The Herald - The Herald Magazine
Want to keep the heid? Get into the quite good outdoors
ONE in five citizens believes the outside world to be “boring” and “dull”, according to a study by ornithology app
Birda.
The sentiment was strongest among Generation Z, those aged 18 to 24, while Generation ZZZ – pensioners – found most enjoyment out in the real, green world, with just 8% finding it humdrum. Scots were most likely to like getting oot, with Geordies least likely.
As a lover of green spaces, I do sympathise with those who find it dull. Looked at cynically, there’s nothing to do except walk and breathe and look and sit doon. But surely that’s enough to be going on with.
Still, I understand that, unless you find something to thrill you – an interesting cloud, bird or piece of litter – it can be boring compared to a computer game or YouTube video. We picture our entitled (to thrills) young person approaching a meadow and, in the words of Nirvana, saying: “Here we are now, entertain us.”
In between the lonely poet-warrior like your correspondent – ken? – and the hapless fun-seeker, there’s the leisure-amenity brigade: dutiful dog walkers, grim cyclists, intense joggers. They’re not having fun but they’re not doing nothing, which is something we should make more of a priority.
In general, I’d advise finding somewhere devoid of Earthlings, though perhaps not totally. I enjoy a friendly word with dog walkers, if not the other two mobs, when oot and also aboot. If you work with folk all day, a walk without them is a balm. If sitting on your tod all day, as I do, it’s pleasant to exchange a few remarks with generally nice folk about how lovely it is to be out.
Edinburgh’s Royal Botanic Garden was busier than Princes Street last time I visited. It’s now fronted, like so many places, by a huge cafeteria and shop. It’s basically a massive coffee shop with a wee back green attached. As there are now things to do/slurp/ buy, it has attracted crowds. But at least, before or after consuming, they’re walking and breathing fresh air. It’s less boring than the gym and arguably better for you. I could spend an hour on the cross-trainer – though I never do; only bovine baldies with no capacity for boredom do that – and never be out of breath. Three minutes up a hill or steep path, and I must stop to get my wind back.
When you walk, other body parts move. You waddle forward as one unit. It’s heady stuff and, indeed, good for the heid. You get things in perspective. You get ideas. Stuck in the dark countryside, I miss more than anything my evening suburban walk, when I could walk off my dinner and look back on the day: “Rubbish again. Don’t know why I bother.”
And that, as foreshadowed mysteriously in my last paragraph, is in the suburbs: good, quiet, green places in which to walk. No-one’s asking you to hike across Yosemite. As also hinted at earlier, being oot
is good for the soul. By going outside you go inside. Somehow, the broad vista of outdoors magically brings you to the vaster world inside your heid. You may not like what you find. But you can’t keep running away from it indoors.
Bird brains
THE research alluded to in the explosive segment you’ve just read was, as mentioned, carried out by ornithology app Birda.
Their whole point was to get folk to waddle outdoors to gawp at the birdies; a laudable aim. “All you have to do is head out and look up,” they say.
That said, I’ve only once gone “birdwatching”, with an enthusiastic pal, but found it trainspotterish in the non-drugs sense. It was rather intense and, somehow, love of achievement overshadowed love of the creatures.
The same research found one in six Britlanders claimed to have seen only three types of bird in their entire lives: pigeons, crows and seagulls.
Not even a robin, blackbird, sparrow, wren or starling. How extraordinary.
Though I can’t claim great technical knowledge of birds – beyond their psychology – I have at least seen, and can identify, all these mentioned, and many more, including eagles, sparrowhawks and falcons, all of which I detest. Ruddy cannibals.
How do I know about avian psychology? Well, I have close and loving relations with several birds in my garden, particularly one wee robin and one blackbird.
Yesterday, on returning home, the wee robin recognised my car. It knew a Rab was in it, and that this Rab was one of the Good Guys, always bunging vittles hither and yon but, more importantly, engaging in pleasant conversation. The wee fellow fluttered about joyfully as I exeunted.
Recently, away for 10 days, I worried the birds would miss me and fear I’d never return. They see the black Volvo has gone, and think the worst. When it at last returns, it’s like all their Christmases and birthdays rolled into one.
Asked by a manwatching app about recognising humans, not only could my wee Robin confidently say, “Well, I know a Rab when I see one”, it could add: “And I ken what kind of car he drives tae.”