“Touch grass”

October 1, 2021 by Joshua
in Nature, Tips

I’ve seen this phrase more lately: “touch grass.”

When someone starts sounding stir-crazy—that is, sounding as if they’ve been cooped up too long—someone will say “touch grass.” They mean, go outside and connect with nature.

When did you last walk barefoot on land that humans didn’t manicure, or even that they did, like a lawn? It’s fall here, so maybe you walked on the beach. How about in a stream or woodland path? When did you last eat a fruit, vegetable, or fungus you picked, within minutes of picking it?

Maybe touching grass would make a good sidcha. Podcast guest Dr. Michael Greger did a video on forest bathing, a therapeutic practice of visiting nature:

Our ancestors only ate and lived this way for nearly all of human history. What does it do to our psyches and culture to eat mostly prepared food, not to touch the ground, not to touch plants, even? I’ve written how we’ve replaced much of our once-grass fields with AstroTurf, as in my posts Plastic grass for kids? What are we doing? and Don’t call plastic “green space”, which nearly choke me up with sadness.

Touch grass.

Idyllic farm

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