The Virtues of Snowshoeing: COVID and Winter Don't Have to Stop You and Your Family from Getting Out
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A lot has been written about the benefits of moving at a slower speed. We referenced a book called The Circumference of Home, by Kurt Hoelting. But the interest in human movement stems beyond the interest of outdoors enthusiasts like us and into serious scholarly work. As just one example, Dr. David A Reichlen - an evolutionary biologist - runs a lab at the University of Southern California that is dedicated to studying the link between our ancient development and our contemporary selves.
“Our lab is focused on understanding how humans' unique evolutionary history explains modern human physiological variation and how we can use an evolutionary context to improve health and well-being today. Specifically, we believe a shift towards high levels of physical activity during our transition to hunting and gathering in the past led to a physiological requirement for physical activity to maintain the health of organ systems from our brains, to our cardiovascular system, to our musculoskeletal system.”
Half a decade ago, he and a research team completed a study of the Hadza, contemporary hunter-gatherers of Tanzania, in which they focused on their walking during prolonged foraging trips. What they found was that their movement corresponded with something known as the Levy Walk. A Levy Walk is a statistical term, but it manifests in the literal act of walking as a set of small steps with the occasional long stride. This has the benefit of not trampling down the same area under your feet as well as not taking you to the same location every time. Think “ancient sustainability.” This keeps foragers from overusing a piece of ground and picking it clean.
We can place the movement of those hunter-gatherers within the broader context of human movement, including movement in urban environments. Turns out, we use the Levy Walk when we walk in heavily crowded urban areas, too. We can’t possibly account for and predict the potential direction changes of hundreds of people walking around us. So, we randomize. And Dr. Reichlen notes the fact that two seemingly disparate branches of social evolution have produced a similar result when it comes to human movement. To an NPR journalist’s inquiry on the topic, Dr. Reichlen responded:
“This movement pattern seems to emerge in both hunting and gathering and urban societies, suggesting it is a feature of human movement that links us to an ancient way of life.”
It’s this “ancient way of life,” that - for our family anyway - connects us to our deep, reptilian brain. There is something satisfying about covering ground under foot. And the science is beginning to prove that out. A Stanford study found walking improves creative thinking. Another study found that the “shock waves” generated from your foot hitting the ground increases blood supply to your brain.
Maybe this return to our pre-automated selves is just what we need to counter the decided distant, virtual, and automated lifestyle that we’ve always been trending towards, but which now have us ensconced due to COVID-19.