Continued from yesterday
After eighteen months away from work I began to reflect on my time spent wandering around the wilder corners of mid-Devon. I was increasingly aware of a nagging sense of dissatisfaction. I’d seen plenty of interesting things, including species I’d been trying to track down for years without success, and I’d enjoyed getting to know an unfamiliar part of the country. But the deeper connection with the natural world I’d been hoping for was eluding me. If it was there to some extent it felt fragmentary and incomplete.
Part of the problem, I thought, was the lack of active engagement with the environment. I was dipping in and out of the natural world– spending a few hours here and there as a passive observer each day before returning home. I wasn’t involved in farming or interacting with wildlife in any other meaningful way in order to make a living. I was making short-term visits to the natural world in the same way that one might go to a football match or visit a theme park. I wanted more than that but each time I returned home I quickly re-engaged with normal modern life; a quick check of the latest news on my mobile, perhaps catch up with some live sport on TV, or switch the computer on and see what the rest of the world had to offer that day. There was time spent chatting to Hazel, or to others on the phone, but that also tended to be linked to wider world events – the things that other people had engaged with on their mobiles or seen on TV.
Henry David Thoreau in his famous book Walden cautioned that ‘staying in the house breeds a sort of insanity always’. If that was true in the 1800s then it’s easy to see why mental well being is so often in the headlines now. Rather than being connected to the natural world in the local woods and fields, we are all connected, through technology, to the rest of humanity. The average person apparently checks their smart phone every twelve minutes on average and spends three to four hours in front of the TV every day. We track world events in close to real time and can’t help but dwell on things that are entirely beyond our control. It’s a far cry from how we used to live and the way of life our brains have evolved to deal with.
Just a few centuries ago most people would spend their whole lives within a few miles of home, becoming intimately familiar with the local environment and dependent on that knowledge for their survival. News of significant events in the nearest settlements might gradually filter through, but what was happening further afield was unknowable and largely irrelevant to day-to-day life. It was local news that held the attention. Did the nearby woods have enough firewood to keep the home warm? Were the crops growing well and were the livestock healthy and well fed? Would there be sufficient produce to survive the coming winter and, if not, what food was available in the local countryside to help improve the odds? Changes in the seasons, particularly as winter approached, would be watched with a keenness of interest, verging on fear, that is hard to imagine now. Cold weather would have been a potential killer rather than an inconvenience, and knowledge of conditions to come had to be gleaned from direct observations rather than a glance at a smart phone app.
The trend of becoming increasingly detached from the natural world has continued at a relentless pace over the last few decades. If, like me, you are in your fifties, you may have fond childhood memories of roaming the countryside. Perhaps you collected birds’ eggs, or butterflies, or pressed wildflowers. You probably learnt the names of the most common and familiar species, and you probably still know them now. It may not have been the life and death of the past but it was a real and meaningful connection nonetheless. If you are in your twenties or thirties it is less likely you will have these memories. Adults have become more fearful of allowing children to explore on their own. And, in any case, there are simply too many distractions to allow for time outside in the woods and fields these days.
I often thought of Richard Louv’s book on our diminishing engagement with the natural world when out and about in the Devon countryside. Last Child in the Woods was published in 2005 and, fifteen years later, his words certainly rang true in mid-Devon. I can’t remember the last time I came across a child playing alone, or with others of similar age, in the countryside, well away from houses. I spent much of my childhood doing just that but it would seem odd now, almost as if it were something to worry about. I encountered adults more often but it was usually on the well-used footpaths close to villages, and almost always with a dog in tow. As I passed by I would see that they were looking for my dog, and sometimes appeared mildly suspicious as it dawned on them that I didn’t have one. Further away from houses and away from the path I was almost always alone. I was glad to have the woods and fields to myself but, at the same time, fearful for what it meant for their future. If there was no-one enjoying them who would care if they were lost?
The Oxford Junior Dictionary is regularly updated to reflect the changing times in which we live. The latest version will help our children cope with modern life, with recent additions such as ‘blog’, ‘broadband’, ‘cut-and-paste’ and ‘celebrity’. But the loss of words relating to the natural world has been widely lamented. Basic words such as ‘acorn’, ‘blackberry’, ‘buttercup’, ‘chestnut’, ‘magpie’ and a host of others, all describing familiar sights in the countryside, are now missing – they are no longer deemed to be words that every seven-year-old should know. You can hardly blame the editors. For at least 40% of our children these words are at once wholly irrelevant because they never play outdoors. They are denied what world-renowned American biologist E. O. Wilson referred to as ‘biophilia’, something he defines as the ‘rich natural pleasure that comes from being surrounded by living organisms’. It has been with us, and taken for granted, for perhaps 99.9% of our genetic history, but for how much longer? If children don’t interact with wildlife as they are growing up then it’s unlikely they will do so as adults, or encourage their own children to explore outdoors.
Increasingly, studies suggest that the more time we spend shackled to modern technology, digitally connecting ourselves to other people’s lives, the unhappier we become. Studies also show that interacting with the natural world is good, perhaps essential, for our well-being and health; it is what are brains were designed to do. Yet we seem to be swapping one for the other and increasingly losing ourway. To be continued tomorrow…
Yes, but there’s another side – the natural world itself has and still is diminishing. If you have any awareness of what has happened during our lifetimes, its hard to go out without feeling the change.
True, but there are still some fantastic fragments remining that have so far escaped development or improvement. And away from country parks or reserves with car parks, cafes and visitor centres they are almost always devoid of people spending time outdoors enjoying them. There are places locally in mid-Devon that I have visited repeatedly, and are full of wildlife, where I have rarely seen another person. Near the house there is a really nice piece of mature deciduous woodland (conservationists might call it ‘neglected’ but it seems ok to me). I’ve never met another person walking there in over two years.