Americans Abandoning National Parks
By Serena Gordon
HealthDay Reporter
(HealthDay News) — National parks were designed to be places where Americans could go to connect with nature, but that healthy ideal may be on the wane.
A new study published in this week’s issue of the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences finds the use of America’s parks and forests may be down by as much as 25 percent since 1987.
“Outdoor health activities in nature are good for you in terms of physical, emotional and psychological well-being,” said study co-author Oliver Pergams, a research assistant professor in biology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. “If they’re being replaced by videos and other indoor sedentary activities, then kids aren’t getting the good stuff. They’re replacing those healthy activities with ones that are quite the opposite in many ways.”
His team believes the decline in national park use stems from this “videophilia,” which they define as the new human tendency to choose sedentary activities involving electronics over outdoor-based recreation.
“National parks and being outside are symbolic of a healthier lifestyle than where America seems to be going these days,” added Dr. Marc Siegel, an associate professor of medicine at the New York University School of Medicine. “We’ve been oriented toward environmental control and want everything to be 70 degrees, so we’re not communing with nature as much.”
While the United States is clearly a sedentary society, said Siegel, he’s not sure that there’s a direct correlation between the declining use of U.S. national parks and a sedentary lifestyle. (more…)
Since our house sits right at the base of the Cleveland National Forest, I decided to take the plunge the other week and hike to the top of one of the mountains. Hiking was always something I enjoyed doing back on the east coast, but this was the first time I actually did it on a mountain. Although I did not make it to the very top (I was about 2 miles shy) because of time, I did manage to do about 8.5 miles up. The best part for me was sitting near the top of the mountain and listening to the breeze as it passed through the divide.
And because my neighbor got me all concerned about hiking in mountain lion country (he is a brotha who has watched too much TV, but has a point), I’m probably one of few hikers out there carrying a gun and knife.
With all the warm weather we have been having lately out here (about 78 yesterday), I am already looking on doing our first camping trip as a family somewhere off of Pacific Coast Hwy around the central coast area.
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