Page 36, Nov 23, 2020

Did not finish but will return to later. Library holds...

Cool quotes so far:

". . . People are happiest when they are well enmeshed in community and friendships, have their basic survival needs met, and keep their minds stimulated and engaged, often in the service of some sort of cause larger than themselves" (p. 2, paraphrasing George MacKerron).

"How we spend our days is how we spend our lives. Why don't we do more of what makes our brains happy?" (p. 3, quoting, in part, Annie Dillard).

"'People may avoid nearby nature because a chronic disconnection from nature causes them to underestimate its hedonic benefits.'" (p. 3, quoting Elizabeth Nisbet).

"We don't experience natural environments enough to realize how restored they can make us feel, nor are we aware that studies also show they make us healthier, more creative, more empathetic and more apt to engage with the world and with each other. Nature, it turns out, is good for civilization" (p. 4)

"This book explores is the science behind what poets and philosophers have known for eons: place matters" (p. 4).

"'The woods, the trees and the rocks give man the resonance he needs'" (p. 5, quoting Beethoven).

"Our nervous systems are built to resonate with set points derived from the natural world" (p. 5).

"I yearned for the mountains. And yearning is a devastating thing, because it is defined by loss. As the months ticked by, I realized that if I was going to explore what nature offers our brains, I also had to acknowledge what it's absence means. I felt disoriented, overwhelmed, depressed. My mind had trouble focusing. I couldn't finish thoughts. I couldn't make decisions and I wasn't keen to get out of bed" (p. 8).

***

"Taksim Gezi became a symbol not only of the importance of nature to city life, but to democracy itself, just as Frederick Law Olmsted knew all along. "A sense of enlarged freedom is to all, at all times, the most certain and the most valuable gratification afforded by a park," he wrote.

"Yet we think of nature as a luxury, not a necessity. We don't recog nize how much it elevates us, both personally and politically. That, ultimately, is the aspiration of this book: to find the best science behind our nature-primed neurons and to share it. Without this knowledge, we may not ever fully honor our deep, cranial connection to natural landscapes" (p. 12).

"The dramatic loss of nature-based exploration in our children's lives and in our own has happened so fast we've hardly noticed it, much less remarked on it. "We evolved in nature. It's strange we'd be so disconnected," said Nisbet. Most of us don't know we're miss ing anything. We may have a pet and occasionally go to the beach, so what's the big deal? Well, what is the big deal? That's what I wanted to find out. And if something serious is missing, how do we recapture it?" (p. 13).

***

"'Why do the Japanese think about nature so much?' I asked Miyazaki, who was preparing to eat a manta ray.

"'Don't Americans think about nature?' he asked me.

" I considered. 'Some do and some don't.' But I was thinking, an amazing amount of us don't, given our downward trends in outdoor time and visits to parks.

"'Well,' he mused. 'In our culture, nature is part of our minds and bodies and philosophy. In our tradition, all things are relative to something else. In Western thought, all things are absolute.'

" Maybe it was the sake, but he was losing me.

"'The difference is in language,' he continued. ''If I ask you, Is a human a dog?' you say, 'No, a human is not a dog.' In Japan, we say, 'Yes, a human is not a dog.'' The great sensei of nature research peered at me over his chopsticks. I was reminded of the story of the Zen student who asks his teacher, 'How do you see so much?' and the teacher responds,' I close my eyes.'

"Miyazaki's answer, I understood, was like a koan, tantalizing and confounding at the same time. But you had to trust the guy was onto something" (p. 24-25).

The Nature Fix - Likewise Book Reviews

3 Reviews