I was recently on a trip to Yellowstone, where the buffalo roam and the deer and the antelope play. Well, technically they are bison, but you get the point. Before I left on my trip several people had told me, in a
mildly joking manner, to make sure I stayed away from the bison. Ever curious, I looked up why they were so fixated on that one animal, when there are far more dangerous and deadly ones living in the park. (Grizzly bear anyone!). Lo and behold, I discovered several news stories about people who had recently been killed by bison at Yellowstone because they were trying to pet them. Then a few days ago I saw a news story about a woman who was injured by polar bears in a zoo because she jumped in their pen. No reason for her actions was given, but in the video (of course there is one of those) she seems to be trying to pet them or get close to the baby that was there.
This perplexing behavior made me really stop and think. Why would people go so close to wild animals dangerous or not? Why would they ever invade their space and try to touch them? The answer I came up with was rather sad although I am not sure it was surprising given how we live in the modern age. We grow up, for the most part, very disconnected from nature in cities and towns made of concrete and glass. We have, again for the most part, solved this survival game, at least from the perspective of the natural world, and we live lives in relative comfort. I say relative because we mostly have enough food and clean drinking water here in the western world, and it’s a far cry from the tribal hunter gather days where food was scarce, and the health of the tribe was highly dependent on mother nature’s whims.
This disconnect from the natural world has led to a misunderstanding of it and a kind of disrespect that happens when one is not taught the proper ways. We have vast amounts of control over our life and environment compared to our distant ancestors. We’ve never seen a tribe’s man gored by the wild bison during a hunt and mourned his loss with the tribe. We’ve never lived with the land and from it, depending on nature and her gifts to survive. We are brought up with words and warnings about nature and the animals that inhabit it, but there is no real experience to back that up. So, when we see an innocent looking bison standing minding its own business, we think they can’t be that bad. All those signs must be wrong. This bison right here, he’s nice. He’s friendly and I want to pet him. So, we try, and nature slaps us in the face with horns, and for some it’s the last they will ever do.
What prey tell does this have to do with food you ask? Well, this disconnect from nature can be seen in part as a disconnect with ourselves. The part of us that is wild, that is biological, the part that remembers the hunt and the long cold hungry winters. The part that rejoiced when spring came, and the herds returned and there was a mighty feast. The part that looks at a waterfall and realizes it doesn’t care who you are or what you do, the power of it will consume you all the same. This wild part, this natural part is what our DNA is built from. It’s what our biochemistry operates with. It’s how we are genetically programed to live. This is changing somewhat (epigenetically) due to modern living and modern “food” choices, and accounts for many of the diseases we see today. Modern day disease as I’ve heard it called. Cancer, Alzheimer’s, autoimmune, unexplained infertility, hormonal issues, diabetes, dementia, Parkinson’s, etc.
When we are disconnected from nature and ourselves, imbued in an environment that contains products that are food like but offer no nourishment, stressed out far beyond that system’s ability to handle and isolated in a city full of folks, the result could be nothing less than disease and disfunction. We have taken the human biology so far from where it was made, we are truly traversing a new frontier in human evolution. While there’s many aspects of this phenomenon we can’t control (I live in a city in a house, and I drive to work every day in stressful traffic etc.) there are some aspects we can which makes a night and day difference on your health. Probably the most important of the things we have relative control over is choosing good quality whole foods to nourish our bodies. Food is literally what you are made of on a cellular and biological level, it's what your cells use for energy and building of biological materials like neurotransmitters (serotonin anyone!) This one thing in and of itself will help your body get some connection back to the natural world.
Second on that list would be proper and adequate sleep. So much healing and detoxification goes on while you sleep, it really is a reset for your body and mind. Sleep is so important that you will die without it just like you would die without food and/or water. It’s a biological necessity that is often overlooked and even shunned in our modern society. It’s a badge of honor in many cases to be able to “get by” on just a few hours when we should really be proud for the opposite reason. Keeping your room dark and cool and turning off electronics at least one hour prior to bedtime will help your body prepare for a good night’s rest.
Third on that list is stress management. We live in an environment where stressors are rampant and that system, the stress response system, was not designed to be turned on all the time. It was designed to do what I like to call the zebra shake. We get chased by a lion and our entire being kicks into high gear to save our butts. Our heart rate and breathing increase, our blood pressure goes up, stress hormones surge and we run like hell. Then we climb a tree and get away, safe to live another day. At that point our body is supposed to, in the words of Taylor Swift, shake it off to rid itself of excess stress hormones. You see zebras do this all the time. That allows the system to go back to baseline and you return to rest and repair mode. The problem today is we don’t shake. We stay in that state of fight or flight with stress hormones surging and it wreaks havoc on our bodies. Stress kills, so having some outlet that is intentional to relieve stress is a must to connect in this modern-day world.
To wrap all that up because I did say a lot, we’ve lost some of our connection with nature and the beautiful yet dangerous aspect she offers. We are much safer and comfortable now, but we lost something wild and raw along the way. In our modern world it can be difficult to get that connection back but good whole nutritious food followed by quality sleep and stress management practices can help. Mother nature is both beautiful and fierce and connecting to both those aspects of her is what makes us truly feel alive.
P.S. Please stay away from the bison. They are just living their best life and don’t need you to get in their way.
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