A Walk On The Wild Side

A panorama of northern Seoul

People often debate human impact on the environment. But what about our environment’s effect on us? Our surroundings undeniably influence our physical and mental status. If you live near Chernobyl then you’ll suffer from radiation poisoning. If you jog in the city then you’ll probably end up with respiratory ailments. A child who grows up in a violent home will be prone to violence. These are specific examples. I’m interested in something more general--whether or not mental health is tied to interaction with nature.

I was walking the streets of the world’s second largest metropolitan center--Seoul, South Korea--last week when it hit me. A raw, brilliant green burned into my retinae as if I had never seen such natural wonder. The building, a clothing store, was being consumed by nature. Grass, unkempt and fallow, sprawled out onto the sidewalk. Ivy climbed over the bricks and iron. I was completely arrested. For a brief moment I entered a new dimension. Glass, iron, concrete, and Seoulites melted away, leaving me to my wild desires. It was calling to something deep inside, a primitive desire to leave civilization behind.


The stark contrast between the store's wild, green facade and the gray street captured my attention

I snapped out of my dream when a little old lady knocked me with her purse trying to catch the bus. “Sorry,” I instinctively shouted, realizing that I was standing right in the middle of the sidewalk and the collision was probably my fault. Remembering that I also had places to go I was on my way, inexplicably more delighted than 10 minutes prior.




Wild, yet sophisticated

Throughout the day my thoughts returned to that building. Why was I so mesmerized by grass and ivy? I’m from the suburbs. Grass is the bed on which our neighborhoods are built and ivy is as common as brickwork. My mind, I determined, had been gray-washed. Since coming to Seoul I hadn’t seen any wild vegetation. Lawns, fields, and mountain bike paths had been replaced by tall, man-made sentries lining traffic-filled streets. Fresh, dry mountain air seemed to me as distant as the green hills bordering Seoul, obscured by the rising smog and humidity. Upon seeing nature’s Trojan horse attempting to breach the walls of metropolitan civilization, I was reminded that cleaner, dryer, cooler places exists. I wanted to be there.

That led me to debate how the urban mind can survive in such vast concrete jungles? Over a hundred thousand years humans have adapted to new environments. Populations learned to survive in nearly every climate and region. Over that evolution, we learned to incorporate nature into our lives. It’s become part of our essence, and arguably a key element to a healthy psyche. Looking back, it’s relatively recent in human history that populations have been effectively removed from the natural order, choosing to immerse themselves in technologically controlled cityscapes. Whether or not our mind has the ability to completely adapt to this new environment is a question of the age.


Images of nature cover this Buddhist bell pavilion

One of the strongest proponents for nature’s positive effect on the human psyche was Wallace Stegner. In a letter urging wilderness protection, Stegner eloquently stated his feelings on the subject:

Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed; if we permit the last virgin forests to be turned into comic books and plastic cigarette cases; if we drive the few remaining members of the wild species into zoos or to extinction; if we pollute the last clear air and dirty the last clean streams and push our paved roads through the last of the silence, so that never again will Americans be free in their own country from the noise, the exhausts, the stinks of human and automotive waste. And so that never again can we have the chance to see ourselves single, separate, vertical and individual in the world, part of the environment of trees and rocks and soil, brother to the other animals, part of the natural world and competent to belong in it. Without any remaining wilderness we are committed wholly, without chance for even momentary reflection and rest, to a headlong drive into our technological termite-life, the Brave New World of a completely man-controlled environment. We need wilderness preserved--as much of it as is still left, and as many kinds--because it was the challenge against which our character as a people was formed. The reminder and the reassurance that it is still there is good for our spiritual health even if we never once in ten years set foot in it. It is good for us when we are young, because of the incomparable sanity it can bring briefly, as vacation and rest, into our insane lives. It is important to us when we are old simply because it is there--important, that is, simply as an idea. (http://www.greenfoothills.org/about/WildernessLetter.html)

Stegner recognized the true relationship between humans and the natural environment, arguing that the natural environment’s most pristine form, wilderness, must be protected simply as an idea to ensure human sanity. Wilderness can offer much needed reprieve from societal pressures, feed primitive desires, and provide endless healthy recreational opportunities.

It’s evident that we, as a species, find comfort and inspiration from nature. It’s manifest in our decoration, our designs, our companions, and our past-times. People buy plants to warm up a home, build parks to offer reprieve, design structures or objects to mimic natural frameworks, choose to associate with various other species, and (by-and-large) prefer to recreate outdoors when the weather and air are tolerable. The challenge for the urbanite is to create a balance between this innate connection with nature and the man-made elements of urban society.


Standoff between Eastern philosophy and Western materialism: Buddha looks out over the expansive Coex Mall

As I emerged from the subway an hour later into the thick, polluted air, it made me appreciate human efforts to reconcile our cities’ assault on nature. That wild, urban scene had, now understandably, brightened my day.