Good Nonsense

A book on what it means to play in a world on fire—of how we move our bodies and brains through the thorny problems life can throw at us. Author Sarah Austin Casson brings us on her adventures around the world and in her backyard, from the high Himalayas of Nepal and the deep seas of Thailand to her backyard dirt trails in Los Angeles and many other places, to explore how we can all play with life's hard questions.

Plenty of us are anxious right now. In 2019, Casson found herself covered in stress eczema, working too many hours as a wilderness conservationist, and sinking under the weight of the world's hard questions. The hard questions asked, what should we do about our world's problems and what is my individual and collective role in these problems?

Casson looked around and realized that these questions haunt most of us—and that they always seem to pop up when you're trying to do something else. They showed up asking about deforestation while she enjoyed a to-go cup of coffee with a friend. Pestered her about lithium mining's ecological impacts as she opened her laptop to watch a romantic comedy. These challenging questions kept showing up to remind her of very reasonable things to panic about at inconvenient times. They wouldn't disappear no matter how hard she pushed them away.

Somehow, though, Casson found that these tough problems always seemed more manageable when she moved her body in nature. As she ran, hiked, and dived, she found she had the mental space to move beyond repetitious panic and start playing with these questions. The key to these thorny problems seemed to be not just in her mind, but in her body itself.

Casson realized that these questions don't go away but that we can handle them better. We can play with them. The best way to play with them is outdoors while sweating—physically and mentally.