I’ve been thinking a good bit lately about a newspaper article a friend from my park service days forwarded to a bunch of us. The essence of the article was that having parks that provide natural wild areas to spend time in is important to maintaining mental health and normal mental and emotional development. The changes in our society have brought us into intimacy with our devices and second hand video experiences more than providing unstructured reality to learn and benefit from. I remember as a kid spending most of my time down in the riverbed or up in the National Forest. I always was insatiably curious about what was up around the next bend or over that hill. I always wanted to see if I could build that tree fort out of what I could scrounge up. Watching TV and experiencing life remotely was a very small part of my existence.
I think that is maybe part of why I am a writer and an artist. I think it’s the reason I enjoy a blank page. I am free to explore it on my own and create my own reality rather than experience one that someone dictates for me. I think it is why I like reading better than watching movies, because ultimately, the reader paints the scene given the limited cues and descriptions the writer provides. Reading is an active process rather than a passive video process. It engages, exercises, and trains the brain in an entirely different manner. I fear even more the mental health damage that a divorce from nature causes, and my friend’s comments on the article are truly on point. We need wild places to relax in, and experience the world in, and to stretch our imaginations across. I don’t benefit the same from a concrete path in a manicured park that tells us where we must walk, and even much less from a video of one where I’m being stalked by a killer. I need a trail that has many possibilities and even allows me to step off the path and climb to the peak to enjoy a view I could find no where but there to own for that moment in time.
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Greg
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