Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder, Louv, Richard [best free novels txt] 📗

affluent society would kids be able to get construction materials free,” he said, shaking his head. But later, he sent me a list of what my young associates and I may well have learned while building that tree house:

• You learned the most common sizes of lumber, 4' × 8' sheets of plywood, and 2" × 4" studs; also, about the sizes of nails.

• You probably figured out that diagonal bracing stiffened the structure, whether the bracing was applied at a corner or to hold up the platform or floor of the tree house.

• You learned about hinges, if you used those to attach the trap door.

• You probably learned the difference between screws and nails.

• You learned about ladders, if that is how you got from one story to the next.

• You learned about pulleys.

• You learned that framing must strengthen openings such as windows or the trap doors.

• You probably learned to slope the roof in imitation of real homes, or because you were beginning to understand that a slope would shed rain.

• You probably learned to place the framing narrow side up; you were beginning to learn about “strength of materials,” a subject taught in engineering schools.

• You learned how to cut with a handsaw.

• You learned about measurement, and three-dimensional geometry.

• You learned how the size of your body relates to the world: your arms and legs to the diameter of the tree trunk; your height to the tree height; your legs to the spacing of the ladder rungs; your reach to the spacing of the tree branches; your girth to the size of the trap door; the height from which you could safely jump, etc.

“One more thing,” he added. “You probably learned from your failures more than from success. Perhaps a rope broke from too much weight; a board or 2 × 4 pulled off because you used nails that were too small. You also learned, by practicing, one of the essential principles of engineering: you can solve any large or complex problem by breaking it down into smaller, simpler problems. Perhaps you broke the tree-house-building problem down like this: which tree to choose; how to climb the tree; where on the tree to build the house; what materials were needed; where to get the materials; what tools are needed; where to get the tools; how much time is needed; how many people are needed to do the job; how to get the materials up the tree; how to cut the materials; how to build the floor; how to build the walls; how to build windows; how to build the roof.”

Conventional memory holds that, in past decades, tree-house building and other nature-based engineering escapades were conducted mainly by boys; those girls who did participate were considered tomboys—when you think about it, a strange, ambivalent term. But the fact is, we don’t know that girls were so demure. In the absence of good longitudinal studies of how kids have experienced nature, we can’t assume that girls—in some significant number—weren’t building tree houses or underground forts or conducting any number of similarly muddy experiments in physics. Janet Fout, for example, didn’t build tree houses, but she wove elaborate weed houses within the hollowed confines of brush and bushes.

When I mentioned my own recollections to Elizabeth Schmitt, a clinical social worker, that tree-house building was something boys did, she bristled and offered a different memory:

My parents married the day after my dad, a navy pilot from WWII, graduated from Columbia on June 2, 1948. As New Yorkers, they were thrown into the life of rural Pennsylvania where my dad, a mining engineer, was employed by Bethlehem Steel Company. In a small company town we called “Toy Town” because the company houses all looked the same, I roamed and played with all the kids. We played baseball together, and built huts and tree houses. Boys and girls did this together. I was as active as any boys there and not a tomboy.

One positive trend is that outdoor opportunities are expanding for women, and therefore for girls. By 2005, the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association reported that females comprised 45 percent of tent campers and 36 percent of backpacking campers. If kid-built tree houses were as common today as when Elizabeth Schmitt or Janet Fout were girls, I wonder what the gender balance of the construction crews would be.

As it turns out, Alberto Lau’s daughter, Erin, a University of Southern California student, grew up building tree houses in a Scripps Ranch canyon. Later, the local community association made a practice of tearing down tree houses and forts there. Even so, in her tree house and canyon, Erin grew a dream:

The quiet wisdom of nature does not try to mislead you like the landscape of the city does, with billboards and ads everywhere. It doesn’t make you feel like you have to conform to any image. It’s just there, and it accepts everyone.

Living where I did allowed me to be outside building forts from age five to fourteen. And to jump to a large conclusion, it influenced the way in which I saw the built world. I am a landscape architecture major because of the pressing need in this world for the reintroduction of the natural landscape into the unwelcoming built environment. Why can’t mini-ecosystems be introduced into the middle of the city? Can we design parks so that they are as chaotic as nature, yet safe for an evening walk?

Idealistic? Let’s hope so, considering the alternative. Which brings us back to Ben Franklin. As H. W. Brands tells the story, Ben and his friends liked to hunt small fish in Mill Pond. But their shuffling through the water stirred up mud, clouding the water, which didn’t help the fishing. Their solution: to build a jetty extending into the marsh. Ben, with his eye on stones piled at a nearby building site, told his gang to wait until the masons had gone. “The boys waited, the men departed, and