, nature-oriented existence that came into focus five hundred years ago,” says Michael Gurian, a family therapist and best-selling author of The Good Son and The Wonder of Boys. “Neurologically speaking, human beings haven’t caught up with today’s overstimulating environment. The brain is strong and flexible, so 70 to 80 percent of kids adapt fairly well. But the rest don’t. Getting kids out in nature can make a difference.” (p. 103)
Much of our learning comes from doing, from making, from feeling with our hands; and though many would like to believe otherwise, the world is not entirely available from a keyboard. As Wilson sees it, we’re cutting off our hands to spite our brains. Instructors in medical school find it increasingly difficult to teach how the heart works as a pump, he says, “because these students have so little real-world experience; they’ve never siphoned anything, never fixed a car, never worked on a fuel pump, may not even have hooked up a garden hose. For a whole generation of kids, direct experiences in the backyard, in the tool shed, in the fields and woods, has been replaced by indirect learning, through machines. These young people are smart, they grew up with computers, they were supposed to be superior — but now we know that something’s missing.” (p. 67)
Whether you’re reading along with us or just picking up the highlights, share your thoughts on this week’s reading and the question of relationship with nature in the comments. Have a favorite quote or excerpt? Let us know, and read with us again in the coming week as we explore Parts III & IV.
Reading Schedule:
Announcement Post
May 17: Introduction, Parts I & II
May 24: Parts III & IV
May 31: Parts V, VI & VII
Photo by Philippe Put, Creative Commons license via Flickr. Post by LW Lindquist.
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Bethany R. says
Thanks for this, I enjoyed your poem about not naming the tree. And I can relate to the healing quality of going outdoors for even a few minutes each day. Glad to hear it was such a positive experience for you too.
I sat outside for at least 15 minutes a day (usually longer because I liked it so well) for 30 days a row two years ago. It was a surprising experience — much more enriching and addictive than I anticipated.
I enjoyed the little bits of writing that would fall my way out there too. I put no requirement on myself to write, and would just sort of catch snippets in my butterfly net here and there, or use my journal to echo back what I was experiencing. Maybe that’s what I need now. Looking out the window, I see it has stopped raining here for the moment… 😉
I haven’t done all the reading, but these stood out to me from Chapter Five:
“Nature is about smelling, hearing, tasting, seeing below the ‘transparent mucous-paper in which the world like a bon-bon is wrapped so carefully that we can never get at it,’ as D. H. Lawrence put it…”
Quoting Robin Moore: “Individual children test themselves by interacting with their environment, activating their potential […] A rich, open environment will continuously present alternative choices for creative engagement. A rigid, bland environment will limit healthy growth and development…”
Will Willingham says
So cool about sitting outside, Bethany. I don’t think I really ever did it with great intentionality. Just something I started doing while I was waiting for tea, and it made itself important to me. 🙂
That Lawrence quote is something else, isn’t it?
Megan Willome says
Wonderful sentence: “Just something I started doing while I was waiting for tea, and it made itself important to me.”
Will Willingham says
That’s exactly how it was. Not a practice I started because it felt important, but one that made itself so. 🙂 Much easier, I think, to give oneself to such things, the ones that prove themselves. 🙂
Sandra Heska King says
The little fourth-grader who said he preferred playing indoors because that’s where the electrical outlets are kind of broke my heart.
So did the tearing down of the boys’ treehouse because they didn’t have a permit and the family who, after checking on permits, spent $4000 to erect a very cool tree house and five years later had to have it demolished because it was in front of the house. (Someone in our neighborhood recently had to move a swing set out of view–HOA orders.)
I’m impressed with how much research Louv did to write this book–even roping in his son to help. The stories about the influence of nature on famous creatives were very cool–including Jane Goodall who slept with earthworms under her pillow when she was two years old (“don’t try this at home.”)
“Most of all, nature is reflected in our capacity for wonder. Nasci. To be born.” (p. 9)
“And then they just cut the woods down. It was like they cut down part of me.” (p.14)
This I liked: “Whale songs even contain rhyming refrains, and similar intervals, phrases, song durations, and tones. Whales also use rhyme in the way we do, ‘as a mneumonic device to help them remember complex material.'” (p. 23)
“Some kids don’t want to be organized all the time. They want to let their imaginations run; they want to see where a stream of water takes them.” (P. 31)
“They say the quality of exposure to nature affects our health at an almost cellular level.” (p. 43)
“. . . pediatricians now warn that today’s children may be the first generation of Americans since World War II to die at an earlier age than their parents.” (p. 47)
“We actually looked out the car window . . .” (p. 63)
“Nature, which excites all the senses, remains the richest source of loose parts.” (p.87)
And then this paragraph: “Nature is imperfectly perfect, filled with loose parts and possibilities, with mud and dust, nettles and sky, transcendent hands-on moments and skinned knees. What happens when all the parts of childhood are soldered down, when the young no longer have the time or space to play in their family’s garden, cycle home in the dark with the stars and moon illuminating their route, walk down through the woods to the river, lie on their backs on hot July days in the long grass, or watch cockleburs, lit by morning sun, like bumblebees quivering on harp wires? What then?” (p. 97)
So does that about copy the entire section we’re discussing? I also shared a little on my blog: http://sandraheskaking.com/2017/05/nature-deficit-disorder-1/
Will Willingham says
I don’t know what I would do if I was told to tear down a treehouse, especially so long in the making. My friend and I once constructed an amazing fort in the woods. It had actual “walls” we built by scavenging dozens and dozens of long branches to craft a sort of three-sided lean-to. We brought in throw rugs for the floor and furnished it with odds and ends debris we found in the woods. We spent so many afternoons in there, until some older neighborhood boys discovered it and tore it down. We tried, but were never able to restore it to its former glory. 😉 I was so, so sad.
And looking out the window? I had to, by necessity as a kid. A tried-and-true car-sickness remedy. (Okay, tried and sometimes-true. 😉
Sandra Heska King says
Dumb boys. 🙁
The last time I walked up the lane (on the farm) that runs parallel to the road, between that lane and the fence, I saw the remnants of the tree house my son and his friend built. I’m not sure what they did up there. I’m not sure I want to know. But I think I’ll ask.
Laura Brown says
In the last week I’ve spent some time in a conservatory and some time in the woods. The first was slow-paced and mentally exhausting; the second was somewhat strenuous and invigorating. I think one difference (aside from the crowds at the first and only me at the second) was the presence of name cards for most of the conservatory plants. I wanted to know some of their names, but then I hit information overload. Like going to a conference and spending more time looking at people’s nametags than their faces.
I’m fascinated by every indication that contact with green growing things helps in healing, whether it’s dementia patients being given a plant that they are responsible for, or surgery patients simply having a green view, or someone in a hard season sitting on the desk or under a tree in the back yard.
For some reason, the last stanza of Wordsworth’s poem “The Tables Turned” comes to mind:
Enough of Science and of Art;
Close up those barren leaves;
Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.
Will Willingham says
I’m also fascinated by the healing powers of nature. I mean, we think it, right? That getting outside will do us good. But the research showing us just how much, and under such surprising circumstances makes a person want to stay outside as much as possible.
Sharon A Gibbs says
LW,
I love that you focused more on how the tree behaves and less on its name.
The TSP Play It Forward workshop has me thinking a lot about nature.
Yesterday I walked the trails of an arboretum and was amazed at the many varieties of leaves, weeds, and wildflowers. Some I could identify and others I could not. But I can remember how they felt. Some leaves were stiff and rough while others felt soft and pliable. One leaf’s edge was so sharp I thought it could cut. Another felt like the torn edge of a sheet of paper. I bent down to touch so many plants. The stem of the dandelion felt like a soggy straw.
Even though I wanted to know the names of all the plants, I knew that was less important than experiencing them.
I was fascinated with the way nature amplified time (as Richard Louv writes in his book).
Lots of wake-up calls in this book.
“…the criminalization of natural play… is occurring without much notice.” (Sounds so insidious and unjust.)
“Given a chance, a child will bring the confusion of the world to the woods, wash it in the creek, turn it over to see what lives on the unseen side of that confusion.” What an image!
I like the thought of nature providing a richer description with more breathing room.
So pleased for this read; I just started reading the library’s copy this morning.
I recall my neighbor talking about this book a couple of years back. As a homeschool mom of seven, she wanted to create natural experiences for her children—things like the feel of pine pitch on their fingers, the smell of skunk and rotten apples on the ground, and the exhilaration of jumping in a Maine lake on New Year’s Day (aka Polar Dip). Imagine six kids and their dad plunging into a winter lake; I have the photos to prove it! Fun!
Will Willingham says
Sharon, I love that line about confusion being washed in the creek as well. Kids don’t (generally) go to the woods to clear their head. They just go to play, and it’s a wonderful side effect. As adults we’re so anxious to find ways to clear our heads, we miss the very natural benefits of simple, unstructured time outdoors. 🙂
So glad you’re enjoying the workshop.