America the beautiful, where no one goes outside
Why the Camino has me rethinking where I live
Third in my “Camino Diaries” series. Read parts one, two, and four.
During the thirty-some days I walked the Camino, my world revolved around weather, dirt, and sun. I would hit the trail early in the morning to a chorus of birds, including cuckoos, which I’d associated more with Switzerland than Spain. The heat would turn up in the early afternoon, and I learned to get my miles in by 2pm. I was more in my body than I’d been in years.
Before leaving, I’d hoped for revelations on some of the themes I’ve been wrestling with lately, like belonging, friction, and futurism. Instead, I realized how much I’d cut myself off from nature and what that had cost my family.
Turns out I’m not alone. A recent study of over 12,000 American adults and children found that Americans are spending less time in nature than ever. Over half report spending five hours or less outside each week. A quarter spend less than two hours. Smartphones, desk jobs, and car culture all seem to be pulling us in the same direction: indoors.
I’m just as guilty as anyone. Every move I make through the world seems buffered by windshields, computer screens, and headphones. Most days, I spend more time online than outside. I check the weather app before opening the door.
About halfway through the Camino, I started fantasizing about buying a farm. This wasn’t because I actually want to farm or have any clue what I’d do with one besides becoming a day-in-the-life TikTok farm influencer. Hell, I don’t even garden. I just liked picturing a version of me with mud on my boots, a breeze in my face, and a laptop still on the table.
When we moved to Florida during Covid, my kid was a toddler and I bought a townhouse sight-unseen. The location is great from an adult’s perspective. It’s over 3,000 square feet and even has an elevator. But there’s no yard. There’s no easy access to a park either.
As a result, my kid has had no place to play outside that’s unstructured, unsupervised, and close by. I read Jonathan Haidt and claim I want my kid to be free-range, with alternatives to screens. But I chose a home where outdoor free-play isn’t really feasible. It felt like the right decision at the time, but somewhere on the Camino I found myself asking, what the hell was I thinking? I don’t want my kid to look back at childhood as something he experienced mostly alone and indoors.
Turns out, he’s not unusual either. According to a University of Michigan study, American kids between 6 and 17 spend an average of only seven minutes a day in unstructured outdoor play. Seven minutes.
Finding a kid-dense neighborhood where outdoor play is easy and normal feels surprisingly hard these days, at least where I live. Birth rates have fallen, housing costs have skyrocketed, and neighborhoods like mine seem more designed for DINCs and empty nesters than families.
In the towns along the Camino, Spaniards seemed to live closer to nature than Americans. At outdoor cafés, groups of people gathered for hours without anyone checking a phone. Kids kicked a soccer ball around the town plaza with no helicoptering parents. Tavernas propped their doors and windows open instead of sealing themselves shut. More people walked places instead of driving.
Of all things, hang-drying my clothes became one of my favorite Camino rituals. After washing my sweat-saturated gear in a sink, I enjoyed hanging it on a rack with clips and arranging each piece to catch the wind and heat. I’m not giving up my dryer any time soon, but it was nice seeing hang-drying so normalized.
Not long ago, daily tasks like laundry and shopping meant going outside. Today we can order Amazon Prime, text our friends, and wash and dry our clothes without ever setting foot outdoors.
Traveling in Spain felt like stepping back in time in this regard. It’s poorer and less developed than America, and I don’t mean to romanticize that. But it made me wonder what we’ve lost on our march to neoliberal nirvana.
Which brings me to air conditioning. With another European heat wave dominating online discourse, I’ve seen a lot of Americans making fun of Europeans’ reluctance to embrace AC. Much of it is fair game. Heat kills hundreds of thousands of people each year. I’m on Team AC.
But spending a month in Spain made me wonder if something else is going on beyond myths about AC causing illness and concerns about energy use. Many Europeans seem more interested in fresh air and open windows than perfectly calibrated climate control. Maybe what they’re really resisting is one more layer between themselves and the outside world. I live in Florida, not Galicia. So I need AC. But I understand the impulse to open the windows first.
Next month, I’m traveling to California with my family, staying at my brother’s cabin, which has no AC. The nights are cool and mornings are foggy. I’ll ask my brother if he’d like a drying rack on the porch, where the afternoon sun consistently beams a dry 85 degrees. “It’s for drying towels and swimsuits,” I’ll explain, not mentioning that I’ll use it for my underwear too. While there, I’ll walk through redwoods, swim in the river, and eat dinner outside. I’ll try to live a little closer to nature, like I did in Spain.
America is spoiled with natural beauty. But we’ve engineered our own disconnection from it, one convenience at a time, to a point that isn’t healthy. If we’re not careful, AI will de-nature and disembody us even more.
That’s why walking across Spain felt right to me. I needed the friction, elements, and pilgrim vibe to challenge my frictionless, climate-controlled life. It’s too soon to say how it will change my life, but learning to walk with Jesus and feeling pulled back to nature seem pretty meaningful.
I can’t wave a wand and fix car culture or declining birth rates, or get Americans to adopt the Scandinavian concept of friluftsliv. But I can control where and how I live. I can take more walks. I can listen to birds instead of podcasts. I can experiment with hang-drying my clothes, though I’ll probably still buy the rack on Amazon and have it delivered overnight. I can take extended hikes like the Camino more than once a decade. Part of me already wants to go back.
I don’t know if we’ll move right away. But I know I must look for a home where outdoor play is easy and nature is part of daily life.
"Engineered disconnection." What a fitting label for American culture. Your kid's drawing is fantastic by the way.
Jeff, you’ve nailed it for all of us! We live on a tree lined street with plenty of yard (which we maintain, too often, begrudgingly) a mere three blocks from a lovely creek with walking paths. It’s June in Minneapolis and I spend most of my time indoors! And, I’m retired for god’s sake! How nuts is that?