Do You Suffer From Nature Deficit Disorder?

By Eliana Alcivar

You’ve heard of Attention Deficit Disorder. But do you or your child suffer from Nature Deficit Disorder? According to Richard Louv, author of the 2005 book Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder, many Americans, children especially, are suffering from this condition today, which results from decreased exposure to nature. At the heart of Louv’s book is an argument that direct exposure to nature is necessary for emotional and physical health, and that lack of exposure leads to a variety of personal and societal ills, including depression and anxiety.

Whatever you think about the lack of exposure to nature leading to a bona fide disorder along the same lines as Attention Deficit Disorder, I can speak from personal experience about the benefits that become available to you when you force yourself to turn off the TV, put down the beer, or turn off your cell phone for a few hours in order to spend some time in the company of nature. For most of life I was one of those nature phobes that routinely avoided the outdoors in favor of TV, books, and technology. By the time I reached adulthood I went about most of the time pasty white from lack of exposure to the sun – to the point that when I went to visit my older brother Ernesto in Chicago, who I had not seen in years, he wondered out loud in alarm what had become of his olive-skinned Ecuadorian sister. When it came time to purchase my Mini Cooper a few years ago when I still lived in Philadelphia, I said I preferred the enclosed model over the wildly popular sun roof model, because, I proclaimed, “The sun roof makes me feel closer to nature. And I hate nature.” I was only halfway joking.

It was not until I moved to North Carolina several years ago that I became the proverbial “outdoorsy type,” largely due to the abundance of free recreational activities available in the region, including many forest and watershed trails and mountains. I’d had a little weight I wanted to lose, and I figured I’d give day hiking a try. I was hooked after the very first outing. Giant bugs didn’t attack me. I didn’t get a horrible sunburn. It didn’t take a lot of my time. I didn’t feel tired afterwards. Instead I felt renewed, and a part of something bigger than myself. Plus, by the end of the summer, I’d lost a little weight – which I’ve more or less been successful at keeping off. Hundreds of miles later, if I ever suffered from Nature Deficit Disorder, I’m pretty sure that I don’t any longer.

Look, the iPhone is pretty miraculous, but at least as miraculous is the delicate web of an ecosystem you will find in the middle of a forest: the product of billions of years of evolution. You owe it to yourself to experience a bit of both. Immersed in the gentle hum of insects and rustling of leaves, with time to think away from the deafening noise of society, it’s not long before it dawns on you that you, too, are a part of that ecosystem. I won’t try to describe how that feels. I’ll leave it to you to try it for yourself.