Earth Child Syndrome

Fresh air, salt water pulled through hair, fast motion through a leafy, wooded trail…there are worse things in life to be addicted to, I’d say. 

*****

I walked barefoot down Constitution Ave in D.C, past the Department of Labor with my white high heels dangled from my left hand fingertips and a red interview folder cradled in my arm. The folder held the resumes, research, and hopefulness of a classic post-collegiate job hunt. Now in that moment, I was also walking away from a career in environmental policy. 

“Take ‘em off, it’s all over now!” someone called from his car, referring to my shoes as I stood shoeless at the crosswalk. 

Ha. 

I waved with my shoe hand, keenly aware of how out-of-place I was in this professional, urban jungle of a city. It was a ridiculous cat call, but I was likewise ridiculous. In my defense, I had a triathlon in the morning with two wicked blisters developing on my heels. Ain’t no time for that. 

Anyway, my morning was an interview gauntlet: a round robin style interview at a defense contractor and a reverse kind of interview at the Marine Conservation Institute (MCI). I didn’t get the corporation job, and I ended up turning down the MCI position.

Funny thing is, we have an uncanny ability of rationalizing things to ourselves when we just want a direction to travel in, and most other directions look murky and against the odds. I suppose, fortunately for me, that when push came to shove I realized I’d wither away if chained to a desk in D.C. I would truly go berserk.

Even if I was fighting for those environmental things I cared about deeply, and the people surrounding me were intelligent and passionate about what they fought for, I knew how frustrating the field would be for me. Patience and tedium are not my virtues. These are good fights, just perhaps not the fights for me to be fighting. I’d continue to admire and respect those environmental soldiers, but my particular strengths lay elsewhere. 

Plus, me in D.C.? Psh. Fish-out-of-water..

“Do you ever actually go to the ocean?“ I asked once, innocently. My interviewers smiled at me endearingly, as if I were a young child asking if our staff took their annual vacation to Disney World. 

“What’s the worst part of your job?” I asked on another interview. 

“Oooh, I suppose sitting on my tush all day,” she said with a giggle. 

“Haha,” I giggled back, alarm bells going off in my head. 

I never thought of myself as odd or afflicted before, until it was brought to my attention in college by a few close friends.“You always light up and ask if we can go outside,” one friend said. Indeed, sitting on the porch with a glass of wine and a couple of friends is one of my favorite pastimes. 

My RA staff’s goodbye note for me was doodled with humming birds and mountains. One wrote, “I’ve never really met such an earth child! I admire your love of the outdoors and the little things. I thought of you as I studied outside the building yesterday, but then my papers started flying away and I gave up.” In contrast, I have a tendency to ignore the sun’s glare on my laptop or the breeze that strews my papers everywhere.

As the years progressed, further evidence of my “affliction” arose. I’d routinely fall asleep on UVa’s Lawn with my head in a textbook, until I woke from ants crawling beneath my cheek. It was a common occurrence for my friend and I to walk back in the wee hours of the morning with our heads turned upward towards the stars and the moon. I also insisted on walking everywhere, sunshine or stormy  weather, for the simple reason that I wanted the fresh air and to hear the birds chirping along 14th street in the morning.

How poetic of me. 

It’s quite annoying, actually, that I can’t sit still in an office space for 4 hours without beginning to pace. My head might begin to throb, my limbs get ridden with anxiety and tightness, and I start to ache to be out in the open spaces and earth. It’s not particularly conducive to certain routine activities of our modern world.

This earth child syndrome, though, it’s not the worst. Richard Louv wrote a book about “nature deficiency order.” That affliction sounds much worse to me. Louv describes, and backs up with his research, how a direct connection with nature is essential for childhood development, and for the physical and emotional health of both children and adults (http://richardlouv.com). I haven't read the entire book, but I’d say he makes a fair case.

The one thing I know for sure is this: there are other “crazies” out there too, waiting to go run around in the woods with me. We easily recognize ourselves in each other. Our adventures involve mud and mishaps, sunshine and shitty weather. We’re most alive out in the elements, far away from the silly things that tie us to the human world. 

So to my friends and family members who have adventured with me, this is simply for you. I think of you who have accompanied me in looking up at the stars; who’ve jumped into really cold oceans or lakes with me; who’ve picked up snakes and turtles on our hike; who’ve run mountain trails alongside, stealing blueberries from between the rocks and catching magnificent views as we flew. Maybe we’ve laughed in hysterics over our lostness, trippings, or full on catastrophe, realizing soon after that it was well worth the trouble and the story. Sadly, most of these shared experiences can be only relived in our memories, but I feel lucky to own them. Thanks, for taking part. I get you.

Finally, we all need something to be weird about. Life’s too quick to fit ourselves into a stupid and unreliable mold. Or, perhaps worse, to be a genuinely incredibly boring person. What a terrifying thought.

The only remedy? Do as Emerson says: “ Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.” 

PS: 

A good friend once said, on a late afternoon Beech Hill snowshoeing adventure, “you know how some people need to see the ocean every once in awhile (yes, yes I do), that’s how I feel about the winter light.” At the time, golden light bathed the entire hillside, lighting up the berries and bending through the branches. Rays reflected on the white snow and ocean, up to our pink-cheeked faces. This was amid moments of hilarity, I might add, including broken-then-jerry-rigged snow shoes and a few moments of being one-legged into the depths of the snow. 

Anyway, that was such an interesting notion to me. I’d never really thought about how different people are significantly pulled to certain things in the natural world, while other elements, though also good, don’t have quite the same draw as they do for a friend. When I mentioned it to two other friends, they each had different answers (woods, the mountains). Mind blown.

And finally, good ol' Wendell Berry. He gets it. : “Peace of Wild Things”