Hey y’all. Welcome to Fast Facts for Gen Z. I’m your host, Callie, and I don’t know anything about anything. Come with me while I explore the world, and I’ll tell you everything you ever, and never, wanted to know, through the eyes of Gen Z.
Today’s episode: Connections with nature and how greatly it affects both my mind and my body.
As the weather has warmed up and school winds to an end, I find myself spending more time outside. Even the little moments, I extend. I walk a little slower to retrieve the mail from the mailbox sometimes. I step out of my door and startle the lizards who skitter away from their basking spots on the porch. I make eye contact with a squirrel through the window as it tears up a flowerpot, looking for nuts it buried god-knows-when. When asked my favorite season, I used to never say summer. I’d blame my skin’s unfortunate affinity for sunburns, or perhaps my deeply ingrained dislike for beach sand. Maybe I was trying to be edgy and set myself apart from all the basic kids who like summer because there was no school. I don’t know. But these days, there’s something about stepping outside in summer, into air so humid it has texture, and feeling the sun wrap around every inch of your skin that just gets me. It sounds so unpleasant and I’m well aware of that, and I wouldn’t necessarily describe it as pleasant, but it’s a feeling that puts me entirely at ease. That feeling of being at ease is probably related to the presence of camp in my life, which is something that my supervisor, if she’s listening, will be both relieved and slightly stressed to hear. Camp is very much at the forefront of my mind right now, but often the things at the forefront of my mind are some of my least organized thoughts. So that’s not what today is about. Today we’re thinking about the feeling of being in tune with the natural world.
When I am inside, I can tolerate insects to a certain extent. My house is in the woods, so if I picked a fight with every single ant or little spider or weevil, I wouldn’t make it very far. That said, I can and will slay any beast – er, minibeast, rather – that dares to enter my bedroom. That’s MY space. Get OUT. DIE. Outside, though, bugs and I come to a sort of agreement. It’s their space and I know I’m invading it. If I’m spending a lot of time outside, we’re sharing the space. I can watch an ant crawl onto and over my feet outside, maybe shake it off if I’m not too happy about this, whereas inside, an ant that dares to get ON me dies immediately. This weekend, my friend and I were sitting and chatting quietly in the woods when a little yellow-jacket buzzed around her ankles and eventually landed and crawled around for a bit before continuing on its way. Part of that tolerance is knowing that panicking is more likely to provoke a stinging insect, but also it’s a feeling of “yeah, okay, we both live in this ecosystem, we’re just passing through.” I’ll see ants crawl over snakes outside and think “oh… y’all really just hang out together, huh? Y’all just live out here.” If they can do it, so can I. Almost completely. If I feel something that I can’t see, I will instinctively jerk my arm or my neck and try to get it off. I’ve gotten ant bites on my neck and face too many times to ignore that.
Sometimes when I’m in the woods, I’m just vibing and not really paying much attention to the world around me. Then sometimes I’ll find myself sitting on the ground against a tree or a rock, watching ants march one by one into their anthill in a nearby fallen log, a sunbeam filtering through the trees and coming to rest on my forehead in the way that afternoon sunlight does. Comfortable might be a bit of a strong word for resting on the ground covered in roots and sticks and rocks and leaves, leaning against an pin oak with its rough bark, very aware of the presence of insects, but the vibes are there. Comfortable. Comfortable in nature, in my presence in the forest, in coexisting with the tree and the rocks and the bugs and the animals that I’m sure know I’m there, I just don’t know that they are.
I remember walking through the woods once, on the way to my friends after going back to get something, mind anywhere but the present. Distracted. Then I heard the chattering of a squirrel overhead and glanced up to watch it bounce onto a branch just in front of me and bite into a walnut. I came to a stop without even realizing and watched as the squirrel methodically cracked the shell all around, rotating it with its paws, dropping bits of shell onto the ground below. As I stood there, completely still, I became aware of how alive the forest was. Eventually, the squirrel finished its walnut, climbed up a tree, and disappeared into the brown expanse of tree branches, and I was left feeling… feeling very Present. Present in the moment, present in my body and my mind, watching and living at the same time. It feels a bit silly that a squirrel and a walnut changed my perspective so much that day, but people always say to focus on the little things and live in the moment, and I suppose that’s what that was. I had no epiphany, no great revelation that changed my entire worldview from that moment on. But I didn’t need that.
After the squirrel moved on, I continued watching the place where it disappeared. Not looking for it, necessarily, just watching. Letting my gaze rest there. Acknowledging its absence as much as I acknowledged its presence. Then, I moved on as well. Slower, this time. I walked slowly through the woods, stepping with intention and thinking about how no matter how many little creatures or plants I noticed as I walked, there were many more pieces and links in the ecosystem that my eyes either glazed over or could never see, even if I tried. I thought about how many years the trees have seen, and how I’ll never know exactly how many years that is for each tree. I thought about the dirt I was walking on and how many people and animals have walked over that same dirt. I thought about the younger dirt full of newly decomposed leaves and debris and about the older rock and parent material deep underneath the hills and valleys of the trail. I thought about all these things until I reached my friends and was sucked into the fast-paced energy of a group of teenagers on an adventure. Which is also good! No complaints here.
There’s plenty of research out there on the benefits of spending time outside in nature. We know that outdoor play is good for children and that getting out into the sun for a little while each day is really good for your body and your brain. Studies have been compiled and officially state that being outside is good for you and has a real effect on your health outcomes. We’re sure that it reduces stress, which in turn helps make your physical and mental health better. That’s pretty cool. I mean, I’m no neuroscientist or biologist, so I can’t claim to really understand why this is or what’s really going on in the relationship between nature and me, but it comes as no surprise to know that the benefits and connections I feel with nature aren’t in my imagination – it’s real.
Part of my mental health journey has involved careful consideration of the factors that influence my well-being, and being outside is something that I often unfortunately overlook. Especially in the past year, during the pandemic, I very rarely thought about getting outside. My whole school life was online, my whole social life was online, my extracurriculars and community service and work that previously got me outside were postponed indefinitely or cancelled entirely. I just didn’t really think about it. So when I did start to spend more time outside again, I was like, shocked. I was like, “why didn’t I think of this earlier? I feel so much better! I could’ve been doing this the whole time!” I feel like that every time. Not to be a Boomer or anything, but kids these days don’t play outside like they used to. There aren’t good spaces for them to play outside. I babysit for this one family who has an only child, and whenever I’m over there, we spend our entire time outside. It used to be because of COVID, and it still is somewhat, even though we’re all vaccinated, but it’s also because it’s so beneficial for both me and the child. Sometimes I think about other kids I know who spend very little time outside, or none at all, and I wonder what kinds of things they’re missing out on. I mean, not everyone has to love camping and want to roll around in the dirt, but I’m sure there are little things here and there, quality of life things, that they’re missing by not spending unstructured play time outside. I think a lot of summer camps are really good for adding that unstructured play time into children’s lives, but we have to strike a balance between structure for safety, unstructured time for creativity, and then risky play, which has a ton of benefits on its own. Sometimes it’s hard to tell what that balance is, which is a struggle I think a lot of parents deal with these days.
As I write this, I’m officially done with instruction and I’m graduating high school in… 15 days? Do we really get two weeks for exams? I guess so. So yeah, two weeks until graduation. And then summer, in which I intend to spend much time outdoors. Honestly, I think that’s unavoidable. I’m working for five weeks at summer camp, which is entirely outdoors. No! Not five weeks, I just got scheduled for two more. So seven weeks. Which will be great. And I’ll keep babysitting here and there until our schedules don’t align anymore, and as I said, we spend lots of time outdoors, so that will continue to be good for me. And then off to college! Where I intend to avoid holing up in my dorm room, but we’ll have to wait and see what happens. We can have goals, right? Yeah, we’ll go with that.
Thank you for listening to Fast Facts for Gen Z. As you may have guessed from my ramblings on my summer schedule, uploads might be spotty! Or they might not! We’ll have to wait and see! It’ll be a surprise. Follow so you don’t miss anything. Y’all are great. This is Callie, signing off.
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