Before they left, she asked them to predict how happy they thought
they’d feel on their walks. Afterward, they filled out questionnaires to
gauge their well-being. The students consistently overestimated how
much they’d enjoy the tunnels and underestimated how good they’d
feel outside. Social scientists call these bad predictions “forecasting
errors.” Unfortunately, they play a big role in how people make
decisions about how to spend their time. As Nisbet rather dejectedly
concluded, “People may avoid nearby nature because a chronic
disconnection from nature causes them to underestimate its hedonic
benefits.”
So we do things we crave that make us tetchy, like check our
phones 1,500 times a week (no exaggeration, but I will point out that
iPhone users spend 26 more minutes per day on their phone than
Android users, which may be a good reason to marry an Android
user), while often neglecting to do the things that bring us joy. Yes,
we’re busy. We’ve got responsibilities. But beyond that, we’re
experiencing a mass generational amnesia enabled by urbanization
and digital creep. American and British children today spend half as
much time outdoors as their parents did. Instead, they spend up to
seven hours a day on screens, not including time in school.
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.
This book explores the science behind what poets and
philosophers have known for eons: place matters. Aristotle believed
walks in the open air clarified the mind. Darwin, Tesla and Einstein
walked in gardens and groves to help them think. Teddy Roosevelt,
one of the most hyperproductive presidents of all time, would escape
for months to the open country. On some level they all fought a
tendency to be “tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people” as hiker-