People in Nature

The Monster of Mystery Valley

Richard Louv — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:50:57 +0000

One day, my older son, Jason, announced that there was one more thing he wanted to do before school started. This was a long time ago. As we left the dock, we felt the cool air coming up from the water. Fishing air feels and smells like no other air. It cools your face and gets in under your shirt, and everything is left behind—all work, all worries, all the static of the city.

“Remember last time?” asked Jason, as he let his line out behind the boat. I did. Here, we had seen the strangest sight: at the very end of the lake, violet hills and green pastures and scattered cattle and a little river running through the willows, a valley that seemed to recede from view as we approached. “The closer we get, the farther away it seems,” I had said to him. His eyes had grown wide. The light had turned red and begun to fade. We had turned back.

“This time, I’d like to go find the mystery valley,” said Jason.

So, just after dawn, we headed straight for the endless arm and the valley at the end. It took a long time to get there. As we approached, Jason said with awe, “It’s like Africa.”

The foothills looked like pink sheets plucked up by invisible fingers, and a stream ran between them and out of another century, meandering slow as Sunday morning through willows and cottonwoods, oozing eventually through a marsh and into the lake. “Look!” said Jason. Ahead, we saw the fields of mustard grass and cattle and two white egrets standing tall, lifting their feet in slow motion, watching the surface of the water. We moved through the shallows and into the stream. Running the outboard slowly, I slid the boat between drowning bushes. Minnows shot ahead and to each side. The air closed in.

Jason’s job was to watch for stumps and hidden obstructions below the surface. He knelt on the front seat and leaned over.

“Dad, a log…Dad, an…alligator!”

He straightened up, eyes wide. “I thought it was a log, but then the log moved forward real quick and ate a minnow.” He said the thing was as long as the boat, or almost as long.

Probably a big catfish or carp, I told him. “Water magnifies. But then again it could be…”

Pause. “…the monster of mystery valley.”

Jason rolled his eyes. Nine-year-olds do a lot of eye-rolling. But I could tell part of him believed in the possibility, and that he was pleased.

Irecalled a similar morning on the Lake of the Ozarks. It is one of my earliest memories. I had looked up at the sky as my father and mother had loaded rods and tackle boxes into the boat, and had seen a sun so swollen that it had seemed to fill half the sky. An optical illusion, I’m sure, but to this day, part of my mind still believes that on certain magical days the sun approaches us like an eye at the other end of a microscope.

Jason and I moved forward, got stuck a couple times, poled out with an oar. And far up the stream, where the air grew silent, we banked the boat and got out. I wanted to see what was in the line of trees; perhaps it was a deeper channel. So we headed across a mushy field of high weeds, through drifting clouds of green, newly hatched flies. Our feet sank down now, six inches below the surface, then more…

At the edge of the trees was a shallow pool of muddy water where something moved beneath the surface. As we approached, a phalanx of panicked life charged away from us, churning the water. We waded on, beneath the trees, where the light was coming down in a kind of sunfall through the branches, and then we stood, awestruck in the silence.

As far as we could see was what appeared to be a field of glowing, green snow. We reached down, both of us, and scooped up fistfuls of duckweed, each plant with the delicacy of miniature clover. Both of us, I think, stopped breathing for a moment, and we stood there for a long time looking out across that scene, and finally we let out our breath.

After a while we headed back to the brown pool, and knelt in the water. “Feel around,” I said, moving my hands in the muck below the surface.

“Dad, yuck.”

“Really, do it.” I felt something moving and came up with it in my hand: a squirming, fat bullfrog tadpole.

Jason, excited and proud, caught one, too.

We made our way back to the boat, and Jason climbed in. I took my rod from the boat, and waded along the stream, pulling the boat behind me. I saw a flash of color and a good-sized bass hit my fly just below the surface. And, of course, I hooted and hollered and fell sideways into the stream. Jason pointed. He could see an even bigger fish following the one on my line. A few minutes later, I held the bass in the water and stroked its belly and we watched it slowly swim away.

I made a wish: that when Jason reached my age, he would still believe in the monster of mystery valley, and that he would know that, sometimes, the closer you are to a place, the farther away it can become.

We turned the boat and moved back down the stream. Jason again scouted the shadows in the water, watching for danger until he could no longer see the bottom, and the valley disappeared around a bend.

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Richard Louv is chairman of the Children and Nature Network. He is the author of “Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder,” “The Web of Life,” and other books.

Illustration by Dave Mollering

America's Best Cities for Nature-Deficit Disorder

Richard Louv — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 22:06:30 +0000

In August, CBS’ “The Early Show” recognized the danger of what we’re now informally calling “nature-deficit disorder.” The show featured the 25 best cities in America for raising kids so they live healthy young lives that are connected to – not cut off – from the natural world. As coiner of the “nature deficit disorder” phrase (an informal, not medical term), I couldn’t have been more pleased. But more important, the media recognition underscores how critically important it is to help kids connect to nature, designing our communities to make it more possible.

The top three cities were announced by Backpacker magazine editor-in-chief Jonathan Don. Selected by his editors, they were Boulder, Colo., Jackson, Wyo., and Durango, Colo. Boulder was the magazine’s first choice, Dorn said, because it not only offers easy access to wilderness, but also to hundreds of miles of networked bike and running trails. After snowstorms, the city plows its bike paths before plowing the roads. It should be noted that most of the top cities on this list are destination locations–small, scenic, and relatively wealthy.

What about the rest of us, who aren’t able or willing to relocate?

Through urban design and family decisions, it’s time to make sure every child in America has access to “nearby nature” – by that I mean urban or state parks, regional nature preserves, clean urban streams, or the little woods just beyond the cul de sac.

One way to achieve that objective is to recognize the value of nearby nature. As Outside magazine puts it, “near is the new far.”

In March Illinois’ new governor, Pat Quinn–referencing nature-deficit disorder and the importance of nearby nature to families during a recession–reopened seven state parks closed by his predecessor. He cited the economic importance of urban parks.

It’s also time to start creating more nature, nearby.

Dream on, some pessimists will say. According to their vision of the future, rising energy prices will stimulate green flight, to more energy-efficient, self-contained exurbs. Paradoxically, green flight could drive us deeper into our electronic cocoons–or, at best, our back yards.

Last year, during the height of the oil crisis, Newsweek projected that “life at $200 a barrel” could radically reduce our activities in natural surroundings. Michael Lynch, of Strategic Energy & Economic Research, estimated the effects of rising fuel costs on our lifestyles would produce a 53 percent increase in gasoline prices, boost sales of yard toys by 18 percent and backyard pool supplies by 15 percent. A spike in gas prices, he added, could also enhance another close-to-home form of entertainment–leading to a rise of 1.2 percent in pregnancies. Newsweek opined: “If he’s right, stock up on videogames.”

That’s it? That’s the best we can do? The missing motivation here is health, which, over the long haul, will trump the pump.

Growth of the original suburbs offered the illusion of healthy country living; it was stimulated by green flight as well as white flight. Even before that, late 19th and early 20th century planners believed that cities could and should be places rich with nature. That philosophy inspired the urban parks movement. The industrialists who pushed for the creation of New York’s Central Park weren’t concerned with gas prices. Their priority was worker productivity, linked to the health benefits of nearby nature.

Unfortunately, planners and consumers lost touch with that philosophy. Now we have denatured urban and suburban neighborhoods.

In Last Child in the Woods, I described the growing body of scientific evidence indicating that the rise in attention-deficit (hyperactivity) disorder and an assortment of other childhood maladies might have something to do with children’s nature deficiency.

Recent studies have also suggested a connection between the decline in outdoor activities and the dramatic rise in childhood Vitamin D deficiency and myopia. In October 2008, Science Daily reported “the first study to look at the effect of neighborhood greenness on inner city children’s weight over time.” Researchers from the Indiana University School of Medicine, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis and the University of Washington reported an association between higher neighborhood greenness and slower increases in children’s body mass over a two-year period, regardless of residential density. In other words, urban design can provide a greener, healthier environment, even in the densest of neighborhoods.

So it’s time to create nature and health where we and our families live, work and play. We can do it by expanding urban parks, by creating new woodlands and other natural spaces out of land reclaimed from industrial pollution and decaying shopping centers. New and redeveloped neighborhoods should incorporate natural play spaces, green roofs, community gardens, vertical farms, food-producing office buildings, and recycled rainwater streams. When it comes to the health-giving properties of the natural world, near is the new far.

Note: Parents who wish to find nearby nature can go to NatureRocks.org for an online ZIP code-oriented directory to nature near to home, and a planning guide to create family nature “staycations.”

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Richard Louv is chairman of the Children and Nature Network. He is the author of “Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder”, and a member of the Citistates Group.

Part of this column is adapted from a previous blog entry. The column was released September 4, 2009  by Citiwire.net. Citiwire.net columns are not copyrighted and may be reproduced in print or electronically; please show authorship, credit Citiwire.net and send an electronic copy of usage to webmaster@citiwire.net.

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Fighting Nature-Deficit Disorder in the Backyard

Richard Louv — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 19:45:56 +0000

I was intrigued when I first heard about my local natural history museum’s intention to hand out packets of seeds to schoolchildren so that they might plant their own backyards with the vegetation that attracts butterflies – thus helping bring back butterfly migration routes. There was something almost enchanted about this plan – the idea of entering intimate participation in the life currents of the world, through the modest doorway of a suburban backyard or window box in an inner city. These currents swirl around and over and through our lives. And yet, most of us are far more aware of the signals of our mobile phone and computer networks.

What if we were equally aware of the timing and routes of, say, monarch butterflies, those that breed in North America and each year migrate over a thousand miles to spend the winter in a small patch of pine forest in Mexico? Or the Neotropical birds – the wood thrushes, cerulean warblers, scarlet tanagers, indigo buntings, and Baltimore orioles on the wing from Kentucky to the Andes. What if we were to take part in these migrations by nurturing a planting a few feet from the barbeque grill? That grill, that yard, would then be connected to something large, magnificent, and not entirely explicable.

Habitat fragmentation and degradation are disrupting those routes at unprecedented rates, but Doug Tallamy believes that we can do something about that, and we can at least help salvage – or build – the biodiversity of our continent, from our back yards. Tallamy is professor and chair of the Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware.

I highly recommend Doug Tallamy’s book, “Bringing Nature Home: How Native Plants Sustain Wildlife in Our Gardens.”

A modest, self-effacing man, he offers this radical idea: the site of North America’s resurgent biodiversity is in your back yard, and your family has power: “My central message is that unless we restore native plants to our suburban ecosystems, the future of biodiversity in the United States is dim.” He tempers this gloomy prediction with two points of optimism: “First and foremost, it is not yet too late to save most of the plants and animals that sustain the ecosystems on which we ourselves depend. Second, restoring native plants to most human-dominated landscapes is relatively easy to do.”

For the first time in history, he argues, “Gardening has taken on a role that transcends the needs of the gardener. Like it or not, gardeners have become important layers in the management of our nation’s wildlife. It is now in the power of individual gardeners to do something that we all dream of doing: to ‘make a difference.’ In this case, the ‘difference’ will be to the future of biodiversity, to the native plants and animals of North America and the ecosystems that sustain them.” Analyzing data from all over the world, one researcher found a one-to-one relationship between species loss and loss of native habitat. One example: In Delaware, 40 percent of all native plant species are threatened or extinct; 41 percent of native birds that depend on native forest cover are rare or gone. Save a native plant, save a native bird.

Usually, when gardeners recommend the use of native plant species, the goal seems to be to conserve water, to save native plants, or to replace the ordinary with the novel. Tallamy suggests a new motivation: to save insects – and the wildlife that depend upon these insects as a food source.

He argues that this is crucial, “since the terrestrial ecosystems on which we humans all depend for our own continued existence would cease to function without our six-legged friends.” (E.O. Wilson calls insects “the little things that run the world.”) “Unless we modify the places where we live, work, and play to meet not only our own needs but the needs of other species as well, nearly all species of wildlife native to the United States will disappear forever,” says Tallamy.

Such predictions of mass extinction, he adds, are typically based on the assumption that the vast majority of plants and animals cannot coexist with humans in the same place at the same time. “Nonsense!” he says. “Evidence suggests that the opposite is true: most species could live quite nicely with humans if their most basic ecological needs were met. Yes, some species such as the cougar, gray wolf, and ivory-billed woodpecker are just too reclusive to become our fellows. But countless others could live sustainably with us if we would just design our living spaces to accommodate them.” Tallamy and his colleagues have begun the large, controlled and overdue research projects that are needed to nail down his case and lead to broad-scale action. But the preliminary data is beginning to accumulate: “So far, the results provide exciting support for gardeners who have already switched to natives or who are enthusiastic about doing so.”

If Tallamy’s hypothesis turns out to be right, “these gardeners can and will ‘change the world’ by changing what food is available for their local wildlife,” he says. In a future blog entry, I’ll present some of Tallamy’s specific suggestions, ones that families can apply to their own yards.

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Richard Louv is chairman of the Children and Nature Network. He is the author of “Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder.”

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What are you doing this summer?

Richard Louv — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 05:26:26 +0000

Got dirt? “In South Carolina, a truckload of dirt is the same price as a video game!” reports Norman McGee, a father in that state who bought a small pickup-load of dirt for his daughter and friends.

McGee, who took the wonderful photo above, is turning consciousness into action. So is Liz Baird, who keeps a “wonder bowl” available for her children.

When Baird was a little girl she would fill her pockets with natural wonders—acorns, rocks, mushrooms. “My Mom got tired of washing clothes and ﬁnding these treasures in the bottom of the washer or disintegrated through the dryer,” Liz recalls. “So she came up with ‘Liz’s Wonder Bowl,’ and the idea was that I could empty my pockets into the bowl. I could still enjoy my treasures, and try to ﬁnd out what things were, and not cause trouble with the laundry.”

McGee and Baird are among the thousands of parents who have joined – and are leading – the international children and nature movement.

Sometimes known as Leave No Child Inside, the effort is bringing together people from all walks of life, who are creating grassroots regional campaigns, state and national legislation, and changes in their own families to help children become “happier, healthier and smarter,” as Children & Nature Network president Cheryl Charles puts it.

So what’s your family doing this summer? Here are some suggestions:

Visit Nature Rocks. This web site, created in alliance with the Children & Nature Network, ecoAmerica, the Nature Conservancy, REI, the American Camp Association, and other groups, offers a “family fun nature planner” designed to help you find all sorts of nature activities, plus tools to help guide and plan your adventures, including a Family Nature Staycation guide.

Also, a “Find Nature” feature — plug in your ZIP code and find out about nature activities near your home. (Incidentally, some folks tell us they like to visit the Nature Rocks site just to listen to the ambient nature — and children — sounds in the background.)

Find a good guide. Take a look at the growing number of good books and online guides for parents. Among them: the free onlineParents’ Guide to Nature Play offered by the Green Hearts Institute; “I Love Dirt,”; Joseph Cornell’s classic “Sharing Nature With Children”; and “Coyote’s Guide to Connecting with Nature.”

Use the “Last Child in the Woods Field Guide? Offered at the back of the expanded and updated 2008 edition of “Last Child in the Woods,” the Field Guide offers 100 Actions that families and communities can take, along with discussion questions, a report on the movement, and other resources for parents, educators, conservationists, business people and community leaders.

Here are some sample activities from the Field Guide. But wait, there’s more:

Start a Family Nature Club. Download C&NN’s guide to creating a network of like-minded families who want to get their kids outside, but need the support of others to help make that happen. It’s a new form of social networking! New: The Family Nature Guide is now also available in Spanish.

Become a Natural Leader. Being a nature mentor isn’t just a job for parents and grandparents. Young people helping other young people get outside is catching on.

For example, in Mississippi, teenager Josh Morrison founded Geeks in the Woods (www.geeksinthewoods.org) for his friends and fellow geeks everywhere. He defines “geek” as a “gaming environmentally educated kid,” and says he and his friends — “tired of being labeled” tech addicts — can have their PlayStations and their outdoor time too: “We could be the generation that makes a U-turn back to . . . a balance between virtual reality and what sustains all life . . . nature.”

Meanwhile, a seven-year-old girl in Virginia rounded up her friends and enrolled them in her own nature club. Together they organize backyard campouts and bug hunts. They call their club (you guessed it): Girls Gone Wild in Nature.

Relieve your own stress. Remember: If you’re a parent, a grandparent or a young person who missed out on nature as a child, this summer could be your chance. Indeed, all the gifts of nature that come to children also come to the good adult or teen-ager who introduces a child to nature.

By the way, here’s what I’m doing this summer: Working on a book, speaking….and next month, my older son, Jason, and I are headed north to Alaska. My younger son Matthew left a couple weeks ago to become a summer fly-fishing guide on Kodiak Island. Guess who’s going to be our guide.

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Richard Louv is chairman of the Children and Nature Network. He is the author of “Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder.”

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The Right to a Walk in the Woods?

Richard Louv — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 21:44:19 +0000

From a new article in Orion magazine, "A Walk in the Woods: Right or Privilege?"

A FEW YEARS AGO, I visited Southwood Elementary, the grade school I attended when I was a boy growing up in Raytown, Missouri. I asked a classroom of children about their relationship with nature. Many of them offered the now-typical response: they preferred playing video games; they favored indoor activities-and when they were outside, they played soccer or some other adult-organized sport. But one fifth-grader, described by her teacher as "our little poet," wearing a plain print dress and an intensely serious expression, said, "When I'm in the woods, I feel like I'm in my mother's shoes." To her, nature represented beauty, refuge, and something else.

"It's so peaceful out there and the air smells so good. For me, it's completely different there," she said. "It's your own time. Sometimes I go there when I'm mad-and then, just with the peacefulness, I'm better. I can come back home happy, and my mom doesn't even know why." She paused. "I had a place. There was a big waterfall and a creek on one side of it. I'd dug a big hole there, and sometimes I'd take a tent back there, or a blanket, and just lay down in the hole, and look up at the trees and sky. Sometimes I'd fall asleep back in there. I just felt free; it was like my place, and I could do what I wanted, with nobody to stop me. I used to go down there almost every day." The young poet's face flushed. Her voice thickened. "And then they just cut the woods down. It was like they cut down part of me."

I was struck by her last comment: "It was like they cut down part of me." If E. O. Wilson's biophilia hypothesis is right-that human beings are hard-wired to get their hands wet and their feet muddy in the natural world-then the little poet's heartfelt statement was more than metaphor. When she referred to her woods as "part of me," she was describing something impossible to quantify: her primal biology, her sense of wonder, an essential part of her self.

Recently I began asking friends this question: Does a child have a right to a walk in the woods? Does an adult? To my surprise, several people responded with puzzled ambivalence....

To read the rest of this article, please visit: "A Walk in the Woods: Right or Privilege?" in Orion.

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Richard Louv is the author of "Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder" and chairman of the Children and Nature Network.

Nature's Economic Stimulus Package

Richard Louv — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 18:23:36 +0000

Is nature obsolete? This year, the publisher of the Oxford Junior Dictionary decided to replace dozens of nature-related words, such as “beaver” and “dandelion,” with “blog” and “MP3 player.” Children just aren’t going outside much anymore.

Reverse that trend, and we could see big dividends in our physical, emotional and even economic health – especially in tough economic times. For stressed-out families, spending more time in the natural world – a nature stimulus package – may be just what the doctor and the economist ordered. Here are a few of the benefits:

With gas prices again on the rise, families are rediscovering both the joy and the cost-effectiveness of getaways in nearby nature, including regional, state or national parks. As Outside magazine puts it, “near is the new far.” Unless we’re talking about a new bass boat or a high-tech tent, nature toys are free or cheap, and they encourage self-directed creativity. In 2008, the National Toy Hall of Fame in Rochester, N.Y., inducted the stick, which it called not only possibly the oldest toy, but “possibly the best.”

Green exercise is free. In the United Kingdom, and now in the United States, families are eschewing commercial indoor gyms. Groups of families form “green gyms” and meet once or twice a week to hike, garden or take some other type of exercise in the natural world.

Research suggests that green exercise may be better at improving a number of health indicators – including blood pressure and mental acuity – than the same amount of energy expended in an indoor gym.

By planting trees and preserving open space, we can improve energy efficiency, reduce the carbon footprint and protect property values. Studies by the Trust for Public Land show that adjacent parks and nature trails are consistently associated with higher home resale values. One recent study shows that, even in inner cities, the greener the neighborhood, the lower the rate of obesity. Playgrounds with more trees generally have lower crime rates. Back-yard or community gardens offer improved nutrition and, for the wider society, reduced long-distance shipping costs.

To shorten the recession, we’ll need to teach better and work smarter. Students learn better when schools promote place-based learning in the largest classroom of all: the natural world. In Scandinavian countries, where “all-weather” schools require students to spend time outside every day, kids get fewer colds and flu. And outdoor classrooms cost less than brick and mortar.

Nature also can help us build social capital. In hard times, we need cohesive neighborhoods and supportive kinship networks more than ever. The family that plays outside together stays together.

In the U.S., parents are forming family nature clubs; at almost no cost, these clubs are changing lives.

True, nature’s no panacea. Reducing our society’s nature-deficit disorder can’t pay the mortgage or immediately replace a lost job, but doing so could help reduce stress, and improve our health and our sanity.

So it’s time to reduce the nature deficit.

We’re seeing some progress. Last year’s most visible legislative success came in September, when the U.S. House of Representatives passed the No Child Left Inside Act, sponsored by the No Child Left Inside Coalition. If approved this year in the Senate, the bill may help the states support environmental education.

More important, a growing national network of thousands of individuals, families and organizations is building a movement to leave no child inside. Families are partnering with other families. In North America, more than 50 regional and statewide campaigns to get kids outside have emerged.

To create these campaigns, educators, health care professionals, conservationists, kids, college students, government officials and businesspeople are joining forces – sometimes out of economic self-interest. They’re also acting from their heart. Future generations should have the right to a walk in the woods, and so should we.

The investment in the children and nature movement won’t put our grandkids in debt. And, especially in a recession, the dividends will be priceless.

Download a free tool kit on how to create your own family nature club.

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A version of this commentary first appeared in The San Diego Union-Tribune on Feb. 24, 2009

Richard Louv is chairman of the Children and Nature Network. He is the author of “Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder.”

No More "Nature-Deficit Disorder"

Richard Louv — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 00:07:40 +0000

Some say the future isn’t what it used to be. Here’s a different view. The future is going to be better than it used to be -- at least when it comes to the human connection to nature.

In "Last Child in the Woods," I described what I called "nature-deficit disorder." I hesitated (briefly) to use the term; our culture is overwrought with medical jargon. But we needed a language to describe the change, and this phrase rang true to parents, educators, and others who had noticed the change. Nature-deficit disorder is not a formal diagnosis, but a way to describe the psychological, physical and cognitive costs of human alienation from nature, particularly for children in their vulnerable developing years.

In the four years since publication of "Last Child" (with an updated and expanded edition in 2008), the gap has grown wider.

Consider the 2008 Recreation Participation Report," released this month. The report is based on a survey of more than 60,000 Americans, covering 114 different outdoor activities; it represents a collaborative effort by The Outdoor Foundation, Sporting Goods Manufacturing Association, and other outdoor recreation groups. Among its findings: adult participation is up slightly -- very slightly. But the survey also found a decline of more than 11 percent of participation in outdoor activities among young people age 6 to 17, with the sharpest decline among youngsters ages 6 to 12. We already knew that kids were becoming more disconnected in nature in recent decade -- but that's an additional 11 percent decline in a single year.

Consider, too, the decision by the publisher of the Oxford Junior Dictionary to replace dozens of nature-related words like “beaver” and “dandelion” with “blog” and “MP3 player.” As noted wildlife artist and conservationist Robert Bateman observed, “If you can’t name things, how can you love them? And if you don’t love them, then you’re not going to care a hoot about protecting them or voting for issues that would protect them." In a few words, literally, this story illustrates the urgency to connect children directly to the natural world, and our ultimate goal – deep cultural change.

Still, there's reason for hope. Just look how far the children and nature movement -- or the No Child Left Inside movement, as it's sometimes called -- has come in such a short time. The real miracle is the rapidly growing network of thousands of individuals, families and organizations that have made this movement their own.

We have a long way to go, but the grassroots are growing; and so are the netroots.

We've seen evidence of this miracle in the growth of regional campaigns across the country, as reported and encouraged by the Children & Nature Network. Between 2006 and 2008, C&NN helped galvanize over 50 regional and statewide campaigns in North America. We've watched the environmental organizations take this issue to heart, with the Sierra Club, National Wildlife Federation, the Conservation Fund, National Audubon, Hooked on Nature, the Trust for Public Land and many other groups supporting more programs that connect kids to nature and promote changes in public policies.

Last year’s most visible legislative success came in September, when the U.S. House of Representatives passed the No Child Left Inside Act, sponsored by the No Child Left Inside Coalition. If approved this year in the Senate, the bill will -- hopefully, in some form -- help the states support environmental education.

In Canada, the Nature Child Reunion and the Robert Bateman Get to Know Program, are quickening their strides. And through the efforts of C&NN President Dr. Cheryl Charles, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, at its World Conservation Congress in Barcelona, officially designated connecting children with nature as an international priority.

These are just a few of our shared milestones.

Now comes 2009, and the beginning of a new era – with new opportunities to strengthen ties and build new relationships.

The Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (AFWA), for example, has presented recommendations to President-elect Obama. AFWA listed children and nature as No. 2 in their roster of five Priorities of a National Agenda for State Fish and Wildlife Agencies. Other conservation-related initiatives are in the works.

We’re pleased that the incoming Obama administration has indicated there will be expanded federal emphasis on early childhood education.

With that in mind, many of us believe that the child-nature connection and environmental literacy should be considered as fundamental elements of children’s cognitive development, as well as their psychological and physical health. Future education reform must widen the definition of the classroom. To help young people learn in nature, not just about nature, policy-makers must view parks, wildlands, farms and ranches as the new schoolyards. We’ll push for an expansion of the number of nature-oriented preschools, including experiential education and greened schoolyards in Head Start.

This month, in an article titled “Nature Makes a Comeback in Wisconsin Schools,” the Wisconsin State Journal reported: “To reconnect children to nature, school districts are expanding school forests around the state while also developing low-cost, small projects such as rain gardens that can be effective even in poor urban areas.”

Many of us would like to see more progress like that.

In 2009, education reform must also be about a reformation of values, not just the distribution of more information.

Consider the words of Oberlin professor David Orr, one of the world’s foremost proponents of environmental literacy and a leading voice on climate change. In his seminal essay, “What Is Education For,”he describes “the way our education has prepared us for how to think about the natural world.” Orr argues correctly that more education “is no guarantee of decency, prudence, or wisdom. More of the same kind of education will only compound our problems.” The worth of education “must now be measured against the standards of decency and human survival. The truth is that many things on which your future health and prosperity depend are in dire jeopardy: climate stability, the resilience and productivity of natural systems, the beauty of the natural world, and biological diversity.”

Orr has also taken note of nature-deficit disorder -- which belongs on this list, and is linked to each of these priorities. A growing movement will continue to make the case that a meaningful human relationship with nature, shaped in children’s formative years, is crucial to our society’s practice of stewardship, its sense of community, and the strength of family bonds. We also believe that natural play will increasingly be recognized as a key element in any successful effort to turn the tide on child obesity.

The emerging body of scientific knowledge supports these theses, but more research is needed. In November, the first National Children and Nature Research Summit, co-sponsored by Yale University, the University of Minnesota, and the Children & Nature Network, brought together 20 eminent scholars and practitioners from throughout the United States to address the importance of nature in children’s lives, to identify strengths and gaps in current knowledge, and to establish general principles and guidelines for inquiry.

In the meantime, C&NN continues to report the growing body of correlative research. Among the studies published in major journals in recent months: a new one from Andrea Faber Taylor and Francis Kuo showing that children with ADHD concentrate better after walking in a park; UK research finding that living near parks and woods boosts health, regardless of social class; and in October, researchers at Indiana University School of Medicine-Purdue University and the University of Washington reported that greener neighborhoods are associated with slower increases in children’s body mass, regardless of residential density. One reason that last point is important, as Kuo says, is that it dispels the mistaken assumption that more green equals more sprawl.

We need nearby nature everywhere, especially in the most urban neighborhoods.

That principle must be among the central precepts of any planning for the future of urban design, education, and health care – and should be at the forefront of any discussion of child obesity by agencies of the Obama Administration. As Howard Frumkin often says, “Yes, we need more research, but we know enough to act.”

This brings us to the need to examine how we act. In the current economic climate, we need a new model for change – and new tools to stimulate cultural transformation. That transformation is most likely to occur at the personal and neighborhood level, where we live, work and play -- through what might be called "social-nature networking."

Across the country, urban planners, neighborhood organizations and community action groups, along with such organizations as the Trust for Public Land, are beginning to join forces to protect the remaining islands of urban nature – and create new ones. One possibility: neighbors working with conservancy groups to establish what might be called “nearby-nature trusts.”

Using new and old tools of social networking, families can band together to experience outdoors adventures -- two, three, five families agreeing to meet, say, at a county park on Saturdays. Coming soon: an easily downloaded C&NN Family Nature Clubs Tool Kit designed to give families the tools and inspiration they need to take action in their own lives – without waiting for programs or funding. Also coming in 2009: campaigns to engage grandparents and young people themselves as leaders in the movement. These initiatives will be featured as part of the upcoming Children and Nature Awareness Month, in April.

Think how the lives of our children – our lives, too – would improve if such social-nature networking were to spread as quickly as book clubs and Neighborhood Watches did in recent decades or the use of social networking tools did during the 2008 presidential campaign.

In the coming years, young people will discover or create fulfilling careers in the fields and professions that connect people to nature; they will become biophilic architects and urban designers, nature therapists, natural play organizers and natural teachers -- and assume careers that have yet to be named.

Despite the current rash of bad news, we may be seeing the emergence of a new landscape: the fading of our society's nature-deficit disorder, and the rise of human restoration through nature. Farfetched? Maybe. But as the poet Emily Dickinson wrote: “Hope is the thing with feathers/That perches in the soul/And sings the tune without the words/And never stops – at all.”

The future: better than it used to be.

______________
Richard Louv is chairman of the Children and Nature Network. He is the author of “Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder.”

Natural Teachers are the Future

Richard Louv — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 19:22:19 +0000

Environmental educators and others have worked for decades to reintroduce children to nature. But in recent years, too many school districts have turned inward, building windowless schools, banishing live animals from classrooms, and even dropping recess and field trips. But we are beginning to see progress. There have been a number of recent successes in the United States and elsewhere that may point to a cultural shift, reflecting a rapidly expanding grassroots children and nature movement - which has changed the tone of the public conversation.

The nonprofit Children & Nature Network, for which I now serve as chairman, has tracked and encouraged more than fifty regional campaigns that are helping reintroduce children to nature. These campaigns, often focused on children’s health, will offer added power to a nascent, overdue movement for what might be called natural school reform.

Bucking the status quo, an increasing number of educators are committed to an approach that infuses education with direct experience, especially in nature - one that redefines the classroom.

On September 18, the U.S. House of Representatives took a step in that direction, by voting to approve the No Child Left Inside Act of 2008. Approved by a bi-partisan vote of 293 to 109, the bill would require K-12 school systems to build environmental literacy, strengthen teacher training and provide federal grants to help schools pay for outdoor education. In coming months and years (whether or not the Senate version of the bill is approved) educators will be encouraged to return nature to the classroom - but the key to success will be if sufficient support comes to educators who take students beyond the classroom, into the rich environments of nearby nature: parks, farms, the woods and creeks and canyons adjacent to schools.

This approach to education is not new, and the definitions and nomenclature of this educational movement are tricky. In recent decades, the approach has gone by many names: community-oriented schooling, bioregional education, experiential education and, most recently, place-based or environment-based education. The basic idea is to use the surrounding community, including nature, as the preferred classroom. When it comes to reading skills, “the Holy Grail of education reform,” says researcher and educator David Sobel, place-based or environment-based education should be considered “one of the knights in shining armor.” Students in these programs typically outperform their peers in traditional classrooms. Sponsored by many state departments of education, a 1998 study documented the enhanced school achievement of youth who experience school curricula in which the environment is the principal organizer.

More recently, factoring out other variables, studies of students in California and nationwide showed that schools that used outdoor classrooms and other forms of nature-based experiential education were associated with significant student gains in social studies, science, language arts, and math. One recent study found that students in outdoor science programs improved their science testing scores by 27 percent.

A nature-balanced life reduces many barriers to education, including stress and attention deficit. Researchers at the University of Illinois have shown that the greener a child’s everyday environment, the more manageable their symptoms of attention-deficit disorder. Teachers could also benefit from natural education reform. Canadian researchers found that teachers expressed renewed enthusiasm for teaching when they had time outdoors. In an era of increased teacher burnout, the impact of green schools and outdoor education on teachers should not be underestimated.

One exciting development is the increasing popularity of nature preschools, where children learn to track wildlife even as they learn to read.

Design approaches are central to the movement. “Natural spaces and materials stimulate children’s limitless imaginations and serve as the medium of inventiveness and creativity,” says Robin Moore, an international authority on natural school design, who heads the Natural Learning Initiative. New schools must be designed with nature in mind, and old schools can be refitted with playscapes that incorporate nature into the central design principle. Another approach is the use of nature preserves by environment-based schools, or the inclusion of established farms and ranches as part of these “new schoolyards.” Norway’s departments of Education and Agriculture support partnerships between educators and farmers to revamp school curriculum and to provide more direct outdoor experience and participation in practical tasks.

Ultimately, K-12 education cannot be transformed without reforming higher education - which sets many of the standards and expectations for primary and secondary education. In higher education, greater public knowledge about the generational nature gap should educate policy-makers to require universities to teach the fundamentals of natural history, which have been displaced in recent decades, especially at research universities, by a patent-or-perish emphasis on microbiology and genetic engineering. Higher education can also more consciously engage students as researchers on topics involving the relationship between children and nature, and the opportunities that will emerge as nature takes a more central role in people’s lives.

In coming decades, environmental challenges will require fundamental changes in our lives and institutions, including the reintroduction of nature to the classroom and the young to the natural world.

______________

This article was first published in Green Money Journal, reprinted here with permission.

Richard Louv is chairman of the Children & Nature Network and the author of seven books, including his most recent, “Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder”(Algonquin). He is the recipient of the 2008 Audubon Medal, and has served as an adviser to the Ford Foundation’s Leadership for a Changing World award program, is a member of the Citistates Group, appears often on national radio and television programs, and speaks frequently in the United States and overseas.

Useful links for this article include:
o The Children & Nature Network
o Related research and studies
o Toronto Star report on homework loads and play
o New York Times article: Why are Schools Designed Like Prisons?
o Finland education system
o Track No Child Left Inside Act
o Natural Learning Initiative

The Giftedness of Thomas Berry

Richard Louv — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 08:08:16 +0000

It takes a universe
to make a child both
in outer form and inner
spirit. It takes
a universe to educate
a child. A universe
to fulfill a child.
– Thomas Berry

Carolyn Toben steered through the mist and down a country road, across a partially washed-out wooden bridge and stopped next to an old building, tucked up in the trees, apparently abandoned. “That was once occupied by one of the finest minds and spirits of the 20th and 21st centuries,” Carolyn said.

The building, the Thomas Berry Hermitage, now lies in the path of a proposed loop-road around the city of Greensboro, North Carolina, where Thomas grew up and had a transcendent childhood experience that served as a touchstone for his future life and work. “It was an early afternoon in May when I first looked down over the scene and saw the meadow,” he wrote later. “A magic moment, this experience gave to my life something, I know not what, that seems to explain my life at a more profound level than almost any other experience I can remember….”

That moment never ended. For the better part of a century, Thomas Berry has argued, eloquently and elegantly, that our environmental problems are primarily issues of the spirit. A few years ago, Newsweek magazine called Berry the “most provocative figure among the new breed of eco-theologians,” and the United Nations has honored him as a leading voice for the earth. He founded the History of Religions Program at Fordham University, and the Riverdale Center of Religious Research. A Catholic priest of the Passionist order, he has always been a man of humble demeanor and intellectual steel.

He still lives in Greensboro, and to this day, people come from all over the world to visit with him, to nurture their own spirits. Theologians, environmentalists, teachers and philosophers make their pilgrimages here. And, now and then, a stray journalist comes to call.

When I first met Berry, in 2005, he was 91. Carolyn Toben, the founder of the non-profit Center for Education, Imagination and the Natural World, had invited him to an event focused on the connection between children and nature. Later, she took me to lunch with Berry. Minutes after we slid into his customary booth at the O. Henry Hotel restaurant, he began to talk about the future. He was clearly done with the 20th century, with its industrialized violence and ecological destruction. “Everything we discuss now should be about the 21st century,” he said softly.

His face – always beatific – lit up when he considered the possibilities ahead, and our evolving relationship with nature.

A few weeks earlier, Katrina had raked through New Orleans. I asked him if the hurricane and its humbling aftermath would have a more profound impact on the American psyche than the events of Sept. 11, 2001. “Possibly, very possibly,” he said. “Our species once had two sources of inspiration and meaning: religion and the universe, the natural world. But we have turned away from nature.”

Berry articulated a view seldom witnessed in popular media; that we must move beyond the war between those worlds. In one corner is science, steeped in the “Darwinian principle of natural selection, which involves no psychic or conscious purpose, but is instead a struggle for earthly survival.” This view of reality “represents the universe as a random sequence of physical and biological interactions with no inherent meaning.” In the other corner is dominant Western religious tradition, which, he said, has moved too far from an older creation mystique, and toward a redemption mystique, in which passage to the next world is paramount, and the natural world is of little concern. Most of the time, these two worlds – science and religion – communicate politely, but “the antagonisms are deeper than they appear.”

And yet, Berry wrote in “The Great Work,” we are entering an extraordinary time: “As we enter the 21st Century, we are experiencing a moment of grace. Such moments are privileged moments.” In Berry’s 21st century, we return to Earth.

Perhaps that vision will come to pass. You can see that possibility in a new movement of faith-oriented environmentalists, eager to move beyond the old divide between Bible-based interpretations of dominion and stewardship. (Of course we have dominion, they say; look what we’re doing to God’s creation. Why would we want to hurt God’s creation?) You can see it in the young people who now dedicate their lives to sustainable – no, make that generative – development. You can see it in the growing recognition that exposure to nature enhances health, improves cognitive functioning and nurtures the spirit – for adults and especially for children.

A few weeks ago, I visited Thomas once again, this time in his room at an assisted-living home. He was amused by that phrase, “assisted living.” He can no longer walk. He sat deep in his chair, wrapped in an Indian blanket, and once again his face filled with joy when he considered the possibilities of this new century. He was most curious about what others were doing, but I asked him about his own future and his relationship with nature. “Yes, I feel the urgency every day of spending time…. I go out into the natural world every day, no matter what the conditions are,” he said.

I asked him about the architecture and ritual of homes for the aging. “The whole routine of the year could be more localized, more naturalized in the architecture,” he said. “I suspect that will be done in future years. Particularly as we feel we can make our houses any way we want to, and begin to recognize that there are ways of doing things that require paying attention to a world that is beyond the human mind.”

Then he said, “In our later years, we feel a return. To be gifted with delight as a child, the giftedness should continue. The aging process is full of excitement that comes along with the pain of going through the changes. The giftedness continues.”

Now, I listened to soft rain tap the roof of Carolyn Toben’s car as we looked at the old house, grown weak in its joints and held in the trees. “Thomas’s last two books were written here. ‘The Great Work’ and ‘Evening Thoughts,’” she said. Carolyn and others are raising funds to move this building, one piece at a time, to the earth sanctuary where the Center is located. There it will become the official Thomas Berry Hermitage.

If they succeed, this old house will serve as a symbol of our return to Earth. It will welcome the young and the hopeful, its doorway open to the future.

______________

The Thomas Berry Hermitage: www.savethethomasberryhermitage.org

Richard Louv is the author of “Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder” and chairman of the Children and Nature Network. Thomas Berry serves on the Board of Advisors for the Children and Nature Network.

How Nature Can Transform Education

Richard Louv — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 05:15:54 +0000

Talk about great timing. On September 18, during the Children & Nature Network's 2008 National Grassroots Gathering in Nebraska, mobile phones in the room lit up with good news: The U.S. House of Representatives had just voted to approve the No Child Left Inside Act of 2008. This was an extraordinary moment – symbolizing just how far the children and nature movement has come in just a few short years.

Sponsored by John P. Sarbanes (D-MD), with sixty-four co-sponsors, HR 3036 was approved by a bi-partisan vote of 293 to 109, would require K-12 school systems to build environmental literacy, strengthen teacher training and provide federal grants to help schools pay for outdoor education. Representing the No Child Left Inside Coalition that supported the bill, Don Baugh said it was “designed to help states provide high-quality outdoor and environmental instruction.” The Sierra Club, one of the 745 supporting organizations, lauded the legislation: “Hands-on outdoor environmental education offers an opportunity to improve academic performance in our schools and provides a solution for reversing the trends of childhood obesity and ‘nature deficit disorder’ that are afflicting a generation.”

In coming months and years (whether or not the Senate version of the bill is approved) educators will be encouraged to return nature to the classroom – but also to take students beyond the classroom, into the rich environments of nearby nature: parks, farms, the woods and creeks and canyons adjacent to schools.

This would be a far cry from the current realities in most schools. In recent years, too many school districts have turned inward, building windowless schools, banishing live animals from classrooms, and even dropping recess and field trips.

As passage of the No Child Left Behind Act illustrates, new progress is taking place nationally, and also among state legislatures, schools and businesses, civic organizations and government agencies. In March 2007, the New Mexico state legislature approved the Outdoor Classrooms Initiative, an effort to increase outdoor education in the state. Then on April 21, John Muir’s birthday, Washington Governor Christine Gregoire signed into law the Leave No Child Inside initiative, legislation that allocates $1.5 million a year to outdoor programs working with underserved children. More legislation is on the way. Additionally, C&NN is tracking and encouraging more than fifty regional campaigns in the U.S. and Canada, which are bringing together educators, health care professionals, business people, conservationists and others.

These campaigns, often focused on children’s health and ability to learn, are offering added power to a nascent, overdue movement for what might be called natural school reform.

In recent decades, this educational approach has gone by many names: community-oriented schooling, bioregional education, experiential education and, most recently, place-based or environment-based education. The basic idea is to use the surrounding community, including nature, as the preferred classroom. For more than one reason, the time may have come for place-based education. When polled about the future of education, Americans seem to have lost faith in education reform; they express interest and hope only when education is placed in the context of family and community — and steeped in place.

When it comes to reading skills, “the Holy Grail of education reform,” says researcher and educator David Sobel, place-based education should be considered “one of the knights in shining armor.” (Sobel’s most recent book is “Childhood and Nature: Design Principles for Educators.”) Students in these programs typically outperform their peers in traditional classrooms. A 1998 study documented the enhanced school achievement of youth who experience school curricula in which the environment is the principal organizer. Two related studies followed, conducted by the U.S.’s State Education and Environment Roundtable, both of which produced results consistent with the original study. More recently, factoring out other variables, studies of students in California and nationwide showed that schools that used outdoor classrooms and other forms of nature-based experiential education were associated with significant student gains in social studies, science, language arts, and math. One study found that students in outdoor science programs improved their science testing scores by 27 percent.

Why do kids learn so much better when they have a chance to get outdoors? Nature experiences reduce many barriers to learning, including stress and attention deficit, while encouraging the full use of the senses.

Andrea Faber Taylor and Francis Kuo, researchers at the University of Illinois have shown that the greener a child’s everyday environment, the more manageable their symptoms of attention-deficit disorder, and in a report published in August, 2008, described how children concentrate better after a simple walk in the park. Many other studies suggest that children who spend more time in nature are healthier, happier and smarter. Teachers, too, can benefit from natural education reform. In Canada, researchers found that teachers expressed renewed enthusiasm for teaching when they had time outdoors. In an era of increased teacher burnout, the impact of green schools and outdoor education on teachers should not be underestimated. These are just a few of the gifts of nature that educators and parents are discovering – or rediscovering.

______________
Richard Louv is chairman of the Children and Nature Network. He is the author of “Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder.”

More resources:

• The Children & Nature Network Synthesis of Research and Studies

• House Approves No Child Left Inside Act

• No Child Left Inside Coalition

• “Last Child in the Woods,” Second Edition, with 100 actions for educators, parents and communities