“You see,” she explained, looking at me, “he argues about getting
away from tech and I argue about being in this space. I’m all Disney
movies and he’s House of Cards. He thinks people’s nature is
negative.” Paul shrugged but didn’t disagree. “My hypothesis,” she
continued, “is when you’re engaged in nature, it leads to mindfulness.
It’s passive, the world is coming and going. It’s so good for
depression. When you walk out in nature, it’s like wearing rose-
colored glasses. In nature everything is a little more positive, there’s
a little more connectedness. This is the world in which we are
supposed to be. Plus, most of us have positive memories of childhood
in nature.”
Gazzaley, having arrived, now jumped in. “Well, in nature I do
feel more relaxed more quickly than anywhere else, but I didn’t spend
time in nature as child.” He grew up in Rockaway, New York, riding
the subway four hours a day to and from the Bronx High School of
Science. “By lunch yesterday, I was definitely relaxed.”
Lisa Fournier, who had also joined us, roused: “That’s affirming
the consequent. We’re biased, we’re just affirming our beliefs, and
the experiments reflect that.”
Ruth Ann Atchley: “You don’t go onto Outward Bound unless you
already believe it’s helping you. But they had no idea what we were
looking for (in the cognitive tests).”
Fournier: “The placebo effects are so strong.”
Kramer: “We’re all skeptics.”
Paul Atchley, hoisting his daypack: “I’ll cite the X-Files. I want to
believe.”
AND SO THE skeptics and the believers marched out of the Best
Western. I drove to the trailhead with Paul Atchley and Strayer. As
the strange, folded landscape revealed itself, I found myself
wondering about the significance of attention, and its role in why
nature makes us smarter, as Strayer contends. Psychologists have