Sometimes it seems as though it’s simply a nostalgic illusion – so empty are our streets of the bicycles that once occupied them, our fields of baseball games, our snowy slopes of sleds. If so, it’s a collective figment of the imagination. We all remember rushing outside in the morning, coming in only when called for lunch, dinner, and bedtime. Technology has taken a chunk out of that way of life, and caution. Parents are less apt to let their children wander in the woods on their own or toboggan down Hammond Hill. Though their wariness is warranted, the decreasing time children spend outside raises other concerns.
In Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv, whose research informed the No Child Left Inside Act, coined the phrase “nature deprivation” to describe “the human costs of alienation from nature”. These include physical effects, like increased obesity and vitamin D deficiencies, academic consequences such as attention difficulties and diminished use of the senses and the imagination, and emotional repercussions seen in the rising rate of myopia, depression, and fear. Many young people understand more about global warming and its negative effects on the planet, Louv writes, than of their own back yards. Author David Sobel was one of the first to recognize a phenomenon he describes as “ecophobia: a debilitating fear for the future of the planet… Children learn about rainforests,” he writes, “but usually not about…the meadow outside the classroom door.” Emphasizing “gloom and doom” too early in life, he claims, “ends up distancing children from, rather than connecting them with, the natural world.” As naturalist Robert Michael Pyle writes, “What is the extinction of a condor to a child who has never seen a wren?”
Parents and grandparents can do a lot to curtail this malady of childhood if we simply model the fondness for nature with which we were raised. Granted, adult supervision during outdoor adventures does not further the independence honed while building a raft to embark on the Little River. We can, however, inspire a respect for the environment, foster curiosity, and a consequent thirst for learning. The good news is: children are drawn to the out-of-doors. We witness this whenever snow flies or leaves pile. It’s up to us to kindle a spark that’s already there.
Spring is the quintessential season to appreciate nature simply by observing it, strengthening the ability to focus and the five senses. Our favorite ritual is searching for signs of spring – sturdy stubs of daffodils pushing through the earth, ruffles of leaves beneath fall’s debris, buds on branches — and the nightly ritual of listening for the peep frogs’ chorus. Take a “listening walk” to appreciate the music of returning song birds and the rush of water as the earth thaws and the streams swell. Collect water samples from a vernal pool to examine under a microscope. Learn of constellations and their mythology and locate them with a telescope on clear nights.
Provide opportunities for inspection and deductive reasoning. Freshly fallen snow allows children to play detective while discovering wildlife tracks and using the clues they left to identify them. Take a “wildflower hike” in the summer; examine different flowers to determine their methods of attracting pollinators and dissect them to locate their reproductive parts. In the fall, collect and classify leaves; maples and oaks are particularly useful for this with the recognizable characteristics of their several varieties. Encourage collections — of pinecones, rocks, seashells, seeds. Categorizing is a crucial skill, and children learn the vocabulary of attributes while inspecting objects for color, size, shape, transparency, luster, flexibility, weight.
Problem solving skills are developed whenever children build things, and though a tree house might be too ambitious, bird houses aren’t difficult. Bird feeders are also simple, and few tasks are as satisfying to children as permission to make a suet and sunflower seed mess and to reap the rewards of their efforts watching birds appreciate them. In spring, make pinwheels for a windy day and boats with paper sails and sponges to float on puddles after the rain. Construct a fairy house from a hollowed log to attract the wee folk and furnish it with natural materials.
Nature inspires creativity. The botanical illustrations our daughter drew daily as a child necessitated the painstaking attention to detail that influences her art today. Frame worthy masterpieces include: paintings with brushes constructed of sticks and pine needles; collages using twigs, leaves and petals to replicate trees; prints of an assortment of ferns. In autumn, collect colorful leaves for ironing within wax paper to decorate windows. In summer, collect seashells to construct wind chimes, feathers to make dream catchers. In winter, gather princess pine and moss for a winter garden, pinecones to create a wreath, winter berries to freeze in an ice ring.
Incorporate reading into your adventures — there’s a picture book for every conceivable activity. For older children there are survival stories like The Island of the Blue Dolphins, and those that celebrate nature such as The Secret Garden. How fortunate, as well, that we live near Goodwin Forest where we can read Frost’s “two roads diverged in the yellow wood” as we walk them, or stop by “on a snowy evening”. Read Teale’s daily passage from his Walk through the Year whenever you visit Trail Wood, and encourage children to keep their own nature journal. Hike with a pencil and paper; you never know what will motivate you to stop and pen something.
In one study, high school students who wrote essays on nature prior to a period of exposure recorded only fear; afterwards, only awe. The ordinary is a source of so much wonder. Take a “green walk” in winter to discover the surprising variety of plants that remain verdant. In summer, toss a ring on the lawn and collect the surprising assortment of “grass” within it. Plant seeds in the spring, especially vegetables which are so rewarding when they develop into edible food. Find a chrysalis in the fall – a child will never forget the experience of watching a butterfly emerge from it.
What’s most important is to provide plenty of time for out-door play. Research shows that while the over-regulation of children’s lives significantly reduces self-regulation, the unstructured, imaginative play that nature facilitates strengthens this executive function. And we have all the ingredients: dirt, puddles, sand, snow, rocks, forest, field. Notwithstanding unnatural forces, children naturally gravitate to the “nearby nature” that is everywhere, and their curiosity, and reverence, is innate.
As for the criticism concerning the entitlement of youth, “there is something about nature, that when you are in it, it makes you realize that there are far larger things at work than yourself.”
– Last Child in the Woods