Outdoors

Those who know me know that I’m a rugged adventurer and outdoorsman. Of course, those who know me better know I’m a pathological liar. Just the same, I have been known to venture outdoors even more than is strictly necessary in a two-car family with a one-car garage.

And over years of observation, one of the things I’ve noticed about the outdoors … it hasn’t changed much. Sure, there’s less of it, but it’s still basically made up of trees, grass, rocks, dirt and bugs in varying proportions. It’s about the same as I remember it from my childhood.

The indoors of my youth was living rooms with plastic covered sofas facing massive Colonial maple furniture full of hi-fi systems and black and white television sets. (TV was what you watched, and the appliance was a television set.) Kitchens had a toaster and a coffee percolator, but all other food preparation was done on the range, usually an electric one. You’d have to visit some historic landmark to see interiors like that anymore. But the outdoors? It’s just as it always was (except for the broken glass and graffiti.)

Now environmentalists, take note! If you want to get people jazzed about the environment, you have to update it a little. Give it a little sizzle (and no, I’m not talking about global warming.) You should skip the next couple of versions of iPhone and 3DHDTV, and concentrate on building an environment that resembles the planet Pandora from James Cameron’s movie, Avatar. Now that’s an outdoors … filled with weird glowing plants and flying boulders. People would run around with broadband cables growing out of their heads, able to plug in to the nearest neighbor or tree either to reproduce or to meditate as the occasion demands. That would be an environment worth saving.

And maybe people would even go outdoors once in a while.