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

“It’s an intriguing idea to approach a child’s relationship with nature from the perspective of attachment theory,” Erickson said. She continued:

Children’s experience with the natural world seems to be overlooked to a large extent in research on child development, but it would be interesting to examine children’s early experiences with nature and follow how those experiences influence the child’s long-term comfort with and respect for the natural world—comfort and respect being concepts that are central to the study of parent-child attachment. Given the power of nature to calm and soothe us in our hurried lives, it also would be interesting to study how a family’s connection to nature influences the general quality of family relationships. Speaking from personal experience, my own family’s relationships have been nourished over the years through shared experiences in nature—from sharing our toddler’s wonder upon turning over a rock and discovering a magnificent bug the size of a mouse, to paddling our old canoe down a nearby creek during the children’s school years, to hiking the mountains.

ATTACHMENT TO LAND is not only good for the child, but good for the land as well. As naturalist Robert Finch asserts: “There is a point . . . in our relationship with a place, when, in spite of ourselves, we realize we do not care so much anymore, when we begin to be convinced, against our very wills, that our neighborhood, our town, or the land as a whole is already lost.” At this point, he argues, the local landscape is no longer perceived as “a living, breathing, beautiful counterpart to human existence, but something that has suffered irreversible brain death. It may still be kept technically alive—with sewage treatment plants, ‘compensatory’ wetlands, shellfish reseeding programs, lime treatments for acidified ponds, herbicides for . . . ponds, beach nourishment programs, fenced-off bird sanctuaries, and designated ‘green areas’—but it no longer moves, or if it does, it is not with a will of its own.”

If a geographic place rapidly changes in a way that demeans its natural integrity, then children’s early attachment to land is at risk. If children do not attach to the land, they will not reap the psychological and spiritual benefits they can glean from nature, nor will they feel a long-term commitment to the environment, to the place. This lack of attachment will exacerbate the very conditions that created the sense of disengagement in the first place—fueling a tragic spiral, in which our children and the natural world are increasingly detached.

I am not suggesting the situation is hopeless. Far from it. Conservation and environmental groups and, in some cases, the traditional Scouting organizations are beginning to awaken to the threat to nature posed by nature-deficit disorder. A few of these organizations, as we will see, are helping to lead the way toward a nature-child reunion. They recognize that while knowledge about nature is vital, passion is the long-distance fuel for the struggle to save what is left of our natural heritage and—through an emerging green urbanism—to reconstitute lost land and water. Passion does not arrive on videotape or on a CD; passion is personal. Passion is lifted from the earth itself by the muddy hands of the young; it travels along grass-stained sleeves to the heart. If we are going to save environmentalism and the environment, we must also save an endangered indicator species: the child in nature.

PART IV

THE NATURE-CHILD REUNION

I am well again, I came to life

in the cool winds and crystal waters of the mountains . . .

—JOHN MUIR

Each new year is a surprise to us.

We find that we had virtually forgotten the note of each bird,

and when we hear it again, it is remembered like a dream,

reminding us of a previous state of existence. . . .

The voice of nature is always encouraging.

—HENRY DAVID THOREAU

13. Bringing Nature Home

It is not half so important to know as to feel when introducing a young child to the natural world.

—RACHEL CARSON

ALONE, PARENTS CANNOT heal the broken bond. But each guardian, parent, or other family member can lead the way at home, and within the institutions to which they belong. Educators, city planners, youth nature-program leaders, environmentalists—all of these people will determine the direction of the third frontier, and guide it either toward the end of natural experience, or toward its rebirth in new forms. Parents can encourage institutions to change, but cannot wait for them.

Parents already feel besieged by the difficulty of balancing work and family life. Understandably, they may resist the idea of adding any to-dos to their long list of chores. So here is another way of viewing the challenge: nature as antidote. Stress reduction, greater physical health, a deeper sense of spirit, more creativity, a sense of play, even a safer life—these are the rewards that await a family when it invites more nature into children’s lives.

The Gift of Enthusiasm

Several years ago, Jerry Schad invited me and my sons, then five and eleven, to accompany him and his four-year-old son on a hike along Cottonwood Creek in the mountains east of San Diego. We parked along Sunrise Highway and slipped down a rough path toward a valley far below. The path was a tunnel through chaparral, scrub oak, and manzanita, widened and deepened by countless hikers who have found Cottonwood Creek Falls—named by Schad—primarily because they have read his Afoot and Afield guidebooks.

But before I take you on this hike, let me say something about the pressures that parents endure. Simply put, many of us must overcome the belief that something isn’t worth doing with our kids unless we do it right. If getting our kids out into nature is a search for perfection, or is one more chore, then the belief in perfection and the chore defeats the joy. It’s a good thing to learn more about nature in order to share this knowledge with children; it’s even better if the adult