Walking and Socking

What an incredibly lovely day yesterday - clear and sunny and cool. I spent far too many hours in a windowless cubicle wedged between a computer screen and a telephone, conducting an archaeological dig into desk drawers that I've been chucking paper into for two years. Unearthed a few interesting finds, but mostly scrap paper. Walking home was balm for the soul.

I had NPR on at work (WEMC), and on Talk of the Nation they were discussing research about why human health is enhanced by the influence of nature - "nature" meaning the usual Romanticized concept (trees, flowers, grass), in opposition to what is "artificial" - manufactured. One thing they said was that in our everyday lives we are surrounded by stimuli that demand our focused attention: the phone ringing, cars going by, even the stacks of paper on the desks. This constant demand exhausts a certain part of the brain. But trees, grass, and flowers do not - in fact, the stimuli of nature renew and refresh that part of the brain, because these natural sights and sounds and smells demand nothing of us. Basically, researchers are identifying the specific ways that our neorology responds to these different kinds of stiumuli. One study showed that the presence of trees, grass, and green spaces in urban areas had a direct correlation to reduced levels of violence, especially violence against women and children.

I really ought to try to find the sources of these findings - but the upshot was that after I head the broadcast, I walked home (knitting) and lay on the grass in the backyard watching the bees burrow their snouts into the bachelor's buttons, and listened to the wind in our (dying) pin oak tree, thinking happy thoughts. Bliss...!