I missed National Trails Day (June 6) but am not too late for Great Outdoors Month (all of June). The idea behind  these celebrations is to get people outside. No problem for a walker in the suburbs. I’m outside as often as possible.

But Great Outdoors Month is a good time to ponder the great divide between outside and in, between natural light and its artificial cousin, between the elements and our shelter from them.

Thinking back to Benin,  open doors, the colorful cloths hung where screens would be. There the line between outside and in is far more blurred than it is here. There people sleep on their little verandas in the hot season. They cook outside, eat outside and often wash their clothes outside, too. They do not need a Great Outdoors Month. 

Not to romanticize this, though. The Beninese are in a constant battle to keep their houses clean and dust-free, not an easy proposition with unpaved roads and meager sidewalks. They live with a degree of discomfort most of us cannot imagine.

Still, in so many ways, including this one, they remind me of simple truths we seem to have forgotten. One of them is this: That before we became creatures of climate-controlled comfort, we lived in tune with the wind and the rain and the sun. We belonged to our world in a way we don’t anymore. And it’s good to remember that.