Your brain wears a suit of armor and I am not talking about your skull. As you go through the day your brain works hard to protect your focus and attention from other things that could distract you. If your brain couldn’t do this, instead of focusing, you would be distracted by everything from dust to racing thoughts of tomorrow. Maybe this happens to you already and it has led you down the inevitable path of asking yourself “What is wrong with me?”. The answer is very likely, nothing.  Your brain is probably just tired.

At some point your brain gets fatigued by being bombarded with and blocking out information all day and it simply needs some rest before you can both keep going. The term “information overload” is not just a casual one or an excuse that people use for not paying attention, although they might, it can be a real signal that the brain needs a break. More appropriately said the brain needs a break from directing it’s attention to one single focused task. So how does a brain take a break?

Get outside. Taking your brain for a walk will help it recompose before going back inside to pay attention to your math teacher, your customers or any other challenging and important task you have at hand. Taking a walk in the fresh air is good alone but taking your brain for a walk in a park or area where you can find trees and green things growing is even better. Areas with more natural features create a restorative environment that not only fills your lungs with fresh air but also allows your brain to relax.

You probably have experienced a few times what a handful of scientists are confirming with research. To explore the idea of nature nourishing our attention span, scientists followed people who spent two weeks in the wilderness through a program called Outward Bound. I personally know somebody who told me that this program changed his life. This Outward Bound study led the scientists to define nature as a restorative environment after hearing several reports of “feeling at peace” and “having a mind that is more clear”. Aren’t a little peace and a clear head two things we strive for in life? The Outward Bound program does take place in wilderness which is unavailable to most of us on a daily basis. But what if you could have more peace by taking a walk in the park? Would you take more walks? This is a question a different scientist explored through a study he conducted under more “normal” conditions for the average person. He assigned test subjects a 40 minute organizational task to really drain their brain and then randomly assigned them to take a break doing one of three things: relax with magazines and music, go walking in the park, or go walking in an urban area. After break time everyone was given a proofreading test. Those who were lucky enough to be assigned a walk in the park did better on the proofreading test than those who walked in the city or read magazines and listened to music. Walking in the park can help improve test scores! Those that walked in the park also felt better too. Listening to music and reading sounds good to me but when it comes down to it, a dose of nature does the brain, and body good.

Maybe you can’t get to the park everyday but get there at least a couple times a week. Until then how can we work to make our neighborhoods be more park like? A sure sign of a park is its big and flourishing trees. If you have trees pay attention to them and find out what you can do to help them flourish.

Nature is everywhere- Take your brain for a walk in the park or any other area you know of with lots of leafy green trees.

Seems that we are savvy fans of the practical products: the mini computer that is also a phone (previously a phone that could email), shoes that are also skates, bikes that fold up to fit in a suitcase and possibly in our future, a cell phone that can be tossed into the garden and sprout a bright yellow sunflower.  Seriously this phone is currently being developed by Pvaxx Research & Development. Add to this list for practical minded urbanite people: a healthy urban forest.
An urban forest is made up of trees in and around the city; the trees around your home are part of the urban forest. A healthy urban forest means that most of those trees are flourishing, not just surviving.  Talk about multi-purpose and practical, here is a general list of what a healthy collection of timeless trees can do in a timely world, all at once while they are just doing something ancient- being trees.
Think of a healthy urban forest like a gym, a prevention doctor, a giant air conditioner, an energy saver, a giant air filter, and a classroom.  How about an extension of city utilities and city staff.  Did you ever think it could be a flood preventor, a crime reducer, a stress reducer.  It’s definitately a source of food, a home, a breathe of fresh air and the location of your next picnic. Can you imagine the urban forest as a piece art, a free piece of art. The possibilities are endless.
Urban forestry is methodical. It is the science behind planning, planting, growing and maintaining a healthy urban forest. Urban forestry has been around since people planted trees on purpose but now two top California universities, UC Davis and UC Berkeley offer graduate degrees in the field. While all urban environments end up with trees, be it because they were planted or because they just grew, if it’s not methodical, it’s likely not urban forestry.
Urban forestry has to be methodical about what trees are planted and where. Urban forestry requires tree diversity so that in case one species gets a disease, a whole urban forest would not be lost. Urban forestry organizations like Tree Fresno seek to plant trees that satisfy the citizens, the government, the business owner, the bike riders, buildings, streets,sidewalks, those prone to falling on sidewalks, parents, and law enforcement. Yes, you need some method to compete with the madness (the good kind) of urban demands. When methodical, an urban forest can do all this and more while growing quietly just like they had been before there ever was a city.
While it takes policy and planning on behalf of the government, research on behalf of the universities, how do you see your role in urban forestry?
Nature is everywhere- Take a walk around the places that you spend a lot of time and check out the trees.

Green trees, tall trees, trees with no leaves, shrubs, sky, grasses, decomposition, stones, birds flying, insects flittering, “Ahhhh.” You know the feeling. You drive up to the foothills, forest or the park and once you have arrived you know it, not only by the sight but also by the way you feel. You feel sublime and your body relaxes. You may even think to yourself “I needed this”. Needed what? What is that feeling all about?
Sure it’s about getting fresh air, stretching your legs and leaving unread emails behind but it’s more than that. It’s about Biophilia (pronounced Bi-oh-feel-ee-ya). The direct translation of the word Biophilia means love of nature but the way it is used to mean love of living cycles, or, nature. The Biophilia Hypothesis, introduced to the world in the 1980’s by respected scientist E.O Wilson, suggests that there is a deep and instinctual bond between people and nature. Think about it- we came from nature, developed in nature, we are nature.
These days with so many humans living within environments that offer varying degrees of nature, from the forest all the way to having hardly any nature at all, scientists have had ample opportunity to explore the bond people have to nature. To do this scientists compare people that have more access to nature to those who have less. Another way they might make the comparison it is to analyze one person, like yourself, in a more natural setting and then again in a less natural setting. If you were a subject of study like that, pause for a moment and think about what differences their might be.
Basically they have found that a lack of nature is not good for us and that our love of nature is also a need for nature. Throughout history many people knew this from intuition so they started a movement to conserve and restore nature back into our lives by forming organizations who act, and educate. The movement, backed by science has gained respect, momentum and no longer belongs to a special few. The movement now belongs to all who want to maintain and improve quality of life. Tree Fresno is an urban forestry organization who attempts to do that through trees. We want to redefine the city as a dynamic place where one can find the best that life has to offer including more and better access to nature. And being based in Fresno heat we are all aware of a definite need for a trees shade. There is no replacement for that.
This blog is aimed at sharing with you what we have learned about how trees improve our health as well as our urban environment. While the blog is guided by trees, science and set in present day, it is not to exclude the bigger picture, that nature is a balance within the web of relationships between all things, not just trees, and the use of science is not to replace the intuition and raw observations of many nature stewards that came long before us.
Nature is everywhere- Do you have a little patch of nature near by? Go check it out. Look at the big details and the small.