For the love of life
Why do so many people grow flowering plants around their homes? It seems remarkable considering the chores of preparing the soil, weeding, watering and trimming, plus the cost. For some reason we are willing to work for them — and pay for them.
Kansas University geographer A. W. Kuchler says it's because we love beautiful things. But Harvard biologist Edward Wilson believes it is something deeper than aesthetics. Humans, he says, have an inborn attraction to life in its various forms. He calls it biophilia. It's why we keep pets, nurture house plants, tend gardens, and invite birds to our backyards with birdhouses, feeders, and special plantings.
That's probably why some go hunting, fishing, camping, hiking, and vacationing in natural areas. That's probably why "more people visit zoos in the United States than attend professional sports events." It may even be why some want to farm, in spite of the financial risk.
In spite of the convenience of artificial Christmas trees, Kansans purchased an estimated 25,000 live Christmas trees in 2002, or about 3.6 million trees nationally. During the 2003 winter season, Pine Creek Tree Farm near Goessel, Marion County's only Christmas tree farm, harvested about 1,000 trees, according to Marlene and Lloyd Schroeder. For many customers, selecting and cutting the tree is a family affair, says Marlene, a Christmas tradition.
Wilson and others cite data strongly suggesting a feeling of kinship to other living things. Of a population of 120 subjects shown a stressful movie, those later seeing videotapes of natural scenes recovered more quickly than those seeing tapes of urban settings. Their stress levels were determined by heartbeat, systolic blood pressure, facial muscle tension, and electrical skin conductance. The same response was noted in a group of students stressed by a rigorous math exam, then shown videotapes simulating either natural or urban settings.
Folks driving to work through scenic routes bordered with trees and grasslands responded in a more wholesome manner to stressful situations at work. Patients provided scenes of plants and aquaria prior to surgery or dental procedures showed reduced stress, whether the natural environment was seen through windows or in wall-mounted pictures. Surgical patients with access to scenic views needed less postoperative painkillers.
A 15-year study of clinically anxious psychiatric patients responded positively to wall pictures of natural scenes, but negatively to most other decorations. Similar studies in prisons revealed that window views of farmlands and forests resulted in fewer stress-related symptoms (headaches, indigestion, etc.) than views of the prison yard.
Independent research in Australia, England, and the United States revealed that pets reduced stress-related problems and lowered cholesterol, triglycerides, and systolic blood pressure levels. Heart attack survivors who owned dogs had a survival rate six times that of those who did not. Increasing numbers of retirement centers are adding a dog to their "staff." And in-house aviaries are becoming common in these centers.
But people do not respond uniformly to all living things. A student during my first year of teaching biology much preferred studying animals because "they seem so much more alive than plants."
People also respond differently to different ecosystems. People prefer to live in not just any natural environment; most especially prefer savannas which are grasslands with scattered trees or scattered clumps of trees allowing a long depth of view. Along with high temperature, savannas have a long dry season often accompanied by fire which discourages tree growth. People also prefer a nearby stream, river, lake, or ocean.
Many paleontologists believe that much of the early history of the human species was spent in or near these or similar habitats. So it is that human beings still retain an aesthetic preference for their ancestral savannas and transitional woodlands.
In one study, children between the ages of eight and eleven were given a choice of environmental photographs. They favored savannas over hardwood forests, cone-bearing forests, rainforests and deserts. Older children preferred hardwood forests and savannas equally, suggesting that children first favor the ancestral environment but increasingly favor the environment in which they have grown up.
My wife, Elaine, grew up in the open country of rural McPherson County with a few trees along the pasture creek. When living in Emporia or Lawrence during summers, she felt closed-in by the heavy concentration of trees around and above us. And she missed seeing the horizon.
Perhaps my love affair with grasslands and occasional gallery forests along streams is not so strange afterall. Let's blame it on my ancestral home. And the exciting variety of life found there.
