GO OUTSIDE

CHAPTER 1: GO OUTSIDE

25        remember, you might say: In Searching for Memory: The Brain, the Mind, the Past, psychologist Daniel L. Schacter makes an important distinction between knowing and remembering (see pages 22–26). You may know you were at the dinner with Joe and Jane, but do you really remember being there? This distinction is key when it comes to embodied memories. It’s not enough to know that, say, white trillium blooms in the early spring. Actual visceral memories are required to overcome landscape amnesia.

26        foam into a soapy lather: See this fun video about how to make a garden soap from ceanothus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcyZdQws0iQ

27        Some place cool, green, and watered: I wrote more fully about the experience of fleeing California in part over climate concerns in the essay “I’m an American Climate Emigrant,” Sierra, October 12, 2020. “It wasn’t really the fires, though, that drove me from California, I wrote. “No, it was the specter of drought—the fires’ flinty handmaiden.” Available at: https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/i-m-american-climate-emigrant

27        moss swaddling limbs: There are some 22,000 species of moss worldwide, but as Robin Wall Kimmerer writes in Gathering Moss, they “don’t usually have common names, for no one has bothered with them.”

27        I bought a pile of field guides: My favorite for this bioregion is Cascadia Revealed (Timber Press; 2021) by Daniel Mathews, who is authoritative and also not above the occasional dad joke. The ethnobotany is first-rate

27        made birdsong recordings with Merlin: Some environmentalists worry that the proliferation of nature apps is just further distancing people from nature, another form of technology mediation. “Nature apps might undo . . . ways of knowing nature that are based on observation, experience, and skill. In fact, that is the whole point of most nature apps: The user can get answers without having to do much,” writes Paul Keeling in “Time to Rethink Nature Apps,” Sierra, November 29, 2022. Available at: https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/time-rethink-nature-apps. Maybe. But these technologies have helped make naturalist knowledge more democratic. I, for one, would rather err on the side of accessibility versus purity. 

28        citizens’ efforts to preserve the living world: You’ll note the phrase “living world” a lot in these pages. It is, in my opinion, one of the best synonyms for the overused and often misunderstood “nature.”

28        “Each place is itself only”: See Barry Lopez’ posthumously published anthology, Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World (Random House; 2022) page 4. 

29        “To have any kind of home”: See Madeline Ostrander, At Home on an Unruly Planet (Henry Holt; 2022) page 55. 

29        a billion sea creatures: See Valerie Yurk, “Pacific Northwest Heat Wave Killed More than One Billion Sea Creatures,” Scientific American, July 15, 2021. Available at: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/pacific-northwest-heat-wave-killed-more-than-1-billion-sea-creatures/

29        one of the driest on record in Washington State: See Washington Climate Office https://climate.uw.edu/2023/08/09/whipsaws-in-washington-state-streamflows/ and Washington Department of Ecology https://ecology.wa.gov/blog/january-2025/new-year-same-drought

30        the extinction of experience: See Robert Michael Pyle, The Thunder Tree (Houghton Mifflin; 1993), Chapter 9. 

30        His memoir, The Thunder Tree: Taken as a whole, Pyle’s book is a celebration of the work of developing a sense of place. In the prologue he writes, “When people connect with nature, it happens somewhere.”

31        “What is the extinction of the condor”: This now famous line appears on page 147.

31        “nature deficit disorder”: The evocative phrase was coined by Richard Louv in his book, Last Child in the Woods (Algonquin, 2008), in which he celebrates the gifts earned from close contact with the outdoors. “Nature is reflected in our capacity for wonder,” Louv writes. See more at https://richardlouv.com/blog/what-is-nature-deficit-disorder 

31        average American child:  See National Wildlife Federation fact sheet, “Be Out There,” available at: https://www.nwf.org/~/media/PDFs/Be%20Out%20There/MindBodySpirit_FactSheet_May2010.ashx 

31        a vicious cycle of biophobia: See Masashi Soga and Kevin Gaston et. al., “The vicious cycle of biophobia,” Trends in Ecology & Evolution, June 2023. The researchers write, “The vicious cycle of biophobia risks accelerating the extinction of experience, leading to long-term adverse consequences for the conservation of biodiversity.” Available at: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36707258/ 

32        No one is immune: See Soga and Gaston, “Extinction of experience among ecologists,” Trends in Ecology & Evolution, March 2025. Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0169534724003185.

32        Even summer camp: See Emma Pattee, “Summer Vacation is Moving Indoors,” The Atlantic, June 14, 2023 available at: https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2023/06/extreme-heat-events-summer-vacation-kids/674401/

32        “We just didn’t want to put our kids at risk”: See: John Schwartz, “Climate Change Is Making It Harder for Campers to Beat the Heat,” The New York Times, July 5, 2021. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/05/climate/global-warming-summer-camp.html

32        All generational amnesia begins with individual forgetting: One of the scariest examples is the now-infamous episode in which the Oxford Junior Dictionary in 2007 and then again in 2012 nixed dozens of nature-related words to make room for other words connected to modern technology and communication. The removal of words like almond, crocus, catkin, and chestnut prompted protest from writers including Margaret Atwood and Robert Macfarlane, who worried that a “place literacy is leaving us.” Language deficit has compounded nature deficit. As neuroscientist Lisa Genova notes, “Without language, there is no memory.”

32        if you spend 90 percent of your time: See the US EPA, https://www.epa.gov/report-environment/indoor-air-quality

33        “Every day, come to your senses.”: See Robert Michael Pyle, Nature Matrix (Counterpoint; 2020) page 17. 

33        I had a long conversation with University of Exeter ecologist: Personal interview with Kevin Gaston.

33        the deepest research into the causes and consequences: I think the number of citations I have from Gaston and Soga is enough to establish this. I would also add to their roster of research, “Towards a unified understanding of human–nature interactions,” Nature Sustainability, December 2021, available at: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-021-00818-z and “Extinction of experience: the loss of human–nature interactions,” Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, March 2016, available at https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/fee.1225

33        Many of us suffer from what researchers call: “Nature blindness” has become something of a term of art among some environmentalists and academics in recent decades. See: James R. Miller, “Biodiversity conservation and the extinction of experience,” Trends in Ecology & Evolution, August 2005, available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S016953470500164

34        Do you know the names of the trees: This provocative question comes from no less an adventurer than Steve Casimiro, the editor of Adventure Journal, who posed similar questions to his ultra-outdoorsy readers in his Spring 2025 editorial. Only available to print subscribers. 

35        a social justice nun, Sister Judy Vaughn: I gathered this gem from a friend’s email signature. While it’s been difficult to confirm its provenance with 100 percent accuracy, this seems like the kind of thing Sister Judy would say. See: Sandy Banks, “A renegade and a feminist, Sister Judy is still keeping the faith,” Los Angeles Times, March 28, 2014, available at: https://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-banks-sister-judy-20140329-column.html 

36        Scientists have shown: The physiological benefits of time in nature was expertly covered in Florence Williams’ book, The Nature Fix (Norton; 2016).

36        One of the most widely cited studies: See March Berman et al, “The Cognitive Benefits of Interacting with Nature,” Psychological Science, December 2008. https://bpb-usw2.wpmucdn.com/voices.uchicago.edu/dist/d/1690/files/2019/10/4-The-Cognitive-Benefits-of-Interacting-With-Nature.pdf.

36        University of Chicago’s Environmental Neuroscience Lab: If you have any interest in going deeper into the science of the mind and nature, you can’t do much better than this for a one-stop resource: https://voices.uchicago.edu/bermanlab/publications-2-2/

36        In comparison, urban settings: This idea is known as Attention Restoration Theory, a theory pioneered by Stephen Kaplan, a longtime contributor of Berman’s. A cheat sheet is available at: https://www.ecehh.org/research/attention-restoration-theory-a-systematic-review/.

37        highly recommended for forestalling dementia: My interest in neuroscience isn’t just an academic curiosity. About ten years ago, my father was diagnosed with cognitive impairment disorder, which then bloomed into dementia, and finally into full-blown Alzheimer’s disease. It’s been an awful experience—and, at the same time, a revelatory one. To witness my old man disappear before my eyes has provided a window into how essential memories are to our being. We are made of our memories, every bit as much as a house is made from concrete and wood. Memory is the cornerstone and keystone of individuality. Eventually, someone suffering from Alzheimer’s becomes stranded in a purgatory of the permanent present. What is true for individuals is also true for cultures: an inability to remember leads to a loss of self.

37        Walking’s contribution to memory: See Andrew W. Baily and Hyoung-Kil Kang, “Walking and Sitting Outdoors: Which Is Better for Cognitive Performance and Mental States?” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, December 2022, available at: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36554519/. Also, Heidi Goldman, “Walking Linked to Lower Dementia Risk,” Harvard Health News Briefs, December 1, 2022. Available at: https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/walking-linked-to-lower-dementia-risk

37        an area of the brain called the hippocampus: It’s complicated; memory functions are distributed throughout the brain, and it’s partially this multi-nodal processing that makes memory an associative exercise. And still, as Charan Ranganath writes in Why We Remember (page 36), “To many neuroscientists, the hippocampus is synonymous with memory.”

37        the center of spatial reckoning: The 2014 Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded to Dr. John M. O’Keefe, Dr. May-Britt Moser and Dr. Edvard I. Moser for confirming the link between the hippocampus and navigation. See: https://www.nobelprize.org/uploads/2018/06/advanced-medicineprize2014.pdf

37        plays a crucial role in navigating pathways: See Howard Eichenbaum, “The Role of the Hippocampus in Navigation is Memory,” The Journal of Neurophysiology, April 2017, Available at: https://journals.physiology.org/doi/epdf/10.1152/jn.00005.2017

37        This overlap between memory and spatial-temporal orienteering: Most of this book was written while walking. I always carry with me a hip-pocket notebook that I use to jot down ideas whenever they may come to me. Most often they arrive when I’m out hiking in the woods with my dog. The notes eventually make their way to the keyboard and onto the page when I sit down to put words and thoughts together—which is to say, to do the work of writing. But, truly, most of what I consider the better lines and most original ideas of this book came to mind while I was ambulatory.

37        The mind is a cartographer of not just space: See Stephen Theves et. al., “The Hippocampus Maps Concept Space, Not Feature Space,” The Journal of Neuroscience, September 2020, available at: https://www.jneurosci.org/content/jneuro/40/38/7318.full.pdf

37        what’s called a “memory palace”: This is an old chestnut in neuroscience literature, and it appears in just about every memory book I’ve read. See, for example, Schacter, pages 46 and 47. 

38        an “archive of the feet”: See Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory (Vintage Books; 1996) page 24. Schama is a cultural historian, and so it’s no surprise that he views nature through the prism of culture. “Landscapes are culture before they are nature,” he writes on page 61 of his burly tome, “constructs of the imagination projected onto wood and water and rock.” Well, no—the wood is wood and the water is water and the rock is rock. Even if it’s true that we humans can only experience nature through the lens of our own perceptions, the raw material of Earth exists separate from the human mind. A tree crashing in the woods makes a boom even if no one hears it.

38        Take “the Proust effect.”: This is another chestnut of neuroscience. I leaned heavily on the book The Proust Effect (Oxford Press; 2014) by Cretien Van Campen

38       multisensory memories that combine a visual cue and an auditory cue: It’s significant that many people with exceptional memories, like the Russian mnemonist Solomon Shereshevskii, experience synesthesia: that is, the condition in which people “see” sounds or“hear” colors. And while not all synesthetes seem to possess uncanny memories, people who have uncanny memories are often synesthetes. Mozart, for example, experienced a synesthesia in which he perceived music in colors.

38        “The more senses that can be recruited”: See Richard Restak, The Complete Guide to Memory (Skyhorse; 2022) page 30. 

39        “Engrams,” they are called: See Schacter, pages 56 to 60. 

39        the philosopher Voltaire wrote: I stumbled across this gem in Memory: An Anthology (Vintage; 2009) which includes Voltaire’s essay, “The Adventure of Memory.” 

40        “My experience is what I agree to attend to”: This James line is canonical at this point. See https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/James/Principles/prin11.htm 

40        “How do we make memories”: See Ranganath, page 18. 

40        “Paying attention requires conscious effort”: See Genova, page 34. 

41        Walking is better than running: Author Lyanda Lynn Haupt is dogged on this point. “Walking is the naturalist’s pace—the tempo at which observation can occur,” she writes on page 63 of Rooted (Little, Brown, Spark; 2021).“We must be present, and we must be still. Then more still.”

41        There are good reasons why bird-watching: Nearly one-third of Americans report that they engage in some form of birding. See the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s report on “Bird Watching in America,” December 2024. Available at: https://www.fws.gov/story/2024-12/birdwatching-america

42        Discovery resides in mystery: I borrowed this insight from Thor Hanson, who writes on page 30 of Close to Home (Basic Books, 2025), “Without mysteries, there can be no discovery.”

42        “Curiosity improves memory”: See Ranganath, page 133. 

42        get ‘em while they’re young: For one of a thorough discussion of the importance of forming nature relationships and nature memories early, see Peter Kahn’s Technological Nature, especially the Introduction and Chapters 11 and 12.

42        Discovering birds allowed her: See Amy Tan, The Backyard Bird Chronicles (Alfred A. Knopf, 2024), preface. 

43        her naturalist mentor, John Muir Laws: ibid, page 10

44        Tan discovered something like that: ibid, page 78

45        “an escape hatch from contemporary anxiety”: See Jenny Odell, How To Do Nothing (Melville House, 2019), page 21

45        The mind-work of memory: I came across the term “mindwork” in reference to memory in environmental historian Lawrence Buell’s essay, “Uses and Abuses of Environmental Memory,” which appears in the anthology Contesting Environmental Imaginaries. It’s perfect at communicating the fact that memory demands real effort.

45        “The image (as imperfect as it is)”:  As quoted by Schachter, page 28

46        “Much of the beauty that moves us”: See Rebecca Solnit, Orwell’s Roses (Viking, 2021), page 189

46        It had already been living here a century: To calculate the age of the massive Douglas fir tree behind my house I used the formula I found here: https://theforestguild.com/estimating-the-age-of-trees/. So, 17.5 x 12 = 210 inches for the circumference at breast height. 210 divided by Pi (3.14) = 66.87 for diameter, x the Doug Fir “growth factor” (5) = 334 years old. In the interest of being conservative, I rounded down to 325 years.

47        the calendar is a map: Speaking of emergent ideas: I’ve been struck by how many writers in recent years have focused on the question of time as one of the fundamental handicaps of addressing the environmental polycrisis. It naturally comes up in Marcia Bjornerud’s Timefulness and Jenny Odell’s Saving Time. But it’s also a major theme in Ben Ehrenreich’s Desert Notebooks, where he writes (page 25): “The sky is a clock, and a calendar is also a map.” He goes on to make a case for the necessity of exiting chronos’s “messianic time.” The French philosopher Bruno Latour once complained that modernity has “a peculiar propensity for understanding time that passes as if it were abolishing the past behind it.”

47        In her book, Timefulness: See Marcia Bjornerud, Timefulness (Princeton University Press, 2018), page 7.

47        The ancient Greeks had: For a fuller discussion of chronos vs. kairos, see the Introduction to Jenny Odell’s Saving Time (Random House, 2023). 

48        The most capacious definition of kairos: See Bjornerud, page 26. 

48        kairos is the word for “weather”: See Odell, Saving Time, page 272.

48        “a clear-eyed view of our place in Time”: See Bjornerud, page 17.

48        “the Great Acceleration”: In The Great Acceleration (Harvard University Press, 2014), authors John Robert McNeill and Peter Engelke describe this era as “an eccentric historical moment”—something never before experienced. They point out that less than one out of twelve people alive today can remember life before the acceleration began.

48        Since just 1945: ibid, page 4

48        “the slow violence” of environmental destruction: This haunting phrase was coined by Rob Nixon in his 2011 book, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor (Harvard University Press, 2011). 

49       a spiral is more like it: To whom should I give credit? I feel like I plucked this out of the ether myself, working in the garden one day. But of course I didn’t. It’s an old idea, in Western philosophy at least as old as Hegel. Probably much older, for there are eight-hundred-year-old spiral pictographs chipped into red rock by the Pueblo cultures in the American Southwest. For a modern take, see Priya Subberwal, “The Shape of Time,” Orion, March 18, 2025. Available at: https://orionmagazine.org/article/the-shape-of-time/