Got the new issue of Orion at Barnes and Noble.

Can't call it a magazine. There is no advertising. The writing, the photographs and illustrations are 1st class. The paper even feels good. It's a small treasure.

The surgeon that did my intestinal surgery finds the human gut impressive. It has it's own separate nervous system, but hardly any of it is us.

Pogo might say “Us aren’t us”.

Each of us is a society that goes 24/7. We don't eat for one or when pregnant two. We eat for trillions.

The New You
By Anthony Doerr

 LAST TUESDAY I PRESSED little white keyboard squares for eight hours, drove home, helped the kids with their homework, overcooked some chicken breasts, watched Jeopardy, paid Idaho Power, read some paragraphs, switched off the lamp, and thought: You lummox, you didn't do anything outside all day. 

Why berate myself? Because getting outdoors helps me think, feel, and sleep better. Increasingly, science has my back on this. A 2008 University of Michigan study, for example, showed that volunteers who ambled through a campus arboretum improved their short-term memory by about 20 percent. 

More recently, Japanese studies have found that regular strolls in the woods can lower depression rates, blood pressure, and levels of the stress hormone cortisol. South Korea is so convinced of the benefits of “forest bathing,” they’re building a $140 million National Forest Therapy Center. Finland is funding similar research. 

All of which is both interesting and encouraging. Yet I remain troubled by the language of my own formulation. The words I chose—you didn’t do anything outside—suggest that I didn’t leave the “Inside” to do anything in “Nature.” They imply that a world exists called “Inside” and that it is fully separable from another world called “Outside.” 

Implicit within that arrangement is the assumption that “Me” and “Nature” are discrete entities. But the emerging reality is immensely more complicated. “Me” is not some inalienable being that has to remind himself to plant a tulip once in a while before getting back to the real business of watching Alex Trebek. And “Nature” is not some elfin, rejuvenating spa that provides “Me” with a daily dose of fresh oxygen, mental health, and organic broccoli. 

Increasingly, the science of microbiology is showing that we carry “Nature” with us everywhere we go. From the moment we emerge from our mothers, we are colonized, seized, and occupied by other entities. We are not, it turns out, walking cleanrooms that ought to be shuttled into Nature for forty-five minutes, then bustled inside and bathed in hand sanitizer. 

In truth, no matter how far “Inside” we get, the “Outside” is always with us. 

MORE AT: 

http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/7971

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AUDIO AND VIDEO

Orion Editors Out Loud: January/February 2014

January 21, 2014

Summary: Editors Jennifer Sahn and Andrew Blechman discuss the contents of the January/February 2014 issue of the magazine,