Touch Grass
Seriously. Go outside and move around.
I racked up over 1600 miles of moving around in 2024. I climbed 100,000 feet this year, which is three Everests. Getting outside and moving around is important to me. My workout log goes back to 1983. My lifetime odometer is at around 48,000 miles. I’ve done two laps around the globe and I’m starting my third. Why all this skiing and running and hiking and biking and paddling? Is it a compulsion? It must be more than just physically “working out,” right?
Lately, I’ve read some nuggets about health. The most recent was an article in Outside Magazine by Alex Hutchinson. He described a new study that says physical activity is the greatest predictor of longevity. Hutchinson said, “The message to remember is: move or die.” It’s like the poster I’ve seen that says, “You don’t stop skiing because you get old. You get old because you stop skiing.” The study was impressive:
“The best predictors for how to live longer? Physical activity, followed by age, mobility problems, self-assessed health, diabetes, and smoking. Take a moment to let that sink in: how much and how vigorously you move are more important than how old you are as a predictor of the years you’ve got left.”
The other thing I’ve been reading recently is a 1977 book by Wendell Berry. He points to specialization as a problem for agriculture and for society in general. We are people that only know how to do one thing in order to make money. “Divide and conquer” versus interconnectedness. He gives examples of how division and specialization are bad, including how they’re bad for our bodies and minds. This passage hit me hard because of current events even though it was written almost 50 years ago:
“The first principle of the exploitive mind is to divide and conquer. Surely there has never been a people more ominously and painfully divided than we are — both against each other and within ourselves… Its stock in trade in politics is to sell despotism and avarice as freedom and democracy…
This gluttonous enterprise of ugliness, waste, and fraud thrives in the disastrous breach it has helped to make between our bodies and our souls. As a people, we have lost sight of the profound communion — even the union — of the inner with the outer life.”
The comedian George Carlin also talks about “divide and conquer” tactics used by the upper class to keep themselves “going to the bank.” But my article here was supposed to be about physical activity and how it’s good for our health. Could unifying our bodies with our minds be a pathway to greater health as a society? All this unity talk got me thinking about biathlon. Bear with me.
When I was in high school, I spent my life savings on a biathlon rifle so I could try this Olympic sport that combines cross-country skiing with rifle marksmanship. Back in the 80’s, somebody recommended that I read Zen in the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel to improve my shooting. But all that bow-and-arrow stuff was a gateway drug to Zen. The foreword to the archery book was written by D.T. Suzuki. I bought a book by him called An Introduction to Zen Buddhism. I pulled it off the shelf and rediscovered this passage about the unity of body and mind:
“The trouble with most religious recluses is that their mind and body do not act in unison; their body is always separated from their mind, and the latter from the former; they imagine that there is the body and there is the mind and forget that this separation is merely ideational, and therefore artificial. The aim of the Zen discipline being to annul this most fundamental discrimination, it is always careful to avoid any practice which tends to emphasize the idea of onesidedness.”
Both Berry and Suzuki describe the importance of the unity of body and mind. That’s true for me when things are at their best. Cross-country skiing is my favorite outdoor activity. In an anthology called Why We Write, I describe the drug I’m chasing with those outdoor miles:
“I take it for granted. I’ve been skiing since I was 2. The rhythms and movements of skiing feel like home. Unlike running, cross-country skiing is a sport with zero impact. Kind of like compressing and releasing a spring. No pounding of the pavement with each stride. You move by gliding. I sense the trees pass by. I adapt to the terrain as it tips up or down. Turns left or right. Sometimes, I get into a meditative state (interrupted by my wheezing, but even that, at least, is rhythmic). I don’t think about anything. When I come out of that mode, I sometimes have no idea where I am. I forget which trail system I’m on. Even what month it is. I get mildly disoriented. Maybe I just admitted I have early onset dementia.
The disorientation is a positive, however—a marker. Not an Alzheimer’s symptom, but a sign that I’ve been in a desired frame of mind: “I’m skiing” is transformed into “I am skiing.” There’s no separation between me and the snow and my poles and my boots and my skis. It’s a cornball thing to say, but it’s everything, all at once, at the same time.”
I’ve gone full woo-woo, I guess. So be it. Moving is good for your health. It unifies your body and your mind. But part of this Angry Shmo project is to describe how I’m finding my way in society during current events. I go outside because it’s a real thing in the real world. In the great novel Once a Runner, John L. Parker, Jr. writes a passage about running that describes how outdoor activity fits into my life nowadays. And just like Berry’s book, it was written almost 50 years ago:
“He ran because it grounded him in basics. There was both life and death in it; it was unadulterated by media hype, trivial cares, political meddling. He suspected it kept him from that most real variety of schizophrenia that the republic was then sprouting like mushrooms on a stump.
Running to him was real; the way he did it the realist thing he knew. It was all joy and woe, hard as diamond; it made him weary beyond comprehension. But it also made him free.”
There are people who want to divide us. They want us to fight amongst ourselves; even within ourselves. Don’t buy it. “Touch grass,” as the kids say on the internet. Move away from the keyboard. Go outside. Do something real. Unify your body and mind. Put in some miles. Keep moving.
Besides, like it says in that movie, Rule #1 is cardio when the zombie apocalypse starts.
