For the Love of Nature

Aren’t childhood memories the best?  Psychology tells us that the experiences that created my memories have a lot to do with who I am today; my values, my ethics…all that stuff.  Me, my earliest memories are going fishing with Dad and my brother on the East Fork of the Little Miami River in Warren County, Ohio.  We had to walk down railroad tracks to get to Dad’s favorite fishing spot.  Jim and I would play on the banks while Dad caught that night’s dinner.  Back in those days there was no bike trail running parallel to the river.  It was pretty remote as I remember it, and I remember that I loved it.

I had a lot of freedom as a child.  Our yard backed up to a creek and my neighbor friends and I spent hours in that creek, digging up worms, chasing crawdads, playing hide and seek, exploring.  Funny that I don’t remember any of our parents being concerned that we were down there unsupervised.  They’d call us home to dinner and we always made our way back safe and sound.  I must have been 5, 6 …7 years old.

In 1957 when we moved to Florida I was lucky to end up in a house that was out in the country.  We were surrounded by wide open spaces where again, unsupervised, I could wander as I chose; exploring, discovering, relishing the joys of being outdoors.  As I got old enough to drive my explorations grew broader.  Initially of course, it was in our region.  But the older I got the mightier the reach of my wheels.  I’ve driven all over the US and Canada, twice to Alaska, much of it alone.  I’ve explored the Colorado Rockies, the Grand Canyon, interior Maine, the Olympia Peninsula, the Everglades, hiking trails of Sedona, upper Michigan, the Badlands of South Dakota, etc, etc.  And what I’ve learned through the years is how much I love, respect and cherish Nature.  For me there is nothing as exhilarating as sitting on the rim of Red River Gorge in Kentucky and being dived bombed by a hawk, sailing on a 32’ sloop in the Philippine Sea with my hand in the water while a dolphin slides up under my palm or hiking in the woods of the Buckeye Trail. 

And so you wonder, Sue, what has provoked this reminiscing?  Got to tell you, it is a book that I’ve been reading for the past year.  It isn’t a particularly long book…it’s just taken me a year cause for my brain it has been a tough read.  Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder by Richard Louv is tough for me because it is recapping a lot of studies regarding how our society is becoming more and more disassociated from Nature.  As a result of this disassociation the children we are raising today are lacking the first-hand experience that you and I had growing up in calmer, more innocent times.  The point that Richard Louv is making in this award winning book is that Nature is an essential element for a child’s healthy physical and emotional development.  Geeze…was I ever lucky.  

Each chapter focuses on a different element of his premise and frankly it’s been so long since I read the first chapters that can’t really recount what they covered.  What I know though, is that I agree with him 100%.  I know kids, young kids, older kids, who simply do not get the freedom to explore Nature they way I did as a kid…for many, many reasons…and as a result, do not seem to value the out of doors as much as they could, maybe as much as they should.   And even if you set the experiential exposure aside, even what they get in the classroom is nil.  How many 9, 10, 11 year olds, or even 18, 19, 20 year olds have ever head of John Muir, Rachel Carson or Aldo Leopold for example?  And that is barely tapping the tip of the iceberg. 

There are so many points that he makes that connect to my experiences and my first hand knowledge.  Examples:

·        Author Louv writes about the loss of nature in the classroom.  He quotes a teacher who notes how industrialized classrooms are today…with billions being spent on computers and advanced technology while art, music and experiential learning is being dropped.  This observation supported a TED Talk speaker from a few years ago who was speaking on U.S. education and how it exists to groom workers for the contemporary workplace.  I never thought about it before, but he talked about why the American education system developed as it has.  The development of our formalized education system began in conjunction with the industrial revolution.  This is not a coincidence.  Industry and the migration from the farm to the cities required a base of workers who could function in an ever more sophisticated and technical workplace.  And if, heaven forbid, you happen to be an oddball whose passion is music, or art or anything other than math or science…you are likely, depending on your resources and school system, to be cast aside.

·        I see more and more examples of a society that just does not embrace or value the natural world.  This evening on our local news a story was told of a woman who called into the station complaining of the focus Cincinnati has had lately on Fiona.  For those outside the loop, Fiona is a baby hippopotamus who was born at the Cincinnati Zoo.  She is being hand raised separate from her mother.  The story lately is that they have been reunited and this week both Baby and Mom were reunited with Dad to bring the family full circle.  The story has been ongoing for several weeks and was even covered in the national news as one of those feel good, happy ending stories.  So anyway, this viewer calls in to the station complaining of all the coverage and said the videos and photos were disgusting and she was sick of seeing them!!  Really??!!

·        And I’m not sure, but sometimes it seems like we can’t win for losing.  Take for instance our local Cincinnati Nature Center.  Established just over 50 years ago CNC is an organization that owns several hundred acres outside the city where for an annual membership fee you can wander the woods and open fields to experience nature.  Forty years ago or so, when I first discovered CNC I fell in love with the place.  One thing I discovered about myself is how much I love the woods.  And CNC has lovely woods.  Back then you could wander the trails and never see another person.  If you wanted company you went to the Visitors Center to browse the library, attend a presentation, shop in the gift shop or peruse the visiting art show.  So for many years I maintained a membership and would drive out as often as I could just to hike in the woods.  Then times changed, I dropped my membership and CNC fell by the wayside for quite a long time.  About three years ago I regained interest, reestablished my membership and began visiting again.  My, how times have changed.  Now, you simply can’t get away from folks.  The membership has grown enormously, facilities have grown, programs have grown…all for the good for CNC of course…but not so good for those of us who were seeking the solitude and quiet of Nature.

·        Fear is another factor of why as a society and our children are moving ever away from Nature.  Not long ago I posted on Facebook how I had spent the day at CNC wandering the trails.  A ‘Friend’ responded saying how brave I was to wander the trails alone…she feared for my safety!   I didn’t pursue the conversation, but the first question that came to mind is “Why?”  I feel safer on those trails than I do on the interstate, or walking city sidewalks or…..  so many things.  Parents today have an overriding fear of letting their kids loose for ‘free play’…play this is NOT adult organized and supervised.  Yes, the media does cover really well the horror stories that occasionally take place, but if you do the research the incidence is statistically speaking, extraordinarily low.  And so our children move through childhood into adulthood with fear at some level of the very organism that sustains and supports us as a species.  This of course is acknowledging an aspect that is very rational and logical and does not even consider the beauty, awesomeness and power of our Natural world.  Don’t believe me?  Go to the Grand Canyon sometime and watch how many people get out of their cars for 10 minutes, look around, purchase a souvenir and then report back home that they saw the Grand Canyon!!!

·        And…if people don’t fear Nature, the other end of the spectrum is that of lacking any respect for what nature can do.  In the late ‘70s I was hiking a trail in Yosemite when my friend and I noticed that everyone coming down the trail was crying.  Yes, crying.  When finally a Park Ranger came down the trail we stopped him and asked what was going on.  We had seen Medic Helicopters flying in and there was all this crying, so something was going on somewhere.  Turns out that 4 young men (11-14 yrs old) had reached the trail head along one of Yosemite’s rivers that plunged several hundred feet into a waterfall.  Signs are posted every 10 feet NOT to step into the shallow water of the river.  But of course these kids, and their parents, ignored the signs.  Disrespecting Nature is not a smart thing to do.  The river bottom was bedrock, slick with moss, the river current was very fast.  Within seconds 3 of the four were knocked from their feet.  Two were saved, one was not.  He was swept over the falls to his death while several dozen people looked on, unable to divert the tragedy.  Children and adults with a working respect of Nature know better. 

I could go on for hours.  Unfortunately I have to stop because I still have 161 pages of Last Child in the Woods to read.  Stay tuned; I will no doubt have more to say on this excellent read.