California, Nature and the Overstressed Young Brain
In August I travelled to California, my favourite state…of existence, to steal the pun from a famous lepidopterist (although I think he was referring to Montana). My first stop was Santa Barbara, a car trip down the coast from San Francisco. Mostly drab fog on the drive down, but around Big Sur the fog glowed orange from wildfires. There was a convey of fire trucks, police vehicles, a military-like compound for the weary firefighters to get some rest. A helicopter buzzed across my windscreen, long ovipositor heavy with fire retardant.
Signs were posted in peoples’ front yards: “Thank you, firefighters!” Further south, a beach with elephant seals, loafing, giant sandbags on land; croaking, cavernous mouths in the surf.
In the Santa Barbara mountains, amidst dry chaparral, oak, twisted liver-smooth manzanita — near the Scandinavian village of Solvang and a casino owned by the local Chumash tribe — I met a welcoming and committed organisation called the Nature Track Foundation. With a light-hearted, contagious passion for the outdoors, the group leads outdoor trips for school kids to get to know the local wilderness.
A majestic view of the Channel islands, a tour of Chumash cave art, a visit to the palmy UC Santa Barbara campus (lone, leggy white crane spotted in the marsh), a quick trip to Los Angeles, Westwood village, where nostalgia served me two slices of pizza just a couple blocks away from UCLA, one of my three American alma maters.
Back in the Bay Area, I traveled to UC Santa Cruz (second alma mater), where I visited the Kenneth S. Norris Center for Natural History. I’m pretty sure I once interviewed Ken for an environmental column called “Debate Outdoors,” which I wrote for the university newspaper. (The topic, I seem to recall: Wildfires). Compared to the highlands of Santa Barbara, the Santa Cruz mountains are denser, wilder, more fragrant, with larger oak trees, larger insects, darker-hued birds. And then there’s the redwoods.
I think it’s a good idea for university students to feel as small as possible when walking between classes. Their brains are still developing, after all, still propelling their impatient ambitions up some crazy salmon-run of identity and social significance. They need to understand how negligible their selfhood is compared to the old giants looming high above them, monster-feet stamped deep into the earth; and in so doing, in recognising their comparative lightness and flexibility, make it easier to ride the many currents that are waiting to elevate their lives.
Do the students stop to touch the coarse, beastly fur of those Sequoias? Inhale the soggy odours? Some do. Some more than others. Did I? I can say this: I often wish I’d discovered my interest in butterflies — or any entomological pursuit really — earlier in life, before university, as a kind of emollient to the stresses of youth (not to mention an outlet to that youthful ardor for adventure and beauty). Few things, I’ve found, assuage a restless mind so completely as chasing butterflies with a net.
I wrote a lot in those days, which helped; but writing was a deeply cerebral activity, a retreat from the external. So although I found comfort in nature, in catching blue-bellied lizards as a kid, in trekking across the Sierra Nevada ranges, or walking between classes at UC Santa Cruz, little compelled me outdoors during my college years.
Much has been written about the healthful effects of being in nature. “When we get closer to nature — be it untouched wilderness or a backyard tree — we do our overstressed brains a favor.” This from a recent article in National Geographic, in which several peer-reviewed studies indicate that nature is likely to reduce stress. In fact, doctors in Oakland, California, are trialling a project in which they can write prescriptions for young patients and their families to visit nearby parks.
Dennis Nord of Nature Track (his blog is here) knows these effects first-hand from his own work at UC Santa Barbara, where he taught psychology. One day he decided to take his students out into nature, let them loose for a couple days, see what happens. The result, he told me, was life-changing for many of the students; and for Dennis.
“One of the things we know,” Dennis has emphasised over the course of his career, “is that being highly intelligent — which [UC Santa Barbara] students are — doesn’t mean they’ve also learned how to handle all the emotional and interpersonal issues they need to manage.” Dennis, meanwhile, was so convinced of the healthful effects of nature, it’s why he began dedicating the majority of his life to taking young people out on adventure retreats. And has done so to this day.
