the fossil record

home

archives

guidelines 

1st annual print edition:

June 20, 2004

#39

I read in the newspaper recently about a young Native American man living in Ames, Iowa, who has let the grass in his backyard grow to two-feet tall—not a popular height with his neighbors—because watching wind blow through tall grass calms his mind. For him, having to cut the grass would mean "the destruction of [his] church." "Tell your neighbors if they're stressed to come and watch the wind on the grasses," he told the newspaper interviewer.

What this man is saying is worth considering. The capacity for perceiving and understanding our world is rooted deeply in our biological evolution as a species, and since as a species we have spent nine-tenths of our tenure on the earth in environments other than those of large cities, we had better pay attention to rural matters. After all, even if rural environments are far from pristine, they nevertheless retain some of the elements of those original landscapes. We know that people in hospitals get well faster if they can see trees through their window; that we have a innate propensity to fear snakes; that more people visit zoos in the U.S. every year than attend sporting events; that our bodies were not designed for sitting in chairs or to be propelled along freeways in cars or in the air in airplanes; and, we know that exercising is just about the best thing we can do to stay healthy.

The fact is that our bodies and minds were designed to learn and understand in immediate, sensory ways, and that non-wild and non-rural environments tend to subvert those natural connections with the planet. But because man-made, mediated, insulated environments are so prevalent now, most people don't learn from direct experience but from what other people tell them. What if, one of these days, brain scientists discover that we have an innate, species-specific propensity to be calmed by watching wind moving through tall grass? Even if they don't, many of us know it's true already. We know because we've seen it with our own eyes.


 

—David Allan Evans