Old news and new news

I was perusing mountaineering stories and gear reviews online when I found this blog post by a Deuter employee, giving an amusing secondhand account of my own expedition with NOLS in the Indian Himalaya. As a student, I think we were sheltered from the instructors' true alarm over our fuel shortage situation. We knew it was an issue, but reading Evan's quotes make me realize how serious of a situation it could have become! We all thought Evan was crazy for bringing just a 3-season golite quilt to sleep on a glacier for three weeks, but his bean-counting ways helped him keep his pack (full of extra protection and rescue regalia) smaller than most of our own.

I found that same photo from the Deuter blog on a NOLS flier on a bulletin board at REI two summers ago. Quite a trip seeing myself on the wall as I walked out of the bathroom! I'm second from the left, wearing an orange jacket. Eric, pictured in front wearing red, was carrying a 100lb+ pack by this point!

Another article I enjoyed reading is this from Adam Alter for The Atlantic:

How Nature Resets Our Minds and Bodies: The research behind an understanding that natural environments refocus our attention, lessening stress and hastening healing

Some good quotes:

Nature restores mental functioning in the same way that food and water restore bodies. The business of everyday life -- dodging traffic, making decisions and judgment calls, interacting with strangers -- is depleting, and what man-made environments take away from us, nature gives back. There's something mystical and, you might say, unscientific about this claim, but its heart actually rests in what psychologists call attention restoration theory, or ART. According to ART, urban environments are draining because they force us to direct our attention to specific tasks (e.g., avoiding the onslaught of traffic) and grab our attention dynamically, compelling us to "look here!" before telling us to instead "look over there!" These demands are draining -- and they're also absent in natural environments. Forests, streams, rivers, lakes, and oceans demand very little from us, though they're still engaging, ever changing, and attention-grabbing. The difference between natural and urban landscapes is how they command our attention. While man-made landscapes bombard us with stimulation, their natural counterparts give us the chance to think as much or as little as we'd like, and the opportunity to replenish exhausted mental resources.

. . . 

Natural environments promote calmness and well-being in part because they expose people to low levels of stress. These stressful experiences are tame in comparison with the trials and tribulations that most of us associate with stress -- workplace drama, traffic jams, and wailing children on international plane trips. Humans thrive with some stimulation, but we're incapable of coping with extreme stressors, which push us from the comfortable realm of eustress (good stress) to the danger zone of distress (bad stress).