The lure of nature

I didn't have an easy childhood.  There were a lot of reasons for this, some stemming from my own issues and some completely outside my control.  But one happy constant in my life, and the high point of every year, was that in the summer my dad and I always went on a three-week car trip to Arizona and New Mexico.

The reason for this was that my dad was an avid rockhound.  Not only did he simply like rocks, he was a talented lapidary -- he had the diamond-edged saws and grinding wheels and all the other equipment to turn agates and jaspers and turquoise into beautiful jewelry.  Our summer expeditions resulted in the car coming back weighing twice as much as it did going out, because the trunk was full of boxes of fist-sized chunks of brightly-colored rocks we'd found while hiking in the canyons.

I loved these trips.  My dad was an interesting guy but not very talkative -- a trait I definitely inherited myself -- so it left me lots of space to wander my own interior world while messing about outdoors.  I liked rocks as well (still do, in fact), but my favorite things about the desert were the blue skies and clear air, the stark, pristine beauty of the cliffs and mesas, the weird and wonderful cacti, and -- most of all -- the absolute silence.  Where I grew up, in southern Louisiana, was at the time a quiet, not-quite-suburban neighborhood not on the direct path to anywhere, but even so I was never far away from traffic noise.  In the canyons of southeastern Arizona, however, there was literally no sound but the sighing of the wind, and sometimes the far-off call of a hawk.  The rumble of a distant thunderstorm or the howling of a coyote at night sounded otherworldly.  It was a strange, beautiful, harsh, magical place, and I swore as a child one day I'd live in Arizona permanently.  It never happened, but over the years I've been back several times to visit some of my favorite childhood haunts, and the southwestern desert still has an attraction for me that borders on the spiritual.

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons BAlvarius, Cave Creek Canyon, CC BY-SA 3.0]

The reason this comes up is a study released a few weeks ago in the journal Ecopsychology by Joanna Bettmann (University of Utah) et al. that found that even a short exposure to nature generated symptom alleviation for adults with anxiety and/or depression -- and the longer and more consistent the exposure, the greater the benefit.  Add to this a study in The Journal of Environmental Education called, "How Combinations of Recreational Activities Predict Connection to Nature Among Youth," by Rachel Szczytko (Pisces Foundation), Kathryn Tate Stevenson and Markus Nils Peterson (North Carolina State University), and Howard Bondell (University of Melbourne).  The team of researchers looked into what activities were most likely to lead to kids feeling a lifelong connection to the outdoors, and they found that social activities -- family camping trips, Girl or Boy Scouts, programs like 4-H and Primitive Pursuits -- were good, but far better were activities outdoors that were solitary.  Give a kid time to explore outside on his/her own -- whether in the context of an activity like hunting or fishing, or just for the hell of it -- and (s)he's likely to form a permanent bond to nature.

"We saw that there were different combinations of specific activities that could build a strong connection to nature; but a key starting point was being outside, in a more solitary activity," said study co-author Kathryn Tate Stevenson, in a press release from North Carolina State University.  "Maybe we need more programming to allow children to be more contemplative in nature, or opportunities to establish a personal connection.  That could be silent sits, or it could be activities where children are looking or observing on their own.  It could mean sending kids to the outdoors to make observations on their own.  It doesn’t mean kids should be unsupervised, but adults could consider stepping back and letting kids explore on their own."

My dad certainly did that.  I got good instruction on safety -- always carry water and food, wear sturdy hiking boots, don't stint on the suntan lotion (a rule that had to be reinforced daily, given that as a kid I was kind of the half-naked savage type), stay on established trails, and so on.  I already had a healthy respect for wildlife, having grown up in a place that had water moccasins and copperheads galore, so I kept a good lookout for rattlesnakes and scorpions and the like.  As a result, I never got lost or injured, and spent many a happy hour exploring the desert, fostering a love for the outdoors that I still enjoy.

And we need more people growing up with a love of the natural world, given how much our current activities are imperiling it.  "There are all kinds of benefits from building connections to nature and spending time outside," Stevenson said.  "One of the benefits we’re highlighting is that children who have a strong connection to nature are more likely to want to take care of the environment in the future."

It certainly did that for me.  I never got to live in the desert, as I wanted as a child, but instead made my home in one of the most beautiful places on Earth -- the lake country of upstate New York, where I have 3.5 acres of woods and fields, a nice pond (suitable for skinnydipping), and if that's not enough, I'm five miles from a National Forest with miles of trails for running, hiking, and cross-country skiing.

Which is, to me, a recipe for bliss.

****************************************

The lure of nature

I didn't have an easy childhood.  There were a lot of reasons for this, some stemming from my own issues and some completely outside my control.  But one happy constant in my life, and the high point of every year, was that in the summer my dad and I would go on a three-week car trip to Arizona and New Mexico.

The reason for this was that my dad was an avid rockhound.  Not only did he simply like rocks, he was a talented lapidary -- he had the diamond-edged saws and grinding wheels and all the other equipment to turn agates and jaspers and turquoise into beautiful jewelry.  Our summer expeditions resulted in the car coming back weighing twice as much as it did going out, because the trunk was full of boxes of fist-sized chunks of brightly-colored rocks we'd found while hiking in the canyons.

I loved these trips.  My dad was an interesting guy but not very talkative -- a trait I definitely inherited myself -- so it left me lots of space to wander my own interior world while messing about outdoors.  I liked rocks myself, but my favorite things about the desert were the blue skies and clear air, the stark, pristine beauty of the cliffs and mesas, the weird and wonderful cacti, and -- most of all -- the absolute silence.  Where I grew up, in southern Louisiana, was at the time a quiet, not-quite-suburban neighborhood not on the direct path to anywhere, but even so I was never far away from traffic noise.  In the canyons of southeastern Arizona, however, there was literally no sound but the sighing of the wind, and sometimes the distant call of a hawk.  The rumble of a distant thunderstorm or the howling of a coyote at night sounded otherworldly.  It was a strange, beautiful, harsh, magical place, and I swore as a child one day I'd live in Arizona permanently.  It never happened, but over the years I've been back several times to visit some of my favorite childhood haunts, and the southwestern desert still has an attraction for me that borders on the spiritual.

The reason this comes up is a study that appeared this week in The Journal of Environmental Education called, "How Combinations of Recreational Activities Predict Connection to Nature Among Youth," by Rachel Szczytko (Pisces Foundation), Kathryn Tate Stevenson and Markus Nils Peterson (North Carolina State University), and Howard Bondell (University of Melbourne).  The team of researchers looked into what activities were most likely to lead to kids feeling a lifelong connection to the outdoors, and they found that social activities -- family camping trips, Girl or Boy Scouts, programs like 4-H and Primitive Pursuits -- were good, but far better were activities outdoors that were solitary.  Give a kid time to explore outside on his/her own -- whether in the context of an activity like hunting or fishing, or just for the hell of it -- and (s)he's likely to form a permanent bond to nature.

"We saw that there were different combinations of specific activities that could build a strong connection to nature; but a key starting point was being outside, in a more solitary activity," said study co-author Kathryn Tate Stevenson, in a press release from North Carolina State University.  "Maybe we need more programming to allow children to be more contemplative in nature, or opportunities to establish a personal connection.  That could be silent sits, or it could be activities where children are looking or observing on their own.  It could mean sending kids to the outdoors to make observations on their own.  It doesn’t mean kids should be unsupervised, but adults could consider stepping back and letting kids explore on their own."

My dad certainly did that.  I got good instruction on safety -- always carry water and food, wear sturdy hiking boots, don't stint on the suntan lotion (a rule that had to be reinforced daily, given that as a kid I was kind of the half-naked savage type), stay on established trails, and so on.  I already had a healthy respect for wildlife, having grown up in a place that had water moccasins and copperheads galore, so I kept a good lookout for rattlesnakes and scorpions and the like.  As a result, I never got lost or injured, and spent many a happy hour exploring the desert, fostering a love for the outdoors that I still enjoy.

And we need more people growing up with a love of the natural world, given how much our current activities are imperiling it.  "There are all kinds of benefits from building connections to nature and spending time outside," Stevenson said.  "One of the benefits we’re highlighting is that children who have a strong connection to nature are more likely to want to take care of the environment in the future."

It certainly did that for me.  I never got to live in the desert, as I wanted as a child, but instead made my home in one of the most beautiful places on Earth -- the lake country of upstate New York, where I have 3.5 acres of woods and fields, a nice pond (suitable for skinnydipping), and if that's not enough, I'm five miles from a National Forest with miles of trails for running, hiking, and cross-country skiing.

Which is, to me, a recipe for bliss.

************************************

This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation is a fun and amusing discussion of a very ominous topic; how the universe will end.

In The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking) astrophysicist Katie Mack takes us through all the known possibilities -- a "Big Crunch" (the Big Bang in reverse), the cheerfully-named "Heat Death" (the material of the universe spread out at uniform density and a uniform temperature of only a few degrees above absolute zero), the terrifying -- but fortunately extremely unlikely -- Vacuum Decay (where the universe tears itself apart from the inside out), and others even wilder.

The cool thing is that all of it is scientifically sound.  Mack is a brilliant theoretical astrophysicist, and her explanations take cutting-edge research and bring it to a level a layperson can understand.  And along the way, her humor shines through, bringing a touch of lightness and upbeat positivity to a subject that will take the reader to the edges of the known universe and the end of time.

[Note: if you purchase this book using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to support Skeptophilia!]

The dolphin midwife

Okay, I'm willing to admit that I take a fairly prosaic, practical view of the world at times.

That's not to say that I can't be awestruck by nature.  I've been many places that are breathtakingly gorgeous, most recently coastal Cornwall and Devon.  And the stunning beauty of many plants and animals is what led me to study biology, and ultimately, to share that joy with 29 years' worth of high school students (and counting).

But fer cryin' in the sink, let's keep in mind that however beautiful nature can be, it's not called "wild" for nothing.  When I was in Yellowstone in summer of 2014, my enjoyment of watching elk, bison, and bears was tempered by the knowledge that if I were to approach any of them too closely, those lovely and majestic animals would have without hesitation turned me into Hamburger Helper.

This is an awareness that many people apparently lack.  Not only is there the bizarre attitude that we saw all too often in Yellowstone -- that nature is some kind of Global Petting Zoo created for the entertainment of humanity -- there is a weird quasi-pagan belief system that is experiencing a resurgence lately, and which is leading people to do things that are, in a word, idiotic.

This all comes up because of a link sent to me by a loyal reader of Skeptophilia in which we find out that an Atlanta, Georgia woman is planning on having a "dolphin-assisted birth," an idea that stupidity-wise, ranks right up there with the guy who put his two-year-old on the back of an elk in Yellowstone two weeks before we arrived for a cute photo-op.  The elk bucked and kicked the man, killing him instantly.  (The child, fortunately, was unharmed.)

But such pragmatic reasons for treating wild animals as what they are seem to have no impact on "spiritual healer" Donna Rosin and her partner, Maika Suneagle.  "Dolphins are kind and healing creatures," Rosin said.  "In 2011 and 2014 I had the privilege to learn from and with wild and free dolphins and humpback whales in Hawaii who transformed and healed me in a very profound way.  I felt deeply called to spend two times three months in nature – mostly by myself – and to deeply connect to this magical place of beauty and transformation inside and outside which called me home."

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Which is all lovely and spiritual, but ignores the reality that dolphins, like many large mammals, can kill.  They have not only been recorded as killing other animals -- not, apparently, for food or defense, but because of an innate drive to attack -- but there is good evidence that they sometimes kill infants of their own species.  Such behavior appalls many humans, especially those of us who like to anthropomorphize animals and give them something like human motives, but it is by no means limited to dolphins.  Male lions will unhesitatingly kill cubs fathered by their competitors, the probable evolutionary driver being that such actions trigger the females to go into estrus again, increasing the likelihood of the killer male passing along his own genes to the next generation.

So Rosin's idea of having a dolphin "help her give birth" is one of those ideas that could go severely wrong in any number of ways.

Oh, and did I mention that Rosin and Suneagle believe that if their baby is born this way, it will know how to "speak dolphin?"

Fortunately, I'm not the only one who thinks this is ridiculous.  "This has to be, hands down, one of the worst natural birthing ideas anyone has ever had," wrote science journalist Christie Wilcox in a 2013 article on the practice in Discover.  "Dolphins have been known to toss, beat, and kill other mammals for no apparent reason despite enjoyment.  Is this an animal you want to have at your side when you’re completely vulnerable?"

Apparently, the answer is yes, if you believe in the whole Spirit Animal thing and have zero actual understanding of biology.  After all, even Tennyson, who often waxed rhapsodic about the beauty of the natural world, penned the line, "Nature is red in tooth and claw."

So, there you have it.  The latest in the Truly Awful Ideas department.  But I guess it could be worse.  At least Rosin doesn't want to have a grizzly-bear-assisted birth.  Here, at least there's the chance that the dolphins will go, "Oh, man, another stupid human.  Let's blow this popsicle stand and go find some fish to eat, okay?" and take off.  Because Spirit Animal or no, deliberately approaching a grizzly bear is just asking to have your name put in for a Darwin Award.

A study in tropical colors

As my regular readers know, I just got back a couple of days ago from a two-and-a-half week trip to Malaysia.  I thought it might be interesting to step aside for a day from my usual agenda of lobbing verbal bombs at the woo-woos, and give a few of my impressions of this country.

I was drawn to Malaysia by the birds.  I am a fanatical birdwatcher, an avocation that I am more and more beginning to think of as being some kind of benign mental disorder.  The trip was an organized excursion put together by Birdquest International, a UK-based company that specializes in taking people to where the birds are.  So everyone on the trip shared my obsession -- all seven participants, and the two guides.  We shuffled along the trails in a tight, silent little pack, binoculars in hand, scanning trees and underbrush, listening for unusual calls or songs -- and then launching into action like a SWAT team when one was seen:  "Bulbul!  Olive-winged!  Large tree with round leaves, in foreground, nine o'clock, moving left!"  And everyone would swivel around to find the bird, and one by one you'd hear, "Got it, thanks!" and every once in a while a "Dammit!  It flew!"

But the birds were spectacular.  The grounds of the lodge where we stayed in Taman Negara National Park were frequently graced by four or five Crested Firebacks, a pheasant species that looks like it's ready for a fancy costume ball.  Not all of them were that easy; it took us several hours of work to locate the elusive Garnet Pitta, a bird that has been called the Jewel of the Rain Forest (photo courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons):

We never, ever were without our binoculars, except when we were sleeping.  We wore them at meals, during rides in the van from one locale to another, and when we were hauling our luggage around.  And all it took was the cry of "Bird!" to stop us from all other pursuits and hoist the lenses into the air to see what might have flown in.

Of course, it's not that that was the only attraction to Malaysia.  It's a stunningly beautiful country, with huge stands of pristine rain forest, enormous trees draped with lianas and ferns.  A botanist would go mad here from the diversity of plant life.  I pride myself on my knowledge of plants, and I only recognized perhaps 10% of what I was seeing.  Take this strangely-shaped leaf for example:

No idea what it is, other than "cool."  Because of the thin soils, most of the trees have these sculpted buttress-roots, that never failed to remind me of Old Man Willow from The Lord of the Rings:

Besides the biology of the place, there's the culture.  The food was always interesting, and often delicious.  We had a hundred different takes on curry, most with coconut, a food I heartily approve of.  I finally got to try durian, the famous spiky (and smelly) fruit of Southeast Asia.  Durian has such a pungent smell that it is illegal to open one on public transport or in a hotel room, and I found first-hand that the smell clings to your skin and clothing for hours.  What does it smell like?  Let me quote food writer Richard Sterling: "Its odor is best described as pig shit, turpentine, and onions, garnished with a gym sock."  Anthony Bourdain, even though he likes the stuff, says that after eating it "your breath smells like you've been French-kissing your dead grandmother."  So, of course, I had to try it.  And... I thought it was delicious.  The flavor is kind of indescribable -- musky, sweet, creamy, a little oily.  But definitely wonderful, and like nothing else I've ever tasted.

I also ran face-first into sambal ulek, which I have renamed "Malaysian Death Sauce" because I had no idea how freakin' hot it was until I had slathered it all over my breakfast.  Now, I'm from southern Louisiana, and have a very high (probably genetic) tolerance for pepper, and this was hotter than anything I've ever eaten.  It was only my hatred of losing face amongst comparative strangers that kept me from dumping my plate and taking a second serving with three drops (rather than three heaping spoonfuls) of the stuff.

And speaking of hot: Malaysia is also the other kind of hot.  The temperature varies from blazing hot, all the way up through sauna and right into the realm of pressure cooker.  I was constantly wringing wet with sweat, and I usually have a high tolerance for hot weather.  In the highlands (we spent four days at Fraser's Hill in the Cameron Highlands of central Malaysia) it was a bit cooler, but that's like saying that "compared to a blast furnace, a bread oven is comfortable."  It was still near 100% humidity, and I think the temperature only dropped below 80 F for a brief time at night.

The heat and humidity also encourage a variety of animal life, and not all of it is of the oh-look-at-the-cute-little-monkey type.  Malaysia has leeches.  Terrestrial leeches.  These live in the leaf-litter of the forest floor, attach themselves to your shoes, and then crawl up your pant leg in search of dinner.  Most of our party got bitten at least once -- I was one of the only exceptions, probably because I daily doused my boots in high-strength insect repellent, to the point that by the end of my trip my boots were composed of 5% shoe leather and 95% DEET.  If I ever get rid of those boots, I will probably have to file an Environmental Impact Statement.  But I didn't get bitten, unlike poor Linda, a retired nurse from Oakland who got bitten about a dozen times and constantly had large bloodstains on her socks, pants, and shirt.

One of the most curious things about Malaysia was the pervasive role of religion.  61% of Malaysians are Muslim; we saw many veiled women, and daily heard the chanted call to prayer broadcast over speakers.  But 61%, although a majority, means that there are plenty of other beliefs; there are substantial numbers of Hindus (whose brilliantly-colored temples were often seen on our van trips), Buddhists, and even a few animists amongst the Orang Asli, or aboriginal settlers of the peninsula.  But the Malaysians are, by and large, a people amongst whom the adherence to some religion is taken as given, and who have a big focus on decorum and morality.  I saw a few tourists who were showing more skin than was considered proper -- women in short-shorts, men who were shirtless -- and saw more than one skew glance being given to them.  I wore shorts on occasion (while not actively birding in the forest; wearing shorts in the Malaysian forest is like waving a sign in front of the leeches that you're open for dinner) and wondered if the tattoo on my leg would attract any negative attention.  I didn't notice any, but you have to wonder what the more conservative citizens think of some of the foreigners they see.

Last: Malaysia is far away.  It took over 24 hours in the air to get me there, and it is exactly half a day off from my home time zone; when I Skyped with my wife, in the places where wifi was available, I was always had the vertigo-inducing awareness of being on the opposite side of a giant spinning ball.  When it was day in New York, it was night in Malaysia, and we had to plan to meet -- as she was getting ready to head to work, I was getting ready to head to bed.  On the way back, I took the longest nonstop flight in the world -- Hong Kong to New York City/JFK.  Sixteen hours in the air.  And although I had no travel mishaps whatsoever -- not so much as a five-minute departure delay -- I do wish I had not been on the special Screaming Toddler Flight.  I've never been so glad to get off a plane.

So, anyway, those are a few impressions of my first visit to the continent of Asia.  I came away with an impression of a friendly people, a commitment to protecting their beautiful environment, and 199 "life birds" -- species I'd never seen before.  I survived sambal ulek and durian, and all in all, had a wonderful time.  Still, it's nice to be home, where the temperature is mild, breakfast sauces don't burn your face off, and you can walk in the woods without being bitten by leeches.