Primary Thoughts
Neil Mufson, Head of School
As summer nears, one of its draws for me is the chance to spend unhurried time in nature. The lure of the island 12 miles off the coast of Maine that I have visited each summer for almost 4 decades becomes palpable once Graduation passes. Writers, poets, musicians, and even researchers have long written about the benefits of spending time in nature. Pressures fade, connections strengthen, health markers improve, as beauty, calm, and rejuvenation work their magic. When we spend more time in nature, we also better sense our place on and our connection to our planet. We notice intricacy, interdependency, patterns, details, and marvels that the pace and routine of our (sub)urban lives deaden. Our planet’s future depends on our sensing and holding these impressions as valuable.
In the file I keep of articles I intend to read, I was amused to come across an opinion piece in The New York Times by Jeff Opperman, a freshwater scientist for the World Wildlife Fund, entitled “Taylor Swift is Singing Us Back to Nature.” Long before the current phenom of Swift’s Eras tour, Opperman wrote back in March of 2021 that her then recent albums Folklore and Evermore reversed a trend he had long noticed: that “the language of nature has been steadily draining from the vocabulary of our culture.”
Opperman writes, “Our culture has experienced a steady and dramatic decline in its connections to nature. American children now spend an average of only four to seven minutes per day playing outdoors, compared with over seven hours per day in front of a screen. By now they are far better at identifying corporate logos from native plants or animals; they can tell the difference been an Apple and a Coke, but not a maple from an oak.”
He believes Taylor Swift’s music counteracts this trend and that it is one of the reasons her music has gained a following amongst more diverse audiences (perhaps even in the “aging Head of School” demographic). Since Opperman is a “nature scientist and not a music critic,” he “analyzed the lyrics of the 32 songs on Folklore and Evermore and the lyrics of the first 32 songs from the ‘Today’s Top Hits’ playlist on Spotify. The result? Ms. Swift uses nature-themed words seven times as frequently as the other pop songs do.” But more widely, “nature-themed words [are] losing ground in our pop culture.” Opperman cites a Scientific American study found a 63 percent decline since the 1950’s. He maintains this is important because, “If we want to change the world to safeguard nature, and ourselves, we first have to see it. Art can do that.”
In the song Seven, Swift sings, “Please, picture me in the trees / I hit my peak at 7 / Feet in the swing over the creek / I was too scared to jump in / But I, I was high in the sky / With Pennsylvania under me / Are there still beautiful things?” Opperman says that “rather than four to seven minutes outside each day… [in Swift’s work] nature, childhood, and friendship are all intertwined and seared deep in memory.”
The coming summer is an opportunity to sear those memories of nature deep in the memory of our children. I think what nature promises is what draws my family and me back to that Maine island year after year. Even my soon-to-be-eighteen year-old craves it.