I cannot have a spiritual center without having a
geographical one; I cannot live a grounded life without
being grounded in a place.
SCOTT RUSSELL SANDERS
IN HIS TIME, SET against the backdrop of the Industrial Revolution, Henry David Thoreau’s notion that humans are an extension of nature—rather than rulers of it—was considered quite radical. No one, he believed, ought to feel lonely in the company of the outdoors. We can find company in a dandelion, a horsefly, even Walden Pond itself. The point is, we are of nature, not separate from it. Yet a century and a half after penning his classic work, even as we make strides to undo the grit and grime of industry and return to a greener planet, this simple truth still eludes many of us.
If you can’t swing living in a remote cabin and doing nothing but observing nature from dawn till noon, as Thoreau was wont to do, you can certainly look at ways to move more elements of your life outdoors. Try taking your coffee breaks and lunch breaks outside. If you have kids, exercise some vigilance against the Digital Age by balancing their screen time with outdoor playtime. Maybe even spend a night outside sleeping under the stars.
My wife, Carrie, and I enjoy doing just that very thing when weather permits. It’s hardly a rugged wilderness experience with the patio sliding door a few paces away. But it’s a refreshing change of pace, gazing at the stars, the clouds, the moon. Try it yourself at home. Soak in the panorama and see if your peripheral vision picks up a shooting star. Even just fifteen or twenty minutes under the night sky can be enough to clear your head.
If you aren’t the type who can sit still and just be, how about sampling the amazing mobile astronomy technology that’s available today? Apps such as Google Sky (Android platform) and Star Walk (for Apple’s iOS) allow you to point your device toward the sky and instantly map planets, moons, asteroids, comets, stars, and constellations. Or check out a local astronomy group (search online or at your local community college), and avail yourself of a world of experts with powerful telescopes and organized outings.
Get creative, take full advantage of the temperate seasons, and head out to the desert or mountains for an overnight camping trip. At the very least, create an inviting area to relax, work, or eat in your yard, on your porch, or on your balcony. Whether you favor yoga, meditation, stretching, or body resistance exercises, find a place to do them outdoors to maximize the overall benefits. And do make it a social event by encouraging others to participate.
As for don’ts: don’t be a weather wimp! Far too many folks balk at outdoor activity unless the weather du jour falls within a few degrees of their climate-controlled environs. Cold outside? Slap on a hat and coat and go out in nature. If it’s hot, don a cap (or not) and appreciate the energy and warmth of the sun’s rays hitting your skin. The point is, leave the excuses and rationalizations behind and get out there. I’m betting you’ll feel invigorated by the experience.
If you dwell in an urban center and have ready-made excuses for neglecting nature, do a retake. Virtually every urban center has its own nature escapes just a short distance away—even if it’s just a small park or playground. Look into nearby hiking and biking trails. If you’re into organized outings, look into joining a club like the Audubon Society, Sierra Club, or local Nature Conservancy.
At home, take a cue from nature and add natural elements such as wood, stone, or even metal, and natural light. Live plants especially make quick and inexpensive additions. They not only look great, but act as natural air scrubbers by removing much of the CO2 from the air and filtering out Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) such as trichloroethylene, benzene, and formaldehyde, which are commonly found in paints, varnishes, building materials, and paper and personal hygiene products. The best type of plant is one officially categorized as “houseplant.” They evolved to flourish under the canopy of large trees, so they do well indoors.
Some of the houseplants singled out in NASA’s 1989 Clean Air Study are areca palm (great general purifier), bamboo (acts as natural humidifier), peace lily (removes mold spores), gerbera daisy (absorbs carbon dioxide—great for bedrooms to improve overnight oxygen absorption), snake plant (absorbs nitrogen oxides), and spider plant (removes carbon monoxide). Aloe plants are also great, pulling double duty as an air scrubber and powerful skin-healing gel.
Artwork and photos that depict nature provide nearly the same positive effect on our psyches as the real thing. Same goes for piped-in natural sounds. So be sure to include those in your living environment as well, especially if your home environment is lacking in other natural features. In one 2008 study, subjects had access to either windows covered with curtains or high-definition plasma TVs (made to look like windows) depicting realistic nature scenes. The folks who saw the technological nature had improved psychological wellbeing, cognitive functioning, and a sense of “connection to the natural world,” while folks who saw the covered windows did not.13
One of my favorite indoor features is a saltwater fish tank, which can provide countless hours of peace and tranquility. You may also wish to open your home to pet birds, cats, or reptiles. But there is perhaps no better companion for reclaiming the outdoors than with man’s best friend.
Studies of dog-human interactions confirm the biological benefits, reporting increased levels of the hormone oxytocin, the so-called “love hormone” (not to be confused with the commonly abused painkiller oxycontin). After positive social interactions, your body releases oxytocin, promoting feelings of contentment, empathy, strengthened social bonding, and reduced fear and anxiety.
While evidence suggests the domestication of dogs dates back some thirty thousand years, the interaction between wolves and early humans goes back nearly one hundred thousand years. One theory holds that canines domesticated themselves,14 learning quickly that wherever man went, bones and scraps would surely follow. Having a dog offers you to a display of primal behavior all day long, from the succession of power naps, to the immediate spring to attention for the life-or-death matter of a random squirrel invading your buddy’s territory.
“artwork and photos that depict nature provide nearly the same positive effect on our psyches as the real thing.”
The next time your dog bravely wards off a furry intruder or proudly drops a souvenir mouse or bird catch on the front porch or kitchen floor, take a moment to savor natural animal instincts in action. And this is just backyard stuff I’m talking about. Get your dog out for a proper hike in the wilderness, and watch him bound up a near-vertical incline, muzzle into every nook and cranny along the trail, and leap half-madly into any and all bodies of water. Maybe you can follow suit? If a dog can’t get you in touch with your inner beast, I dare say nothing can. Just be sure to bring enough blankets to cover the entire backseat of the car for the ride home!
If for some reason your living situation does not allow you to add a canine to your home life, look into volunteering at your local animal shelter or animal rescue. They are always looking for animal lovers to spend quality time petting and visiting with their broods. To follow are a few additional ideas to help you reclaim the outdoors. Let your imagination run free and expand on these suggestions with more of your own:
Attract critters. Plant flowers that attract butterflies. If you live on the West Coast, be sure to catch the bi-annual migration of the Monarch butterflies between Canada and Baja California. Or pick up a bag of ladybugs for the garden—a natural predator to unwelcome pests.
Perform dawn patrol. Enjoy your morning coffee with the sunrise. Better yet, venture out for a hike or walk around the block at dawn. It almost always turns into a memorable experience.
Observe and record. Grab a guidebook and a pair of binoculars and become a bird watcher or hobby botanist. Take up nature photography and travel in search of breathtaking scenery and wildlife. Or grab a field bag and collect interesting artifacts. Get into polishing stones or refinishing driftwood. Savor the fun of collecting natural souvenirs, but always be respectful to not disturb the natural environment.
Step into liquid. I lean more to the serenity of standup paddling myself, but any activity involving water promotes a strong and inherent nature connection. Choose from high-adrenaline stuff (surfing, wakesurfing, kitesurfing, waterskiing, wakeboarding), paddle activities (kayak, canoe, standup paddling), underwater endeavors (snorkeling, SCUBA, freediving), or something completely mellow such as floating down a river in an inner tube.
Dine al fresco. Take your meals outside when you can. This is especially fun in groups. Outdoor gatherings provide a more relaxed, mellow vibe and are made especially fun when an outdoor movie screening is included. Just set up an LCD projector hitting a portable screen or white sheet draped on an outdoor wall.
Be a kid again. Puddle stomp, pick in-season fruit, walk on the beach, hike up to the water tower, or fly a kite in the park. What did you love doing outdoors when you were a youngster? What the heck happened? Weave those things back into your life one by one.
Reconnecting with the wild requires a deep familiarity with the land. As George B. Silberbauer puts it in Hunter and Habitat in the Central Kalahari Desert, no one should be a stranger to a place he or she occupies for any length of time. We evolved identifying with our habitat, even if it was a considerably vast area of hunting and gathering potential. Such connections to the land are still evidenced today in societies of indigenous people.
The Australian Aborigines, for example, have navigated their terrain through the use of songlines for forty thousand years. These songs, or vocal maps, are sung in specific sequences containing lyrics, rhythms, and melodies that correspond to the land’s geographical features. Going to a specific watering hole, for instance, might require singing a particular songline about a watering hole sixteen times until you reach the marker. Once there, the songline changes en route to the next marker on the path, a cave, perhaps, and is sung the appropriate number of times until reaching the cave. Some songlines are known to spread hundreds of kilometers across the Australian interior. The songlines pass through regions and groups of widely disparate tribal cultures, adapting into other languages. (There are over a hundred dialects among the Aboriginal peoples). This might read as a charming anecdote for those of us with handheld GPS navigation apps, but for our primal ancestors, and traditional societies like the indigenous Australians, intimate knowledge of terrain was, and still is, a matter of survival.
“you connect with your habitat by acting within it, moving within it, and engaging your senses and imagination.”
This obligation to claim one’s habitat was so powerful in primal life that all of culture reflected and celebrated an attachment to the land. In his memoirs of living with traditional communities, anthropologist Wade Davis elaborates: “Mythology infuses land and life with meaning, encoding expectations and behaviors essential to survival in the forest, anchoring each community … to a profound spirit of place.”16
Who our ancestors were and how they defined themselves was inextricable from their terrain. Few of us have totemic associations connecting ancestry to animals or spirits anymore, but the essential truth of connection to your habitat lingers. Those of us who still live in the towns and countryside of our family’s previous generations can perhaps identify with this concept more easily. The land is part of your story—it’s part of you. But no matter how well you think you know the woods behind your house, the garden out back, the lake down the street, or the local hiking trails, there’s always potential for more subtle, ongoing discovery.
Sometimes, the connection you have to your home base doesn’t hit you until you return from a hiatus. As writer Richard Louv suggests, travel has the power to astound you with the sheer magnitude and diversity of the world and to help you perceive gratefully the character and life of your own terrain.17 You return home to a sense of belonging—not just to your house and possessions, but also to your habitat. And what if you have been permanently or semipermanently uprooted, say, for job opportunities or some other reason? There are still many ways to live reciprocally and meaningfully in an unfamiliar land. Wherever you are, the land calls upon you to invest is a little time, interest, and attention.
Seek out the historical areas of any city, and you’ll likely find natural monuments such as the oldest trees, largest ponds, riverfronts, or the other landscape features that shaped the original urban layout. Likewise, there are little-known preserve areas, bike trails, architectural points of interest, community gardens, and, of course, alternate routes to get you where you want to go. Nothing delights me more than discovering a clever shortcut to bypass a cluttered major intersection!
You connect with your habitat by acting within it, moving within it, and engaging your senses and imagination. No GPS required, just set foot out your door, and see where the landscape of people, activity, and architecture leads you. If you are intent on your walk, you can’t help but exercise Habit #4: be present. Your inner dialogue should sound a little like this: “Look at that leaf; it’s shaped like an elephant’s ear.” “Look at that rust spot on that gate.” “There’s a ceramic turtle on the lawn over there I never noticed before.” “There’s a new cobweb under that mailbox.” There are easily a thousand new things you could notice about your surroundings if you try. But challenge yourself to pick at least twenty. This is not at all unlike what our ancestors did, who had to pick up on every available clue and know everything there was to know about a trail back to their home camp.
Take this time also to appreciate contemplative solitude or act on opportunities to make new acquaintances. Lose yourself for an afternoon meandering through a familiar place and looking at it from a new vantage point. Once you do, you’ll never see it quite the same way again.
Consider kicking your habitat adventures up a notch and actually record what you encounter over a month, a season, a year—or more. Think of it as your personal Walden. Choose a medium such as photography, video, or journaling, and record your neighborhood observations. Decipher patterns in the area’s wildlife. A small lake in the middle of a large city can be host to frogs, turtles, cranes, geese, and all sorts of other creatures. Even a quiet street can have its share of birds and gardens. Likewise, take note of the human cast of characters you regularly encounter while exploring your habitat—the man who commutes by cross-country skiing on winter evenings, the two older women who walk arm-in-arm down the street speaking a foreign language, the child who sits in an ornamental tree with a book after school each day. You’ll note what the neighborhood looks and feels like after a snowstorm, with the changing of the leaves, or during a drizzly day. The more aware you are of your surroundings, the more you’ll discover the extraordinary.