Driving in to Badlands National Park on my final full day I noticed a huge plume of smoke rising up off the prairie. “A prescribed burn,” said the gate attendant, confirming my suspicions.
I witnessed evidence of these intentional fires throughout the Black Hills as well. In the mountains, a runaway infestation of the Mountain Pine Beetle is threatening two million acres of woodland in Colorado, another two million in Montana, and much of South Dakota as well. The cause? A century of well-intentioned but woefully misguided forest fire prevention by the park service. As it turns out, pine forests are naturally sparse. After one hundred years of putting out fires, our forests have become choked with trees. This has allowed the Mountain Pine Beetle to infest the forests like never before, wreaking destruction on a level which has never been seen. Signs by the park service throughout the Black Hills admit to the error. Workers are now trying to play catch up by cutting down infested trees and thinning the forests to natural levels.
It seems the prairies and forests have evolved to require adversity to thrive. We are now finding out that people have too. Harvard studies of adult development have shown that it is the presence of adversity, not the absence of it, that lead to healthy human development. Even more intriguing are the latest findings in neuroscience. We now actually possess the technology to show scientifically that the human brain requires challenges to its survival in order to remain healthy. It seems a brain which is preoccupied with its survival rather than its comforts is significantly less likely to fall prey to depression and anxiety disorders. A recent article in Scientific American Mind magazine discusses how activities which are performed in order to assist in survival, such as gardening, sewing one’s clothes and so forth, cause the brain to produce beneficial neurochemicals which protect it against mental illness. It is no wonder therefore that the developed nations which no longer require essential survival skills have the highest rates of depression and suicide. It is quite literally no good for you to be without adversity.
