Louisa,

As an adventure traveler for many years (and having just come back from a month of pack horse riding in the remote and VERY wild Muskwa Kechika wilderness of Canada), this nails it on the head.

To wit: when people march into the mountains ISO the ‘gram photo with nothing more on their minds than bragging rights, what we end up with is a conga line of 300 aspirants en route to the top of Everest, at least half or more who had no fucking business on the mountain. And many died as a result.

We have people who abuse first responders when it rains or their feet get tired because they grossly misunderstood the demands of the wild, and ended up being exhausted after a mile of hiking, and they treat that service like Uber.

We have people who bring their mini speakers on a hike, not only scaring off every single wild thing within miles, but also ruining the experience of the wild for anyone else within hearing distance. All day and all night long.

As my friend and Tanzania-based client Ben Jennings says, we don’t understand wild. To your point in your story, we are a little short on humility and awe when we step into one of the fast-disappearing forests. We have little appreciation for the extraordinary complexity of tree systems and what’s going on under our feet.

We are fast losing a great deal of what makes us sane. Happy. Healthy. Human. We have traded it off for poor posture, bad eyesight, fat butts, a host of (preventable) diseases. And our kids have no clue, being babysat from infanthood by devices. Their reference points aren’t the back yard, the trees and forests. It’s the ad-infested lands of the Internet, an easy answer to parents but a bad answer for all of us who desperately need the wild, the greens and blues and winds and sounds of what makes the Earth so beautiful.

I have the option- and I’m going to exercise it- to sell my Colorado home and move somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. Whether that ends up being back in Washington or Montana or Boise, I could care less. But I grew up surrounded by forests, night sounds and the evening music of birds and frogs. I am happiest listening to the sound of rain pattering on my tent fly. For the final decades of my life that is the gift I am going to give myself.

I am off to Mongolia, then Ethiopia, then back to Africa again over the next few months. Each time I do this, I am reminded: we are losing our wild at an appalling rate, and far too many of us have no fucking clue what its value is to us. While I don’t think that most folks belong on the kinds of adventures I do, just getting out of the house, off the computer and into a park to sit under a tree for a few hours breathes new life into a person. That is very available to most of us.

Nobody has to spend a month in Mongolia to get a full dose of nature. However, ensuring that nature is a part of our every day lives can save lives, improve lives, and do a lot to prevent what ails us.

Thanks for your excellent piece.