At 82, Russ Backus has lived through prostate cancer, nine heart attacks and the insertion of 12 coronary stents.
So given his age and medical history, you might think he’d be living a life full of limitations.
Yeah, not so much.
Instead of hanging out in the living-room recliner with TV remote in hand, or even just taking a cardio-friendly walk on the YMCA track, he rises before sunup, drives a half hour or so east of Rapid City and fires up his chain saw to cut firewood for a rancher friend and his son.
Great heaps of firewood, stack by stack, buzzing cut by buzzing cut.
“They heat both of their houses with a big, outdoor wood-burning stove,” Russ said. “So they go through a lot of wood. And that means I’ve got to cut a lot of wood.”
Which he does, with pleasure, almost any day the weather allows it.
What in the world must his cardiologist think of all that?
“He told me never to stop doing what I’m doing,” Russ said. “And my wife understands that.”
That’s his wife, Betty, who has come to know Russ at a depth of discernment that only love and time can produce. They celebrated their 62nd anniversary in October. That’s plenty of time to understand how much her husband loves and needs his time outdoors.
And how good it is for him.
Treasuring what others might not know they’re missing
An Air Force veteran and former district manager for Job Services here in Rapid City, Russ also ran a taxidermy shop, worked as a trapper, helped the state Game, Fish & Parks Department with prairie dog control and big-game studies, was on the professional walleye-fishing circuit and for 27 years guided anglers on the Missouri River.
So, he knows his way around the outdoors. And in recent years he has focused his outdoor time on that beautiful little patch of prairie and woodland along Rapid Creek east of Rapid City, where he wears out a lot of chain saw chains cutting wood.
But he never wears himself out. He gets his exercise without taking it too far.
“I cut until I get tired, then I quit for the day,” he said.
Well, he quits cutting wood for the day. That doesn’t mean he goes home right away. He might take a slow drive around the property to check on the wildlife. He also likes to sit on the tailgate of his pickup, drink a cup of coffee or have a sandwich and consider the world around him.
It’s a beautiful world, thick with hardwood groves that provide plenty of fallen trees for wood cutting. And it’s along a winding stretch of the creek that attracts turkeys and deer and songbirds and raptors and all manner of other wildlife.
During the autumn morning when I joined him at the spot, he cut wood for half an hour or so, then took a break to sit on the tailgate and chat.
“This is what I love right here,” Russ said. “I can just sit here and relax and listen to the birds. And maybe see some turkeys or some deer come through. I think about people in New York City or Chicago, and most of them don’t have any idea what we have here and what they’re missing.”
A discussion on wild places and the human psyche
What people who aren’t connected to the outdoors are missing could be more than they know. And it could matter to their health, just as it matters to Russ’s.
A few days before I joined Russ along Rapid Creek I attended a presentation by Rapid City psychiatrist Steve Manlove at the Rapid City Public Library. It had this fitting title: “The Importance of Wild Places for the Human Psyche.”
It was an interactive presentation with questions and answers and the sharing by some of us in attendance of personal experiences outdoors. We had a conversation about wild places and what they mean to each of us. We spoke of the Walt Whitman poem “There was a Child Went Forth Every Day,” which in its early lines describes a child going into nature and absorbing what he sees and experiences.
“The early lilacs became part of the child,” Whitman wrote. “And the grass and the white and red morning glories, and the white and red clover, and the song of the phoebe-bird.”
And the things the child saw and experience became part of him. And they changed him.
At least, that’s what Whitman wrote, and what Steve Manlove believes, and what I believe, too.
We spoke during that session at the library of some of the outdoor places and things that first moved and changed us. And for me, it was the North Dam at our farm and catching my first bullhead there when I was four or five years old. And it was the big grayish-blue birds on stilts that I learned, from my dad, were called great blue herons. And the frogs and snakes and killdeer along the shore. And the haunting calls of mourning doves that would remind me, forever, of home.
Finding a sense of awe can takes focus from the self
All became part of me. All made me better. Less anxious. More hopeful. More alive. Healthier. And so too have the innumerable wild things and places I have seen and heard and smelled and touched in the many years since.
Wild places. Healing places.
“Most people go to wild places seeking something important that they don’t get in other places in their life,” Manlove said.
Among other things, he said, we get a sense of awe from wild places, which can help us focus on life beyond our own daily worries.
“People are healthiest when they can and do focus on something outside of themselves,” Manlove said.
Feeling awe can mean feeling better, and can open us up to an expanded view of our lives and our world. Research at the University of California at Irvine indicated that people who spent time looking up at towering trees were more likely to feel awe and, in turn, more likely to help strangers.
Awe is good, then. Really good.
“And for most people, the most common source of awe is in wild places,” Manlove said.
Studies show the healing power of nature. Manlove notes that post-surgical patients heal faster and require less pain medication when they can see and connect with nature, even if it’s just watching trees through the window of a hospital room.
Don’t underestimate the power of backyard birds
So it doesn’t have to be a two-week backpacking trip into a wilderness area or even a couple of hours cutting wood with a chain saw on a friend’s ranch. It can be finding a piece of nature, through a walk in a park or a picnic under a backyard tree, with birds singing overheard.
Studies have shown that listening to birdsong can reduce anxiety and depression and improve overall mental health, which helps improve physical health.
A 2016 story in Time magazine found that time in nature produced symptom relief for anxiety, depression and attention disorders.
But it also helped with cancer and cardiac rehab and recovery — which, of course, Russ Backus knows as well as anyone.
A New York native, Russ came to Ellsworth Air Base while serving in the Air Force and fell in love with the area. The Black Hills towns, sure, and the city of Rapid City, of course. And the people here. But especially the outdoors and that magnetic pull that takes him outside and into wild places.
But at his age he’s not irrational about it. He does regular reality checks about the extent of his outdoor recreation and exertion, and accepts some limitations. He finally sold his boat, for example. That has been a tough transition for a guy who taught boat safety for GF&P, fished the professional walleye circuit and won the national walleye championship with fellow Rapid City angler Jim Randash in 1987.
To say nothing of all the wonderful days he and Betty spent fishing together in the boat.
But the boat was just getting to be too much. So now he does his fishing from shore, and enjoys that.
Nothing, however, is quite as consistent or fulfilling these days as his wood chopping, which only gets suspended because of bad weather, including rain or snow or frigid winter winds.
“I can’t take the cold like I could 30 years ago,” Russ said.
He can take most everything else, though. And he doesn’t miss very many days of cutting wood and sitting on the tailgate of his pickup, absorbing the outdoor world around him.
“It all depends on the weather and time of year,” Russ said. “This time of year it’s probably 9 or 10 before I get out here. In the summer, I’m usually out here by daybreak.”
Out there among the trees along the creek at dawn, Russ Backus sees and hears the things that so many others miss. And like the child in the Walt Whitman poem, he lets them all become a part of him.
Which has to be good for his health.
