Dan McCaslin: ‘Being Human’ While Roaming Solvang’s Hans Christian Andersen Park | Outdoors

In the middle of September, I was looking for some easy hiking while my wife’s elderly mother celebrated her 97th birthday at Atterdag Village in Solvang. While my partner visited with her mom that day, I found myself roaming around Solvang looking for a healthy walk. Wandering a bit, I found Solvang’s attractive Hans Christian Andersen Park, which includes more than 50 acres of picnic areas with tables, tennis courts, playgrounds and a popular skateboard park.

I had no idea of the extent and bucolic nature of this glorious space, at 633 Chalk Hill Road, right on the edge of the vacation town and faux-Danish tourist hub. In fact, as a snobby Santa Barbaran and self-styled backcountry hiker, I had looked down on Solvang for years in my backcountry hubris. However, mid-September revealed that Los Padres National Forest and the local Santa Barbara frontcountry trails had been closed, and after five weeks in Germany, I had become desperate to work on “being human” and so wandered into the park’s entrance.

A bit put off by the grandiose arch, nonetheless I strode in determined to check out this park and try for an hour’s hike. What a great place, and 50-plus acres means there was plenty of ground to cover. I made the 1.3-mile circuit trail hike twice, and this helped my human consciousness to emerge and keep healthy bathed in Stone Age roaming.

Charles Foster’s fascinating book “Being Human” tackles big issues such as human consciousness, modern boredom, and the origins of art and music — while hiking around Derbyshire in the United Kingdom. I admit that the British author grapples with the same issues I write about in my own backcountry/hiking books (see 4.1.1. books), although I’ve never sunk to collecting roadkill and cooking it or hiking barefoot. We agree that today’s type of human consciousness — so-called “behaviorally modern” homo sapiens — sprang up somewhere during the Upper Paleolithic (40,000 years ago or so). In a flowing style mixing hikes with nature explorations and meditations, the Brit hits the same themes I’ve been pursuing for many decades.

Foster and I believe that studying the very Stone Age period when anatomically modern/behaviorally modern humans first emerged (Upper Paleolithic in Europe) helps us understand postmodern humans today. Events happened and adaptations occurred then that we recognize as hallmarks of our species today.

Foster contends that “in our instinctive [chronological] racism, we tend to think of the hunter-gatherers as simple people. Not a bit of it. Hunter-gatherer life demands a far wider range of skills than ours … easy to be a specialist, but being a generalist is hard and interesting.” He would agree with Yuval Harari that the Upper Paleolithic Stone Age lifestyle was quite superior to the agrarian slavery coming with the Neolithic Age farming revolution, beginning ca. 12,000 BCE (4.1.1.).

I agree with Foster that those anatomically modern humans gathering and hunting during the Upper Paleolithic lived better than most of us today, enclosed by and cramped in with nearly 8 billion humans! All of my emphases on hiking and walking in my nearly 200 columns aim to knock the reader off of her or his duff and begin traipsing into these lovely Santa Barbara hills, backcountry trails and even along rustic park paths in Solvang.

If I don’t manage to do at least a couple of Rattlesnake Canyon hikes every week, and one much longer trek, I believe that my aging brain will shrink faster, my knees and hips will give out sooner, and the ensuing ennui and lethargy then will resemble a living form of American death-by-urbanization.

Foster summarizes what most anthropologists know about the flourishing human bands in Europe 40,000 to 70,000 years ago, and the necessary conditions for them to adapt into literally “being human” like us today (what’s needed to actually be human).

» To be human — relate; and not just to living humans but to the dead ancestors and to non-human life forms

» To be human — endure; believe you will endure and survive, and usually this involves a sense of the after life

» To be human — wander; continuous roaming through changing landscapes stimulates brain development and brings astounding vigor

While homo sapiens had remained relatively the same for 150,000 years, around 50,000 BCE, during what has been called the Upper Paleolithic [creative] Explosion, suddenly the species changed diet, developed better tools, improved oral language through musical Hmmmm speech, danced, made rock art, and increased numbers with their focus on the individual “self” and family and the small nomadic social group (30 to 150 humans).

One angle we realize, by the book’s end, is that a reader agrees with Foster that there is NO actual “autobiography” possible anymore in this Anthropocene Era since what matters is how our entire species behaves and controls itself (no “Autobiography in the Anthropocene”!). In a nihilistic age, fervent individual choices boil down to things such as toenail polish color, gun rights, and petulant refusals to vaccinate or see anything worthwhile “on the other side.”

A healthier global approach comes when we ask: How we can act in unison to heal the planet and save our children?

The incredibly deep interconnections between homo sapiens form the threat and the cure at the same moment. The advanced science, the incredible inventions and amazing artistic creations come from the same minds determined to extract every resource from the Mother’s ailing planetary body. Foster wonders if we’ve repressed those natural human fears about death, illness and aging to the extent that we simply defy organic reality. He quotes one of my favorites, Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, that “the main thing is not to be afraid.” All of our science, our false Internet friends, our layers of comfort cannot dissolve these spiritual questions and fears.

There are many strange humans roaming backcountries and hinterlands all over the planet — men lounging at skateboard parks daring each other into more challenging flips, teenagers playing ferocious tennis doubles while screaming with laughter and young children playing at the playground. Plus, a woman emails me about the mule trips she leads with six to eight other riders. They go crazy places, and “Pat,” whom I’ve never met. forges on into even wilder zones. Maybe the adversaries in postmodern living are houses, debilitating routines and a lack of joy.

So I could even feel “being human” while walking purposefully along the dusty 1.3-mile trail looping through Hans Christian Andersen Park on the edge of touristy Solvang. There are hidden pockets of green adventure all around us. We simply need to wander about and put off that to-do list until tomorrow while seizing the moment today.

4.1.1.

» Charles Foster, “Being Human: Adventures in Forty Thousand Years of Consciousness” (New York, 2021); Dan McCaslin, “Eternal Backcountry Return” (2018), “Autobiography in the Anthropocene” (2019) and “Trails Into Tomorrow (2021). Yuval Harari, “Sapiens: A brief History of Humankind” (2014). On Breslov’s 18th century Rebbe Nachman (a grandson of the Baal Shem Tov); click here.

— Dan McCaslin is the author of Stone Anchors in Antiquity and has written extensively about the local backcountry. His latest book, Autobiography in the Anthropocene, is available at Lulu.com. He serves as an archaeological site steward for the U.S. Forest Service in Los Padres National Forest. He welcomes reader ideas for future Noozhawk columns, and can be reached at [email protected]. Click here to read previous columns. The opinions expressed are his own.