A largely sedentary lifestyle can’t be good for most humans, and I’ve written before about the physical dangers of sedentism, especially in our highly urbanized West.

When one lives a life of limited bipedal activity, the body adapts to that lack of regular motion. When you aren’t using your leg muscles, ligaments and joints in modest levels of activity, you are slowly losing them.

Your knees may become weaker as you require less of them, and later in life severe knee pain can flare up.

I’ve seen this in middle-age folks who become so stoked about walking and hiking in Santa Barbara County’s splendid natural areas that they overdo it and end up with terrific knee pain. Perhaps they have just retired and plunge into golden retirement too lustily.

Imagine one way we can enjoy nature and prepare for moderate hiking after speeding off to Nira Camp:

The surging creek’s mellifluous roar near my sleeping body ensconced in the Tacoma’s  truck bed swooshes about 25 feet from my ears. I left the hinge down and the wide window flap thrown all the way up. Rushing water and myriad rivulets stream over immovable rocks rife with choking sounds while the flow courses through leafy debris and the occasional downed sycamore limb.

Only while camping in nature do I realize — re-cognize — how much white noise and bright ambient light curse today’s urban tribes, those of us living in the human species’ vast and interconnected cities (including Santa Barbara).

Steven Pinker and those who simply believe in the better angels of our nature brag about our science, technologies and mighty industries that support and feed upwards of 8 billion of us (4.1.1.). Much of this “work” has been accomplished while sitting (sedentism again).

I understand their point and how that “selfish gene” (Richard Dawkins) drives some human inventions and achievements; I admit to driving a fossil fuel 4×4 truck and acknowledge the material underpinnings of my life.

However, I must ask these techno-optimists (including Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Peter Thiel): “So is this the end-goal of the human species: simply to procreate and make more of us to feast forever on our ailing mother planet?” Eight billion humans.

What about quality of life for our own children and grandchildren under such a neo-liberal regime? Thomas Jefferson bragged about a great future for Americans even “to the seventh generation.”

How about the health of all the other life forms existing on Gaia? We’re apparently able to see only about half the birds that flew around us 50 years ago. Are we simply dominant apex predators; no more than voracious lemmings in blind search of more food and procreation?

One of my longtime walking pals originally fell in love with hiking right here in Santa Barbara’s local backcountry. Mr. C appeared so extremely rejuvenated and joyful during and especially after long backcountry camping that I intensified and extended my own explorations of nearby Los Padres National Forest, as well as the eastern Sierra Nevada.

Two of his insights involve natural light and melodious sounds. Like him, I can barely tolerate artificial bright lights, particularly the super-white incandescent LED headlamps that may shine in one’s face at night.

For decades I only utilized those weak little “candle lanterns” while backpack camping in order to avoid bright flashlights.

The student backpackers I led to Camp Whitsett in the Sierra Nevada learned to use ONLY the headlamp’s red beam, and whenever possible eschewed deploying any artificial light at all.

Let the eyes adjust to the night and retain maximum night vision capacities when out-of-doors.

Likewise, we generally banned small cassette players (back in the day!), iPods (and now, earbuds) and all forms of human-sponsored machine noise except campfire singing, sometimes accompanied by an instrument (harmonica, recorder, deer-bone whistle or Irish whistle as examples).

This digital/electronic silence offers another value to overnight camping by adding a vacation from screens and omnipresent doom-scrolling.

Somehow I held down a 10-month teaching position between 1980 and 2016 while finding time to hike frequently, both locally and in the backcountry. I added outdoor treks with my Crane Country Day School students, with my young son and other family members.

But motion was always the emphasis — constant movement, consistently criss-crossing over our Mother’s beautiful body (this planet), and chanting or yodelling part of the way. Nature, vitamin N, elicits joy and praise and recharges the heart during these minor outdoor forays.

Freedom from the Machine, its Sounds and overwhelming Light does allow for some alternate time to reflect, to revel in the simplicity amid quietude, and to heal.

Cutting off white noise and elimination of unnatural light absolutely recharges something in the human brain. While hiking, we pull away from technocracy’s online addictions, and we’re always on our feet, rarely sitting.

At such crucial intervals, we often tend to psychologically detach (or recede) and can temporarily “back up” to re-enter glorious adolescence (neoteny). Sometimes, not always, one can rekindle sacred juvenescence and recover islands of childlike innocence that generate new insights and inspiration (4.1.1. Juvenescence).

Restoration of one’s spirit simply happens while sleeping in the back of a covered truck bed at Nira Camp or Reyes Peak and then making a long day hike. Manzana Creek coos and gurgles nearby as spirit and organic brain rejuvenate. Why is it so difficult to get back here, just 47 miles from Santa Barbara? It’s totally challenging to break away given our city jobs, social commitments and important (dharmic) family duties. Once you’re at Davy Brown or settled in at a Nira Camp site, then of course one begins the long roaming outdoors: the steady pulling away from sedentism commences. Perhaps I’ll trudge along the creek or head up Potrero Canyon Trail toward the sacred realm of ‘alapay, embodied geologically by the recumbent and terrifying Hurricane Deck Formation.

Walking, mountain biking, extensive hiking, backpack camping, moving about outside and out-of-town whenever possible — all these actions support the effort to clear the monkey mind.

I add to this by removing my watch and any other detrimental tech impedimenta and stow them in a fanny pack (or back in the vehicle).

Do bring safety gear and food, and dress carefully. The next level is to make the 90-minute drive to Nira Camp, gateway to the San Rafael Wilderness, and after long day-hiking to sleep at the truck (or in the truck bed as I do).

There in camp one can have comfy camp chairs, cooking gear and an ice chest — American heaven.

Stepping back by sleeping near the musical water gives the mind and organic brain an overnight acoustic massage, and the over-civilized orbs receive a rejuvenation that only moonlight and star-bright can offer.

The almost nine-mile day hike up the steep Hurricane Deck described in the last column became possible when we set it up as a two-day/one-night episode away from the concrete jungle of Santa Barbara.

If you have endured sedentism, I recommend taking at least five or six months to slowly build up strength and endurance, and gently re-accustom the knees to so much motion before pushing them into a five-hour hard hike.

My recent mid-November Hurricane Deck venture required a four-mile downhill return slog. Although your leg muscles may be prepared for this jagged descent, the sedentary knees will hate it and act up.

I’ve been doing this since the 1970s, so the knees are relatively OK. If you plan to dash into these holy hills, do the 6-month ramping up if you are coming off the ubiquitous curse of sedentism. 

4.1.1.

Inactivity is hard on the knees; Steven Pinker, “The Better Angels of Our Nature — Why Violence Has Declined” (2011); “Juvenescence” (2014) by Robert Pogue Harrison relates the individual’s biological age to their  cultural era (or age). I retired from full-time teaching in 2016.