In an old essay on Ebon Musings, "Finding Beauty in the Mundane", I wrote in a contemplative mood:

Have you ever considered the trees? Though their kind of life is far grander, slower and more patient than ours, they are each individuals, as different as human beings are. They add beauty to the world, give peace in their dappled shade, freshen the air and enrich the earth, and turn even the most hard-edged urban environment into a blossoming garden. We humans grew up beneath the trees, and we love them still...

Several years later, I still find this to be true. Whether I'm depressed or whether I'm already feeling good, it's almost always the case that visiting a botanical garden or a nature preserve, or even just going for a walk on a tree-lined street, noticeably improves my mood. The sight of sunlight slanting down through green leaves never fails to give me a sense of calm and peace. I tend to think the cause is that looking up at a tree reawakens one's sense of perspective: it's hard to see your own troubles as so serious in the presence of an organism that measures time only in years and decades.

But trees have more than just aesthetic benefits. Human beings feel an instinctive attraction to nature and wilderness, what E.O. Wilson called biophilia, and we flourish in its presence. For example, in one famous study, surgical patients who could see trees outside their window recovered faster and required fewer painkillers than patients whose window looked out on a brick wall. Other studies have found that greener urban areas have lower crime rates and that being in green environments lessens the symptoms of ADHD and improves schoolchildren's academic performance. (And that's not even to mention the many environmental and economic benefits of trees, either.)

The most likely explanation for this is that millions of years of evolution have instilled in us a built-in preference for certain kinds of environments, namely those most similar to our species' ancestral habitat. Wilson argues that this is the savanna, an open grassland broken up by patches of forest. This is the habitat we evolved in, the one we're best adapted to, and when we're placed in such an environment, we tend to fare better both mentally and physically. Urban environments, by contrast, present very different stressors that the human species never evolved to deal with.

I wonder if this feeling of displacement from nature is something that plays a role in religious conversions. When people live only in cities, surrounded by concrete and fluorescent lights, separated from nature, they do feel a sense of isolation and loss, and most of them don't know why. Religious proselytizers, of course, claim they can offer something to fill that void, and to people who don't know the true cause of these feelings, it's probably an effective sales pitch.

But when you know the true source of these feelings, the imitation can't compare to the reality. As I found for myself, the feeling of awe induced by direct contact with nature at its most spectacular is an ecstasy that easily compares to anything offered by any church. That's a piece of knowledge we ought to spread more widely. If more people understood the true, natural roots of human spirituality, the artificial attractions of religion might not prove so resilient.

This weekend, I went for a walk at a nature center in the Hudson Valley. The weather was quintessential summer - warm, brilliantly sunny and clear - and the forest was alive with life: swarms of bees, butterflies and moths doing the daily work of pollination, dragonflies darting over the water, a symphony of birds in the trees, even a snapping turtle basking in the sun. This was one of my most cooperative photo subjects, who took the time to pose and display the iridescent photonic crystals that give butterfly wings such striking colors.

Eastern tiger swallowtail (Papilio glaucus), Hudson Highlands Nature Center, July 2010. Photo by the author. Camera details: Canon PowerShot SD1200 IS. Click for larger version.

A special video edition of Photo Sunday!

Last month on our honeymoon, my wife and I went on a whale-watching tour in St. Lucia. We only saw one whale - at a distance, and he didn't let us get close enough for me to take any good pictures - but the dolphins were another story.

We encountered this school of dolphins off the southwest coast of the island. There must have been dozens of them, leaping out of the water on every side of our boat, and they seemed as fascinated by us as we were by them. They were beautiful, sleek and as fast as missiles, easily keeping up with the boat. We circled for about an hour to watch them, but I could have spent all day there without feeling a trace of boredom.

Since it was impossible to predict when or where they would jump, I decided to switch to video instead, and I'm pleased with the way it came out. I think it gives a sense of their speed and grace that would have been much more difficult to convey in a photograph. We should be cautious in ascribing human emotions to non-human species, but I feel comfortable saying, at least in this instance, that these dolphins followed us in a spirit of curiosity and play. In fact, I almost got a sense that they were showing off!

I haven't put up any pictures in a while, so here's a new one. It's from my honeymoon last month - we stayed at a resort on the west coast of the island of St. Lucia, a developing but beautiful country with some (in my humble opinion) of the world's most gorgeous scenery, including a spectacular sunset every night. It was almost impossible to take a bad picture there, but this was one of my favorites:

Boats at sunset, St. Lucia, May 2010. Photo by the author. Camera details: Canon PowerShot SD1200 IS. Click for larger version.

For this week's Photo Sunday, a seasonally appropriate picture. There's complexity in the world all around us, and the patterns of cracks and pits on the frozen surface of this lake, almost like the surface of an alien planet, caught my eye as a beautiful example:

Frozen lake surface, Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis, January 2010. Photo by the author. Camera details: Canon PowerShot SD1200 IS. Click for larger version.

This week's guest contributor says:

"Day three of a canoe exploration of Lows Lake and the Bog River Flow, Adirondacks. This dreamlike scene marked the end of an idyllic day of slow paddling and fishing for dinner. The world takes a breath and pauses...."

Sunset, Lows Lake, Adirondack State Park. Photo credit: Jim Sabiston, Essential Light Photography. (Visit his site!)

This week's guest contributor says:

"This is why it pays to rise with the sun. Very few people are blessed with the experience of a wilderness sunrise such as this gem. After a morning like this, the world cannot help but seem a miraculous place."

Sunrise, Pharaoh Lake, Adirondack State Park. Photo credit: Jim Sabiston, Essential Light Photography. (Visit his site!)

This photo is from my trip to St. Louis last weekend, taken from the base of the famous Gateway Arch. Besides the sheer scale of the structure, I was attracted to its stark, geometrical shape - almost like a mathematical equation in the form of a building. In the enlarged version, you can see the windows of the observation deck at the apex.

Gateway Arch, St. Louis, January 2010. Photo by the author. Camera details: Canon PowerShot SD1200 IS. Click for larger version.