I don’t know that I’d buy all the theoretical trappings, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that there’s something to this. As a kid growing up in a small, largely rural town, I spent a lot of time riding my bike, wandering around in the woods, and spending a lot of more-or-less unsupervised time outside. Not to say that I didn’t spend my fair share of time holed up in my room reading comic books, but there was definitely a certain familiarity and comfort with being in nature. Do a lot of kids grow up without that? And what happens to us as adults if we don’t have it? It makes sense that we’d be wired at a pretty deep level to connect with nature; I’ve often wondered if living in a largely human-built environment is good for us.

Granted, we can only really begin to wonder about this stuff once we’ve achieved a certain level of freedom from and control over our natural environment.