Surfing the Internet I discovered something new the other evening: ‘virtual environmental education and team building’. Apparently you can catch some pretty wild rides and achieve some serious bonding without leaving your couch!
Unfortunately, my old surfing buddy never got to see it, the Internet that is. He had to settle for the real thing. Decades ago we used to sit together on our boards at sunrise, waiting for the surf to come up. My friend was among the first to surf the big waves at Ghost Trees in my hometown of Pacific Grove. He had the courage to charge down the face of those massive forty footers, long before jet ski pull ins, or rather, pull outs. He pushed the limits of the possible and was an astronaut on a surfboard.
I miss him, and a lot of other things and places we enjoyed together, many of which are now paved over with asphalt and concrete. I particularly miss his questions. Once, as we passed a used car lot in downtown Monterey with a huge banner advertising ‘transportation cars’, he asked me: ‘What other kind of cars are there?’ In this age of climate change induced by human fossil fuel consumption, this remains a great question. To put a finer point on it, I was surprised during a recent visit to the Peninsula that the legendary Concours de Elegance was in town. The stunning parade of exotic McLarens, Ferraris, Porsches and even a few Bugattis suggest our thinking on this subject remains as muddled as ever!
So, if we could ask my friend whether the experience of wild nature, or bonding with your fellow human beings, can really be replaced with virtual reality, what would he say? For that matter, let’s ask ourselves that question. But before we answer, perhaps we should ask our kids to tear their attention away from their video games, TV shows, computers and cell phones, and ask them too.
Neuroscientists can now offer multiple reasons why the answer would be, at least for now, an emphatic no! One reason is that memories created in the natural world are particularly vivid, long lasting and multi-sensory. Although humans are biased toward sight, memories resulting from sensory input from auditory sources generally last longer, and olfactory sources even longer. When I remember my friend dropping in on one of those monster waves I don’t just see him, I hear the thunder and feel the vibration, taste the salt air, and smell the rotting seaweed on the beach.
Something else happens to me. I get butterflies in my stomach, as though I too was falling, suddenly weightless, down the face of the wave. These are my ‘mirror’ neurons, the ones that specialize in giving us our ability to understand how other people feel and which lay down particularly long lasting, complex and nuanced memory tracts. I still care about and empathize with my friend on that wave, just as I did decades ago.
I think we have just summed up the essence of experiential learning. Even if we could create an ‘app’ for environmental education and team building, I doubt it would be as powerful as the real thing. Repeatedly we hear from our participants, ‘that was the most amazing thing I have ever done and I will never forget it!’ Right on, the surf’s up. See you on the river.
Scott the RiverDoc
