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

his mother, Jason and I walk a stretch of the Owens to fish with barbless flies. As we fish, we watch a great blue heron lift effortlessly, and I recall another heron rising above a pond in woods long ago, and I feel the awe that I felt then. I watch my son lift the fly line in a long loop above his head. Under the cottonwoods, he tells me with firmness that he wants to tie his own leader. And I understand that it is time for me to put some distance between us on the river.

When it is too dark to see into the water, we walk toward home in the cold. We hear a noise in the bushes and look up to see seven mule deer watching us. Their heads and long ears are silhouetted against the dark lavender sky. We hear other sounds in the bushes. We reach the gravel road, and an Oldsmobile rolls up behind us and an old man cranks down his window and asks, “Do you need a ride or are you almost there?”

“We’re almost there,” I say.

We can see the light in our cabin. Matthew and his mother are waiting, and tonight I’ll read a few more pages of Lion Hound before they sleep.

JASON IS A MAN NOW, and on his own. Matthew is in college. I feel a sense of pride and relief that they have grown well, and a deep grief that my years as a parent of young children is over, except in memory. And I am thankful. The times I spent with my children in nature are among my most meaningful memories—and I hope theirs.

We have such a brief opportunity to pass on to our children our love for this Earth, and to tell our stories. These are the moments when the world is made whole. In my children’s memories, the adventures we’ve had together in nature will always exist. These will be their turtle tales.

NOTES

1. Gifts of Nature

8   We attach two meanings to the word nature Gary Snyder, The Practice of the Wild (Washington, D.C.: Shoemaker & Hoard, 2004), 8.

2. The Third Frontier

15   “The smallest boys can build . . . simple shelters” Daniel C. Beard, Shelters, Shacks and Shanties (Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press, 1992), xv.

17   The passing, and importance, of the first frontier Frederick Jackson Turner, “The Problem of the West,” Atlantic Monthly, September 1896.

18   the federal government dropped its long-standing annual survey of farm residents Barbara Vobejda, “Agriculture No Longer Counts,” Washington Post, October 9, 1993.

20   “When Nick’s children were small” Richard Louv, The Web of Life: Weaving the Values That Sustain Us (York Beach, ME: Conari Press, 1996), 57.

23   how some nonhuman animals compose music Patricia M. Gray, Bernie Krause, Jelle Atema, Roger Payne, Carol Krumhansl, and Luis Baptista, “The Music of Nature and the Nature of Music,” Science, January 5, 2001, p. 52.

25   new dialectic between the “wild” and “urban” Mike Davis, The Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster (New York: Henry Holt, 1998), 202.

25   “An important lesson from many of these European cities” Timothy Beatley, Green Urbanism: Learning from European Cities (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2000).

3. The Criminalization of Natural Play

30   Each year, 53,000 acres of land are developed in the Chesapeake Bay watershed Natural Resources Inventory Report, U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2002.

33   first charted the shrinkage of natural play spaces Robin C. Moore, “The Need for Nature: A Childhood Right,” Social Justice 24, no. 3 (fall 1997): 203.

33   In Israel, researchers revealed Rachel Sebba, “The Landscapes of Childhood: The Reflection of Childhood’s Environment in Adult Memories and in Children’s Attitudes,” E&E 23, no. 4 (July 1991): 395–422.

33   Even accounting for romanticized memories L. Karsten. “It All Used to Be Better?: Different Generations on Continuity and Change in Urban Children’s Daily Use of Space,” Children’s Geographies 3, no. 3 (2005): 275–290.

33   The Netherlands, often associated with J. Verboom, R. van Kralingen, and U. Meier, Teenagers and Biodiversity—Worlds Apart?: An essay on young people’s views on nature and the role it will play in their future (Wageningen, Netherlands: Alterra, 2004).

34   In the United States, children spend R. Clements, “An Investigation of the State of Outdoor Play,” Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood 5, no. 1 (2004): 68–80.

34   according to a study by Sandra Hofferth S. L. Hofferth and J. F. Sandberg, “How American Children Spend Their Time,” Journal of Marriage and Family 63, no. 3 (2001): 295–308.

35   The Daily Monitor, published in Addis Ababa Berthe Waregay, “Ethiopia: ‘No Child Left Inside,’” Daily Monitor, March 28, 2007.

35   In the medical journal the Lancet J. Reilly, D. Jackson, C. Montgomery, L. Kelly, C. Slater, S. Grant, and J. Paton, “Total Energy Expenditure and Physical Activity in Young Scottish Children: Mixed Longitudinal Study,” Lancet 363, no. 9404: 211–212.

4. Climbing the Tree of Health

43   “biophilia,” the hypothesis of Harvard University scientist Edward O. Wilson, Biophilia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984).

44   modern psychology has split the inner life from the outer life Theodore Roszak, Psychology Today (January/February, 1996).

44   “Psychotherapists have exhaustively analyzed every form of dysfunctional family” Lisa Kocian, “Exploring the Link Between Mind, Nature,” Boston Globe, May 30, 2002.

45   significant decreases in blood pressure simply by watching fish Peter H. Kahn, Jr., The Human Relationship with Nature (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999), 15; citing Aaron Katcher, Erika Freidmann, Alan M. Beck, and James J. Lynch, “Looking, Talking, and Blood Pressure: The Physiological Consequences of Interaction with the Living Environment” in Aaron Katcher and A. Beck, eds., New Perspectives on Our Lives with Companion Animals (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 1983).

45   The mortality rate of heart-disease patients Peter H. Kahn, Jr., The Human Relationship with Nature (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999), 16; citing Alan M. Beck and Aaron Katcher, Between Pets and People: The Importance of Animal Companionship (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1996).

46   ten-year study of gallbladder surgery patients Howard Frumkin, “Beyond Toxicity: Human Health and the Natural Environment,” American Journal of Preventive Medicine (April 2001): 234–240.

46   people who watch images of natural landscape . . . calm markedly Roger S. Ulrich, “Human Experiences with Architecture,” Science, April 1984.

46   our visual