Column: Can two things be true?
Stats are weird because isolated facts tell only part of the story.
In the past few weeks I’ve had the same conversation with my wife regarding the outdoors. It’s odd, we have decided, that there is a national conversation about nature deficit and its impact on people, yet it seems the opposite is also true.
Kids aren’t satisfied by a screen-less afternoon in the woods. Neither are adults. Studies tell us Nature has medicinal qualities, but we instead choose prescription answers. This is overstated in a, “no one goes outside and plays anymore” sort of way.
However, whoever truly believes this hasn’t fished for kings or sockeye on the Kenai peninsula, or been on the local trails when it stops raining in Southeast Alaska.
Anecdotal evidence, though, does have some validity. From home it does seem like fewer people are self-sufficient enough to be entertained by the simple complexities of Nature. It seems like this is an ever-growing phenomenon that, the most paranoid (sometimes me) believe, will end in virtual hikes replacing real ones as our culture continues to race for ease and availability.
Yet, everywhere worth going outside is packed. So maybe it isn’t that no one is going outside, but rather the country is so large we have enough people to sustain both the perception of Nature deficit and crowding in the forest.
