people, perhaps Mesmer wasn’t such a crackpot after all. I had one
final question for Taylor. I was interviewing him via Skype video
because he was on holiday in Australia. His soft curls tumbled to the
lower edges of the screen like a fine galloping creek.
“Is your hair fractal?”
He roared with laughter. “I suspect my hair is fractal. The big
question of course is whether it induces positive physiological
changes in the observer!” I believe it may have.
MY FATHER DID recover, slowly and then quickly, amazingly, in his
sun-filled semiprivate room with a view. He saw physical therapists,
speech therapists, occupational therapists, lots of family who
chattered to him and urged him to talk back. There was clearly more
than nature at work on his battered brain. Of course my elbowing him
into a bed near a window meant his roommate wasn’t near the
window. There aren’t enough windows to go around, and even when
there are, sometimes the views don’t cooperate. Perhaps Taylor had a
point. Wouldn’t it be handy if you could just turn on a video screen of
a glade or fractal waterfall, or even just slap a poster on the wall?
That is one conceit, anyway, being explored at the maximum-
security unit of the Snake River Correctional Institution in eastern
Oregon. In a unique experiment in partnership with social scientists,
the prison staff has agreed to play nature videos in the exercise room
of one wing of the prison. The cells in Snake River offer no windows
at all, and the only “outdoor” courtyard is tiny and surrounded by
buildings. Its only view is the sky through a grate. Snake River is a
difficult place: it has a higher-than-usual percentage of inmates who
commit suicide and self-harm, and it’s not unusual for staff to
perform “cell extractions” on those who are out of control, kicking
and screaming and banging on doors. Prisoners in solitary
confinement are perhaps the most nature-deprived people on the
planet. They are often mentally ill when they enter prison, and