Dispatches The Outsider
26 OUTSIDE MAGAZINE
11.19
STEVE^ GODWIN/ALGONQUINhis real goal is to convince us that cultivating
relationships with wild animals can be just as
therapeutic as curling up with a purring cat.
Encounters like the one he had with the fox,
he argues, have the potential to alleviate our
increasing isolation as a species, and the fact
that more animals are colonizing urban areas
and living among us presents an opportunity
to seek out new ways to relate with them. “I
think that we are desperate not to feel alone in
the universe,” he says. “And ironically, we are
surrounded by a neighborhood of animals.”
He envisions a collection of local Neighbor-
hood Wildlife Watch groups, organized to
share information and photos and educate
residents about the beasts in their backyards.
This is a tricky sell. There’s little concrete
evidence supporting the idea that, say, mak-
ing room for the raccoons on your garage roof
or going birding is good for you. Wild animals
in our cities and towns are still considered by
many—often accurately—as a threat (bears,
mountain lions) or a nuisance (skunks, mice).
What’s more, few scientists have historically
been willing to wade into the squishier sub-
ject matter of human-wildlife relationships,
fearing being dismissed for anthropomor-
phism, or worse, labeled a quack. As ecologist
and writer Carl Safina tells Louv, that fear has
ruined the field of studying human- animal
interactions. It wasn’t until the seventies
that scientists even began researching animal
emotions in earnest, and we still know much
more about animal behavior than the ways
animals feel or think or communicate. Louv
does uncover some fascinating research on
the potential for human- animal communi-
cation, but most of it exists in the realm of
companion animals.
If Louv seems unfazed by the lack of em-
pirical evidence, perhaps it’s because he faced
the same conundrum with Last Child in the
Woods. When that book was published, he
says, there were only about 60 studies on the
impact of time spent in nature; today there
are well over 900. Any holes in his grand the-
ories, he seems to argue, will eventually be
filled by emerging science. And what we do
know is quite promising. In 2014, a research
team from Ohio State University repeated a
decades-old survey about Americans’ atti-
tudes toward nature. Its findings suggested
that despite our increased separation from
wild animals, we’ve become significantly
more concerned about their welfare than we
were in the late seventies, when the origi-
nal survey was conducted. A British study,
meanwhile, found that when people inter-
acted with wildlife in their local parks, their
psychological well-being improved.
As Louv might contend, we don’t neces-
sarily need proof for such findings. On some
intuitive level, we all knew that immersing
ourselves in nature was a good thing. Why
should it be a greater leap to believe that ex-“I think that we
are desperate
not to feel alone
in the universe,”
Louv says. “And
ironically, we are
surrounded by
a neighborhood
of animals.”posure to wildlife is similarly beneficial? In
the book, each time Louv meets with a new
source, he often brings up people’s unusual
encounters with animals, then asks, “Have
you ever experienced anything similar?”
Almost all of them, even career scientists
initially reluctant to delve into the esoteric,
eventually share a wild story—an unlikely
relationship with a swan, a swim with an oc-
topus, a standoff with a bear—that they say
had a profound impact on their lives or ca-
reer choices, even if they can’t quite find the
words to explain it.
Indeed, after all of his research, Louv
himself lacks a tidy explanation for his brief
bonding session with the fox, but a recent ex-
perience confirmed one of his hypotheses. He
was in the parking lot of the Volcan Mountain
Foundation, a conservation group he works
with in Southern California. The people he
was with began trading mountain lion sto-
ries, getting more animated as they talked.
“Suddenly, I realized we were all talking
about something outside of ourselves,” Louv
says. “And there was no room for rumination.
So I think that’s one of the things that hap-
pens when you have these encounters. And
when we talk about them together, life gets
better. At least that’s what I found.” Otime spent outside. That movement is nearly
ubiquitous today. New scientific papers re-
vealing the power of wild places to counter-
act anxiety, stress, depression, ADHD, and
even PTSD seem to make headlines every
week. A unique segment of the travel market
has recently sprouted up to deliver outdoor-
starved Americans with curative doses of for-
est bathing and back-to-nature family bond-
ing. Several nonprofits have been established
to help facilitate research and expand public-
park access and awareness, including one
Louv cofounded, the Children and Nature
Network. But back when Last Child debuted,
Louv’s ideas were pretty radical. The book
arrived two years before the iPhone, long
before anyone was concerned with mobile-
screen addiction or social-media-induced
depression. “Americans around my age, baby
boomers or older,” he wrote, “enjoyed a kind
of free, natural play that seems, in the era of
kid pagers, instant messaging, and Nintendo,
like a quaint artifact.”
Speaking of quaint: Kid pagers? Which is to
say, Louv proved himself a visionary, able to
identify the collective blind spots we’ve de-
veloped amid the rah-rah spirit of our modern
hyperdigitized lifestyles. We should probably
hear him out, then, even if his latest passion,
preaching about the power and importance of
human-animal interactions, can come across
as, well, a little New Agey and mystical.
Our Wild Calling began as Louv’s attempt
to explain his encounter with the fox. “The
genesis of this book is to try to understand
that,” Louv tells me, speaking on the phone
from his home outside San Diego, where he
lives with his wife and entertains visits from
a growing list of neighborhood creatures.
“That elemental relationship, almost primal,
indescribable, beyond language—a relation-
ship we have with other animals.” But as he
started investigating, the book’s mission
evolved into something much larger. Louv
contends that developing relationships with
other species, both wild animals and pets,
can not only provide similar benefits to time
spent in nature, it may eventually become a
key tool for battling mental-health issues.
As with his previous books, Louv turns to
scientists for help backing up his thesis. The
most compelling evidence he finds supports
the importance of having pets. An emerg-
ing body of research shows that companion
animals help us handle stress, depression,
dementia, and many other issues. Louv also
examines the rise in pet ownership in the
U.S., which he writes has recently eclipsed
household growth, and makes a strong case
that the trend is linked to human loneliness,
an epidemic that some experts predict will
soon surpass the health impacts of obesity.
Louv is a big fan of pets (in one chapter,
recounting his childhood, he posits that his
beloved dog Banner taught him ethics), but