Field Notes From the Future

The Wonder Bowl: what are you doing this summer?

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 ?nding 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 ?nd out what things were, and not cause trouble with the laundry.” [Read more...]

So Much News, So Little Open Space

The children and nature movement has miles to go before it sleeps (if it ever does), but we’re seeing so much progress that it’s difficult to keep up with the news. Look for C&NN’s next email newsletter for a more extensive report, but here are some recent highlights.

Eco Clubs and Early Angels: A few minutes ago, I received this email from Martin LeBlanc, C&NN board member and vice president: “This morning the CBS Early Show awarded Bill Vanderberg, the Sierra Club’s Building Bridges to the Outdoors’ lead volunteer as well as a member of CNN’s Advisory Board an Early Angel Award for his work with the Crenshaw Eco Club a Sierra Club grantee since 2003.

“Bill is a true leader who is inspirational and touches students lives on a daily basis. He is a mentor to me and his leadership is phenomenal. It is a moving piece and Bill’s ability to get 300 young people into a gym in South Central LA at 4 in the morning for a live shot is truly remarkable.”

Through nature, Bill Vanderberg, Dean of Students at Crenshaw High, consistently reaches young people who, in many other schools, are economically and academically marginalized.

[Read more...]

In the News

Young Leaders Rising

Young people can be the most effective leaders in the children and nature movement.

On April 4, 2009 young people from across the nation joined together to celebrate Natural Leaders Day: Get Outside & Play! “We announced the official launch of the Natural Leaders Network and now we are entering a new era, one where nature-deficit disorder is but a long lost memory,” says Juan D. Martinez, national coordinator for the Natural Leaders Network, an initiative of the Children & Nature Network, with founding support from the Sierra Club: Building Bridges to the Outdoors and corporate support from The North Face. [Read more...]

The Giftedness

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….”

[Read more...]