Just want to thank you for making this movement more visable. I’ve been gardening at the public school I work with my students with emotional and behavioral disabilities for five years and they love it.
Outside my room today I heard two small children talking. Obviously one had picked up a paper off the sidewalk.
“Did you drop that?” said one boy.
“No.” said the other.
“Then why did you pick it up?” said the first.
“Because I don’t want the Earth to die.” replied our hope for the future.
After despairing that the trails they walked with their kids were empty, two parent volunteers from the Orange County NY Audubon Society, naturalist, Laurel Dodge and Teacher of the Deaf, Kathleen Diamond began a free family nature study club called Nature Strollers in 2005. The Nature Strollers mission is to empower parents and grandparents to be the primary interpreters of nature for their families;to provide opportunities for families to enjoy unstructured time outdoors; to familiarize families with local trails; and to develop networks among families with a common interest in nature. Families flocked to our group, relieved to be able to take their kids on the trail without worry, finding that “safety in numbers” eliminated the need to be on constant guard. Unlike structured nature center programs, on a Nature Strollers walk there is lots of play, parent-child bonding, and conversation mixed in with the discovery and wonder. Because we walk so frequently and in a number of locations, families experence the seasonal round in several different types of habitat. We model the behaviors of a naturalist for the families and find that they soon mimic us, turning over leaves and logs, scanning the treetops, and cupping their ears to hear calls and songs. We demonstrate the use of field guides and identification skills, and have distributed field guides to all our active members. As a result the nature literacy of our members has grown by leaps and bounds, all while having a great time! Our goal is to make nature study a first-choice activity for families. So far we’ve led over 100 walks, and 80 families have become members. We communicate with them via our Yahoo group, emailing information about 2-4 nature walks per week (dates, times and locations). Please visit our website, http://www.naturestrollers.org and click on our blog for our fieldnotes and scroll through to see what our walks are like (please excuse us, as it needs to be updated, we are too busy walking to upload photos and text these days). If you would like to start your own family nature study club please contact us through the email address on the website, we have produced materials to assist and support you in this effort. Also, refer your local Audubon Society group to our website and suggest they contact us as well. The education director at Audubon NY is already encouraging Audubon chapters and centers in our state to adopt the Nature Strollers model, and we’d like to spread it across the country.
Olof Ehrenstrom on
May 25th, 2008 %I:%M %p
I teach at a Montessori Middle School in Phoenix, AZ, and I am working very hard on establishing community partnerships and environmental opportunities for my students to explore their natural surroundings. Living in a large urban city does create certain logistical challenges, but we’ve worked with the Phoenix Zoo, the Dessert Botanical Gardens and the Parks and Recreation Department. We also go on several trips throughout the year to escape the city and the influence of technology and the media. It’s amazing how “plugged” in our students are to their personal electronics. They often go through withdrawal and can’twait to get back to “modernization”.
I’ve been doing to observations over the past year and I’m currently writting my thesis on this subject. I would greatly appreciate any comments or suggestions. Nature is my passion and whatever I can do to help my students share in this experience will enhance my teaching goals. I’m very excited about this movement as it quickly gains momentum. Thank you Richard Louv for your books and your positive influence. You have begun a powerful butterfly effect. Great things will come.
Susi Lippuner on
May 26th, 2008 %I:%M %p
I appreciate so much the work you are doing. Is it possible to get the reference to the UCB study about the “nostrils”? I would really appreciate it.
I think Richard’s response is spot on. In South frica, many of the children are not allowed out of doors due to safety reasons.
We want to start similar programmes like ‘Leave no child inside’ here in South Africa.
I have read your new edition -its great and hits the mark!
Ryan Mykita on
June 16th, 2008 %I:%M %p
I feel that people are basically sensible. As the long-term emotional, spiritual, and physical health of human beings enjoying nature is still an ‘understanding in progress’ , the rhetoric of ‘right to nature’ is helpful. This is because a ‘right to…’ argument is helpful when something valued is as yet difficult to value. Nature is intuitively valuable to most sensible people, I think. But most could not say HOW valuable. Yes, I have a right to nature in my community. No, I do not know the consequences of that right – the costs, the metrics of enjoyment and usefulness. But I will defend the right.
In the future, we should work with metrics commonly to measure the costs and values of our right to nature. But not yet. I believe that the ‘right to…’ rhetoric is a great way to advocate; in the future, once we get the momentum (predicated on individuals understanding just HOW valuable nature is – experience), we can metric the long-term emotional, spiritual, and physical health of human beings enjoying nature. This future context implies less support out of ‘right of nature’, and more support out of practice, enjoyment of nature. Participant advocacy is ALWAYS stronger than moral advocacy! Which is our goal, I believe! Participation!
An organization called New York Restoration Project, founded by Bette Midler, is dedicated to creating and maintaining small gardens and forgotten parks around the City. Have you heard of them? http://www.nyrp.org Their 50+ gardens aren’t playgrounds — they’re natural greenspaces, and their Swindler Cove park is amazing (it used to be a dump). It’s one of my favorite places in the City — check it out next time you’re in town, Richard!
When kids in my neighborhood find weird bugs and cool snakes, they always come to me. Even if I’m deep in conversation with a grown-up, I drop whatever I’m doing and go take a look. What could be more important (or for me, fun) than looking at bugs with a neighborhood kid?
As a scientific illustrator, a biologist and a parent, I have been inspired by this children and nature movement to bring people in my community together and create change. We are developing a children-and-nature campaign here in Georgia. At a recent meeting, Kathryn Kolb, who is a great nature photographer and environmental activist, suggested establishing a network of neighborhood naturalists. The basic premise of the neighborhood naturalist network is that nature is not just “out there”- that even in the city it is close at hand, if you know where to look. Of course we advocate for more green space as well, especially in underserved areas, but we also want to help people find and use the green spaces that we do have. What if every neighborhood had its own go-to person for trails and snails, trees and bees?
Neighborhood naturalists can lead local hikes and outdoor events, and also serve as the go-to person for weird bugs and cool snakes when kids find them. Because a naturalist is likely to know a lot more about the green spaces that are out there, as well as the critters and trees that live in them, it provides a stepping stone to nature for those who might be a bit intimidated at first. Our organization, naturehoods.org is even offering to train naturalists in the local flora and fauna. Be sure and visit our website!
Mr. Louv, first let me thank you for your wonderful book. I now give copies of Last Child at every baby shower I attend.
There’s a lot to think about in this post. From my personal perspective, Newsweek wasn’t far off its prediciton of how expensive gas might curtail outdoor activity . . . I’m a devoted whitewater kayaker, but I’m finding it harder and harder to muster enthusiasm for driving two hours to the mountains on any given weekend. I’d like to take my kids camping in the mountains more often, but that’s becoming harder to do, as well.
And what of urban nature? Perhaps a young adulthood spent pursuing wilderness experiences has spoiled me . . . it’s hard for me to be enthusiastic about the degraded spaces closer to home. When I take my boys down to the nearby (and admittedly scenic) Chattahoochee River, I have a hard time ignoring the old tennis balls and discarded styrofoam cups that float by (much less the posted e-coli warnings). When we visit the little patch of woodland left in my neighborhood, all my eyes seem to see is the invasive Chinese Privet and English Ivy that has overtaken the place. I know this attitude is counterproduitive, but I can’t help myself.
At any rate, you’ve inspired me to get out and resurvey my local terrain, a task I’ll document on my own blog this fall. Thanks again for your very important work.
Richard, I couldn’t agree with you more. We have a school in Tigard, Oregon that has taken steps to connect the students with the outdoors. We built a large school garden next to an even larger wetlands area and use it to help the children achieve the Oregon benchmarks in science and other disciplines. We still have resistance though from many teachers who simply want to stay in the classroom and ‘teach’ from books.
We are a 4-H Wildlife Steward School, an Oregon Green School and we were the 400th Schoolyard Habitat. You can check it out at http://snipurl.com/5s2uz
I am fairly irked by a current Duracell battery ad that portrays a mom at the park, unbuckling one child from a stroller, when suddenly she realizes that her other child has gone missing. As she frantically searches the great looking green park for her son, she pushes the buttons of her electronic tracking device. Lucky she had good batteries. The short ad ends with the mom on her knees embracing the child, thankful that the child wasn’t killed by trees or sucked into the grass; next time they will definitely stay home and watch TV.
I have seen this ad 4 times in the last month; at movie theaters, on TV and online. This is exactly the kind of “the outdoors is a scary place for children” message that convinces young parents and care providers that being outside is scary.
Let’s use this ridiculous advertisement as an opportunity to tell it like it is – another advertisement spreading fear.
Kay Meyer
The Brenton Arboretum
Dallas Center, IA 50063
The part of this conversation between Richard Louv and Thomas Berry that resonated particularly loudly to me is the notion of “a new movement of faith-oriented environmentalists, eager to move beyond the old divide between Bible-based interpretations of dominion and stewardship.” Having spent the last five years of my life in two communities that are strongly rooted in faith-based organizations (one in Southwestern, Idaho, and now in Southern California), this new movement seems of utmost importance. Religious institutions in these places have an incredible influence on the political and educational decisions that are made in the community. I wonder, how do we invite the people of these faith-based groups to join the conversation and growing concern where it is not already being had?
Earth woman on
November 27th, 2008 %I:%M %p
In college I was Earth woman to my friends:]. That was the 80’s. I proceeded to live a rural lifestyle, and rear my children “in the woods”. We still live there, and my now college age daughter had written a sociology paper on ADHD and nature deficit disorder. How about that!
Taking our nations children back to nature is my dream come true.
Our family is a living testimony to the enrichment provided by existence in the real and natural world.
Nancy Herron on
December 19th, 2008 %I:%M %p
I keep coming back to read this. Scientists have established the importance of natural areas and biodiversity for the health of the natural resources on which we depend. Health professionals and child development experts urge active engagement with nature for physical and developmental well-being. But few pieces so well frame our moral responsibility to hold on to natural areas for an equally-fundamental piece of being a whole and healthy human, where we seek inspiration, meaning and reflection and apply our values “even when no one is looking.” Thank you for sharing this wonderful story in your blog.
The issues brought to the public light in “Last Child” are helping many parents make different choices in what we expose our children to; offer for them to eat, do, explore; and what groups we join. As a mother and an informal educator, I have found, however, that knowledge and information about childhood obesity is only part of the issue. Beyond knowing that things are not good for our kids, I encounter other emotional barriers that contribute to obesity, or at least inactivity. Parents are trying to work through the information — and the emotion — and make time for unstructured time. We can only hope that an outcome of the financial crisis will be less money to “do stuff”, hence more time to “do stuff”. We’ll see.
Greg on
December 20th, 2008 %I:%M %p
I love this article. Thank you.
Having firsthand experience with how effective this practice is I only wish more people did it AND believed in it.
miss:bee* on
December 20th, 2008 %I:%M %p
I must admit that I am suffering from nature deficit disorder and the only thing that calms me when I am trapped in a city is the realization that the effects of nature are being recognized. I feel anxious as I search for natural spaces, only to be disappointed by golf courses, plants I can not identify, trash, and man made ponds. The research, books, and websites all initially made my jaw drop and my head shake with relief. Yet the resulting wave of inspiration has crashed and I am feeling washed out. The solutions are there and I read of the people who are on the forefront of the movement in my home BC but I can’t seem to find them – to connect – to find out how I can help put the puzzle all together.
The line, “everything we discuss now should be about the 21st century” should be our mantra when dealing with issues of nature and children and our environment and family life and all of it. We’ve got to protect our connections to the earth and to each other – living in the now and with our eyes simultaneously on the future.
I must be the most ill-read person I know because I am just now stumbling upon you, your book and your blog, in that order, within the last few minutes. This piece on Thomas Berry will not be the last work of yours that I read. I look forward to reading Last Child in the Woods.
It is refreshing to read your book. I was pointed to it some time ago. I have a slightly different take on all of this. As a college professor in genomics, I saw a couple of years ago that my students were almost incapable of using their imaginations to think about biology. They also couldn’t look at simple tables and begin to deconstruct them, e.g. one column is longer than the other. When I worked one on one with them, they would say “well, just tell me what you want me to see.” I think that spending time in nature is one solution to this, but I think that it is not just the separation of kids from nature that is causing it. I hypothesized when I saw this in 2006 that it was due to a resonance in passive education – from too much TV and video games (which are in someone else’s reality) to No-Child-Left-Behind, as well as the fear of letting the kids just roam. In any event, I look forward to reading more of your writing – because while high school teachers seem to recognize clearly what I am saying, the faculty at my institution do not. I do a lot of visualizations, discussions, and other methods to get the students to access and experience their imaginations. So, don’t blame this on genomics and molecular biology – it is a broader thing that has convinced this generation that the highest intellectual achievement that humans can do is memorization.
Hello,
It has been a long time since I put life aside to finish a book. With each page of Last Child in the Woods I connected the seasons of my life to your words and now have a better understanding about why nature has always been so important to me.
Your comprehensive, yet ever so personal, view of our environment- far and near -evokes the same childlike wonder my three-year-old granddaughter shows on our many “expeditions” into a nearby forest. Whether we are collecting moss (I call it God’s carpet), watching snakes basking in the pine tree, or resting under a towering oak, her youth and my years seem to blend together into a timeless moment.
Reading your book is sure to enrich my humble blog, curiousaboutnatureblogspot.com
Joyanne Walmsley-Hammond
Jill Blakeley on
January 19th, 2009 %I:%M %p
Richard,
It is, indeed sad that we are not giving our children & grandchildren enough time to “stop & smell the roses” or name the “birdies”. I feed many species of critters in my back yard & am always trying to educate my grandkids on their names & habits. Keep up e good work & I will do my best to do what I can.
I taught Outdoor School for Penn State University’s Environmental Center. We taught earth science, orienteering, team building, journaling and more to 5-7 grade school groups. We’d get reports from teachers before students came for their week-long experience with us. “Difficult” students were always identified, usually struggling with some form of ADD.
I consistently found that students who were unruly in a classroom did just fine outdoors. They may have been the kid that tried to trip someone when they were unloading the bus, but by the end they had become a better “team” player and were riding away with tears in their eyes.
I asked some crying students, “Why so sad? You now have one more happy memory!” They told me the reason they cried was that they loved learning that week and didn’t want to go back to regular school.
It’s good to know that our elected officials are voting in favor of getting kids out of school buildings and out into the world they’re supposed to be learning about. I hope that students are soon spending at least one whole day a week at “Outdoor School” – very soon, all over the world.
Kudos on your efforts to date. You are so right, the future will be better–awareness has a way of improving things. The inexorable decline of the role of in-situ exposure as a key part of educating anyone, not just children, in the natural sciences–or physics, or accounting, or most any topic–is one of the many negative unintended consequences of the otherwise noble quest to provide basic education for every child that began as an incredible dream in the 18th Century. While our world will no doubt sustain the system of centralized, costly, inefficient schools for another two decades or more, I am advocating for the initiation of a reboot of public education to start over and redesign it from square one. If you could do that today, would your resulting system resemble much of what we have today?
I appreciate your closing thought: “We believe that you and thousands of other people like you will help shape the coming era, a time of human restoration through nature.” I would modify it to read “…a time of human restoration through community.” As you will see on All New Public Education (click through on my name above), I see public education as beginning at conception and extending to two or three days after death or each and every human being. Everyone is a student throughout their lives and, as soon as they have something to share, everyone is a teacher. Lessons are taught in the kitchen, the park, the office, the museum, and anywhere there is something to observe and learn from. And yes, there is online collaboration, for communities need not be dependent on physical proximity.
I will soon include your concept and content in All New Public Education for the obvious alignment in a common good. Your thoughts on ANPE would be appreciated as well. Together we strive to redirect mankind off the tangent that the industrial age set us on, back to a path through the world we live in–for as long as we live in it.
Again, congratulations and many thanks for all you have invested and all you are still committed to do for this worthy vision.
Thanks for this amazing article, I love your writing! I’m only just discovering your blog (through an Environmental Education colleague) and your posts are fantastic – but this was my favorite!
I am currently supporting a submission for a grant for obesity reduction in the community to help start a rowing club on our local lake. Your work here is a most valuable help to all local ‘outdoor’ agents.
Pat Flanagan on
January 29th, 2009 %I:%M %p
Richard,
Reading your column almost offsets a reading of the grim misdirected California State Parks, Off-Highway Motor Vehicle Recreation Division 2008 Strategic Plan. The basin premise of this document is flawed: OHV recreation is a sustainable environmental enhancement. To help make their point, on page 8, Last Child in the Woods is referenced adjacent to a photograph of a child, riding a motorcycle on a dirt road, completely encased in the appropriate protective gear, including a fully padded helmet. They use your words to promote this activity as healthy and capable of instilling caring values for the natural lands of California. By implication the young rider is pursuing an activity that will connect him (her) with the natural world. The picture is nearly identical to the one accompanying your blog with the child walking on the road.
This is a ludicrous position for a State Agency charged with protecting the environment for future generations to take. It is deeply cynical to use your words to promote children riding OHVs as a healthy recreational pastime. Many of the riders begin at an early age (sometimes below 5 years) to experience nature in a synthetic cocoon of speed and sound, while their central nervous systems are developing and acutely sensitive. Their bonding (probably at the cellular level) is with a machine, noise and vibration, not the natural world.
OHV riding, and its associated trails, is known to be one of the most destructive human activities on the functioning of the natural systems in our wildlands. It is queer indeed that the state chooses to endorse OHV recreation as an environmental enhancement, when research shows that its effects cannot be mitigated. It appears to me that the OHV Division suffers from nature-deficit disorder. Perhaps you can suggest a cure. At the very least please suggest they stop promoting you book in their strategic plan.
Pat Flanagan
Environmental Educator
Diane Barker on
January 29th, 2009 %I:%M %p
Richard and all,
I am privileged to give nature tours as a docent at Konza Prairie Biological Station. On a Bison Loop tour with a busload of 42 5th graders, I was holding forth about the history of bison, how they almost became extinct. About 30 bison including calves were a few yards from the bus, so the kids could get a good look. The discussion turned to how some animals and plants are domesticated and others are wild and will not be domesticated like big bluestem, bison, zebras, deer, antelope and elk.
A girl began frantically waving her thin arm over her head, “Can you milk a bison?” That question raised the hairs on the back of my neck. What a gift that question was to open a discussion and to let the children’s imaginations go.
That question opened up many strategies for me to use to mine the curiosity of children and adults whether we are out on a 3 mile hike through the tall grass or sitting on a bus scanning the horizon for bison.
I find that children and adults are eager to discover what nature has to offer them. I applaud the efforts of everyone working to get children and adults out in nature.
Diane Barker
Thanks for the note. I’m definitely not keen on introducing more motorized vehicles to natural areas or to moving away from the “traditional park” model (if traditional means natural), as mentioned in the report. I’ll be looking into this. Thanks again.
Rich
Louise on
February 7th, 2009 %I:%M %p
I had been reading reviews of your book and was thrilled to pick up the National Parks edition while visiting the Jedediah Smith Redwoods National Park this past September. Thank you for such an insightful look into the healthy development of our children.
I see that you will be visiting my “neck of the woods” in March with a presentation in Reading, PA. WELCOME. You’ll love our area. There are wonderful facilities for outdoor experiences.
Fortunately, our two sons and now our grandchildren are able to explore outdoors in our still somewhat rural neighborhood. It would be wonderful if all children would be able to enjoy what we have.
Their objective rings true: give children of all ages the chance to experience what you are teaching—hands on and in context—so that so much more is learned and appreciated than the one or more learning points of the lesson and the experience is so…
Herman Surkis on
February 18th, 2009 %I:%M %p
As a psychologist who has spent too much time working in ‘adolescent treatment centres’ and psychiatric hospital units, I am very aware of the consequences of the disconnect with nature. In relaxation imagery, no one ever suggests, ‘and imagine yourself in a shopping mall’, it is usually a nature scene.
Artists of all stripes tend to refer back to nature.
I would like to issue an invitation to anyone in the Victoria BC area, to include the following event, if you are coming to hear Richards presentation. The art exhibit has been extended till the end of March.
And I beg your indulgence in a blatant promo to bring people closer to nature and wildlife.
OASES presents: An Afternoon with Wildlife.
*Don’t miss this one! Come and be wowed by visits from a number of live animals, and become informed about lemurs, porpoises, lizards and birds of prey.*
John Creviston, former curator of the Crystal Garden Conservation Centre, will speak about the incredible life and habits of the Solomon Island Skink. These unique lizards have a family structure rarely found amongst reptiles, and have a “grasping” tail used when climbing through their rainforest habitat. Two skinks, each about 2 ft. long, will be in attendance.
Anna Hall will talk on the always fascinating porpoises. Anna, a PhD candidate in Zoology, is considered an expert in these mysterious mammals. She recently spoke at the reception for the “Celebrating Wildlife” art exhibit, and was so well received that she was asked back by popular demand.
Jeff Krieger of Alternative Wildlife Solutions will discuss the life and antics of raptors. Live birds will be present, including a red-tail hawk and gyrfalcon, so that the beauty of these normally shy animals can be appreciated. Some basics of falconry will be discussed by Ben Wallace, president of the BC Falconry Association. A flying demonstration might also occur.
Lisa Gould PhD, professor of Biological Anthropology/Primatology at UVIC will give a talk on some of her favourite creatures…lemurs. There is a lot more to them then just being the stars of a TV series “Lemur Street”. Come and learn what Lisa has been doing on her trips to faraway Madagascar, and what could be done to help these primates and the people who live among them.
Please be sure to enjoy the display “Celebrating Wildlife”. This exhibit features a variety of sculptures, prints and photographs depicting local and exotic wildlife. Some of the artists will be in attendance and may be persuaded to discuss how they Celebrate Wildlife through their artwork.
When: Saturday, March 7, 2009. From 3-5 pm.
Where: Victoria Arts Connection, 2750 Quadra Street, (just north of Hillside).
*Admission is free, but please support all our presenters in their efforts to help wildlife.*
*XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
For more information or to interview presenters please contact:
Herman Surkis at 250-472-6995, oases@shaw.ca, and visit oasesconservation.org
I’m helping to start an intergenerational preschool, opening fall 2009. We will have seniors living in one wing and a nature and art-focused preschool in the other. We hope to be getting these two generations together outside every day for gardening, walking in the woods, or just reading a book together in the shade of a big tree. We never stop needing the healing power of the natural world.
Meg Ruby on
March 1st, 2009 %I:%M %p
3/1/09
I wrote to call your attention to some remarkable kids here in Portland, OR. Christopher and Adrian are birders and scientists. I’ve known them since Kindergarten.
Although I think Eric takes a bit too long to get there, his point is quite valid: common points of view in any locality have blinders enforced by mainstream media, and those blinders are hard to remove.
It is unfortunate that Media can propel itself in the wrong direction by perpetuating a storyline or angle the audience has come to want to hear more of only because media outlets propagated it in the first place. It would take too much airtime to correct a misinterpretation.
These days in the PRC, I think the national government tries to tell a more globally nuanced story than it has in the past, but it is trying to do so towards a population it has trained expect to be wronged by traditional powers even as it exerts its own.
Just want to thank you for making this movement more visable. I’ve been gardening at the public school I work with my students with emotional and behavioral disabilities for five years and they love it.
Outside my room today I heard two small children talking. Obviously one had picked up a paper off the sidewalk.
“Did you drop that?” said one boy.
“No.” said the other.
“Then why did you pick it up?” said the first.
“Because I don’t want the Earth to die.” replied our hope for the future.
After despairing that the trails they walked with their kids were empty, two parent volunteers from the Orange County NY Audubon Society, naturalist, Laurel Dodge and Teacher of the Deaf, Kathleen Diamond began a free family nature study club called Nature Strollers in 2005. The Nature Strollers mission is to empower parents and grandparents to be the primary interpreters of nature for their families;to provide opportunities for families to enjoy unstructured time outdoors; to familiarize families with local trails; and to develop networks among families with a common interest in nature. Families flocked to our group, relieved to be able to take their kids on the trail without worry, finding that “safety in numbers” eliminated the need to be on constant guard. Unlike structured nature center programs, on a Nature Strollers walk there is lots of play, parent-child bonding, and conversation mixed in with the discovery and wonder. Because we walk so frequently and in a number of locations, families experence the seasonal round in several different types of habitat. We model the behaviors of a naturalist for the families and find that they soon mimic us, turning over leaves and logs, scanning the treetops, and cupping their ears to hear calls and songs. We demonstrate the use of field guides and identification skills, and have distributed field guides to all our active members. As a result the nature literacy of our members has grown by leaps and bounds, all while having a great time! Our goal is to make nature study a first-choice activity for families. So far we’ve led over 100 walks, and 80 families have become members. We communicate with them via our Yahoo group, emailing information about 2-4 nature walks per week (dates, times and locations). Please visit our website, http://www.naturestrollers.org and click on our blog for our fieldnotes and scroll through to see what our walks are like (please excuse us, as it needs to be updated, we are too busy walking to upload photos and text these days). If you would like to start your own family nature study club please contact us through the email address on the website, we have produced materials to assist and support you in this effort. Also, refer your local Audubon Society group to our website and suggest they contact us as well. The education director at Audubon NY is already encouraging Audubon chapters and centers in our state to adopt the Nature Strollers model, and we’d like to spread it across the country.
I teach at a Montessori Middle School in Phoenix, AZ, and I am working very hard on establishing community partnerships and environmental opportunities for my students to explore their natural surroundings. Living in a large urban city does create certain logistical challenges, but we’ve worked with the Phoenix Zoo, the Dessert Botanical Gardens and the Parks and Recreation Department. We also go on several trips throughout the year to escape the city and the influence of technology and the media. It’s amazing how “plugged” in our students are to their personal electronics. They often go through withdrawal and can’twait to get back to “modernization”.
I’ve been doing to observations over the past year and I’m currently writting my thesis on this subject. I would greatly appreciate any comments or suggestions. Nature is my passion and whatever I can do to help my students share in this experience will enhance my teaching goals. I’m very excited about this movement as it quickly gains momentum. Thank you Richard Louv for your books and your positive influence. You have begun a powerful butterfly effect. Great things will come.
I appreciate so much the work you are doing. Is it possible to get the reference to the UCB study about the “nostrils”? I would really appreciate it.
I think Richard’s response is spot on. In South frica, many of the children are not allowed out of doors due to safety reasons.
We want to start similar programmes like ‘Leave no child inside’ here in South Africa.
I have read your new edition -its great and hits the mark!
I feel that people are basically sensible. As the long-term emotional, spiritual, and physical health of human beings enjoying nature is still an ‘understanding in progress’ , the rhetoric of ‘right to nature’ is helpful. This is because a ‘right to…’ argument is helpful when something valued is as yet difficult to value. Nature is intuitively valuable to most sensible people, I think. But most could not say HOW valuable. Yes, I have a right to nature in my community. No, I do not know the consequences of that right – the costs, the metrics of enjoyment and usefulness. But I will defend the right.
In the future, we should work with metrics commonly to measure the costs and values of our right to nature. But not yet. I believe that the ‘right to…’ rhetoric is a great way to advocate; in the future, once we get the momentum (predicated on individuals understanding just HOW valuable nature is – experience), we can metric the long-term emotional, spiritual, and physical health of human beings enjoying nature. This future context implies less support out of ‘right of nature’, and more support out of practice, enjoyment of nature. Participant advocacy is ALWAYS stronger than moral advocacy! Which is our goal, I believe! Participation!
Ryan
ryan.mykita@gmail.com
An organization called New York Restoration Project, founded by Bette Midler, is dedicated to creating and maintaining small gardens and forgotten parks around the City. Have you heard of them? http://www.nyrp.org Their 50+ gardens aren’t playgrounds — they’re natural greenspaces, and their Swindler Cove park is amazing (it used to be a dump). It’s one of my favorite places in the City — check it out next time you’re in town, Richard!
When kids in my neighborhood find weird bugs and cool snakes, they always come to me. Even if I’m deep in conversation with a grown-up, I drop whatever I’m doing and go take a look. What could be more important (or for me, fun) than looking at bugs with a neighborhood kid?
As a scientific illustrator, a biologist and a parent, I have been inspired by this children and nature movement to bring people in my community together and create change. We are developing a children-and-nature campaign here in Georgia. At a recent meeting, Kathryn Kolb, who is a great nature photographer and environmental activist, suggested establishing a network of neighborhood naturalists. The basic premise of the neighborhood naturalist network is that nature is not just “out there”- that even in the city it is close at hand, if you know where to look. Of course we advocate for more green space as well, especially in underserved areas, but we also want to help people find and use the green spaces that we do have. What if every neighborhood had its own go-to person for trails and snails, trees and bees?
Neighborhood naturalists can lead local hikes and outdoor events, and also serve as the go-to person for weird bugs and cool snakes when kids find them. Because a naturalist is likely to know a lot more about the green spaces that are out there, as well as the critters and trees that live in them, it provides a stepping stone to nature for those who might be a bit intimidated at first. Our organization, naturehoods.org is even offering to train naturalists in the local flora and fauna. Be sure and visit our website!
http://www.naturehoods.org
Mr. Louv, first let me thank you for your wonderful book. I now give copies of Last Child at every baby shower I attend.
There’s a lot to think about in this post. From my personal perspective, Newsweek wasn’t far off its prediciton of how expensive gas might curtail outdoor activity . . . I’m a devoted whitewater kayaker, but I’m finding it harder and harder to muster enthusiasm for driving two hours to the mountains on any given weekend. I’d like to take my kids camping in the mountains more often, but that’s becoming harder to do, as well.
And what of urban nature? Perhaps a young adulthood spent pursuing wilderness experiences has spoiled me . . . it’s hard for me to be enthusiastic about the degraded spaces closer to home. When I take my boys down to the nearby (and admittedly scenic) Chattahoochee River, I have a hard time ignoring the old tennis balls and discarded styrofoam cups that float by (much less the posted e-coli warnings). When we visit the little patch of woodland left in my neighborhood, all my eyes seem to see is the invasive Chinese Privet and English Ivy that has overtaken the place. I know this attitude is counterproduitive, but I can’t help myself.
At any rate, you’ve inspired me to get out and resurvey my local terrain, a task I’ll document on my own blog this fall. Thanks again for your very important work.
Richard, I couldn’t agree with you more. We have a school in Tigard, Oregon that has taken steps to connect the students with the outdoors. We built a large school garden next to an even larger wetlands area and use it to help the children achieve the Oregon benchmarks in science and other disciplines. We still have resistance though from many teachers who simply want to stay in the classroom and ‘teach’ from books.
We are a 4-H Wildlife Steward School, an Oregon Green School and we were the 400th Schoolyard Habitat. You can check it out at http://snipurl.com/5s2uz
Keep championing the cause!
Just found your site. I feel at the same time both sadness and hope, sadness because so much green space is being destroyed and replaced with plastic.
Hopeful because there are people like you who help spread the word, words that stir up hope!
Thanks,
Joy
I am fairly irked by a current Duracell battery ad that portrays a mom at the park, unbuckling one child from a stroller, when suddenly she realizes that her other child has gone missing. As she frantically searches the great looking green park for her son, she pushes the buttons of her electronic tracking device. Lucky she had good batteries. The short ad ends with the mom on her knees embracing the child, thankful that the child wasn’t killed by trees or sucked into the grass; next time they will definitely stay home and watch TV.
I have seen this ad 4 times in the last month; at movie theaters, on TV and online. This is exactly the kind of “the outdoors is a scary place for children” message that convinces young parents and care providers that being outside is scary.
Let’s use this ridiculous advertisement as an opportunity to tell it like it is – another advertisement spreading fear.
Kay Meyer
The Brenton Arboretum
Dallas Center, IA 50063
The part of this conversation between Richard Louv and Thomas Berry that resonated particularly loudly to me is the notion of “a new movement of faith-oriented environmentalists, eager to move beyond the old divide between Bible-based interpretations of dominion and stewardship.” Having spent the last five years of my life in two communities that are strongly rooted in faith-based organizations (one in Southwestern, Idaho, and now in Southern California), this new movement seems of utmost importance. Religious institutions in these places have an incredible influence on the political and educational decisions that are made in the community. I wonder, how do we invite the people of these faith-based groups to join the conversation and growing concern where it is not already being had?
In college I was Earth woman to my friends:]. That was the 80’s. I proceeded to live a rural lifestyle, and rear my children “in the woods”. We still live there, and my now college age daughter had written a sociology paper on ADHD and nature deficit disorder. How about that!
Taking our nations children back to nature is my dream come true.
Our family is a living testimony to the enrichment provided by existence in the real and natural world.
I keep coming back to read this. Scientists have established the importance of natural areas and biodiversity for the health of the natural resources on which we depend. Health professionals and child development experts urge active engagement with nature for physical and developmental well-being. But few pieces so well frame our moral responsibility to hold on to natural areas for an equally-fundamental piece of being a whole and healthy human, where we seek inspiration, meaning and reflection and apply our values “even when no one is looking.” Thank you for sharing this wonderful story in your blog.
The issues brought to the public light in “Last Child” are helping many parents make different choices in what we expose our children to; offer for them to eat, do, explore; and what groups we join. As a mother and an informal educator, I have found, however, that knowledge and information about childhood obesity is only part of the issue. Beyond knowing that things are not good for our kids, I encounter other emotional barriers that contribute to obesity, or at least inactivity. Parents are trying to work through the information — and the emotion — and make time for unstructured time. We can only hope that an outcome of the financial crisis will be less money to “do stuff”, hence more time to “do stuff”. We’ll see.
I love this article. Thank you.
Having firsthand experience with how effective this practice is I only wish more people did it AND believed in it.
I must admit that I am suffering from nature deficit disorder and the only thing that calms me when I am trapped in a city is the realization that the effects of nature are being recognized. I feel anxious as I search for natural spaces, only to be disappointed by golf courses, plants I can not identify, trash, and man made ponds. The research, books, and websites all initially made my jaw drop and my head shake with relief. Yet the resulting wave of inspiration has crashed and I am feeling washed out. The solutions are there and I read of the people who are on the forefront of the movement in my home BC but I can’t seem to find them – to connect – to find out how I can help put the puzzle all together.
Is there is anyone out there?
beebaines@yahoo.ca
The line, “everything we discuss now should be about the 21st century” should be our mantra when dealing with issues of nature and children and our environment and family life and all of it. We’ve got to protect our connections to the earth and to each other – living in the now and with our eyes simultaneously on the future.
I must be the most ill-read person I know because I am just now stumbling upon you, your book and your blog, in that order, within the last few minutes. This piece on Thomas Berry will not be the last work of yours that I read. I look forward to reading Last Child in the Woods.
It is refreshing to read your book. I was pointed to it some time ago. I have a slightly different take on all of this. As a college professor in genomics, I saw a couple of years ago that my students were almost incapable of using their imaginations to think about biology. They also couldn’t look at simple tables and begin to deconstruct them, e.g. one column is longer than the other. When I worked one on one with them, they would say “well, just tell me what you want me to see.” I think that spending time in nature is one solution to this, but I think that it is not just the separation of kids from nature that is causing it. I hypothesized when I saw this in 2006 that it was due to a resonance in passive education – from too much TV and video games (which are in someone else’s reality) to No-Child-Left-Behind, as well as the fear of letting the kids just roam. In any event, I look forward to reading more of your writing – because while high school teachers seem to recognize clearly what I am saying, the faculty at my institution do not. I do a lot of visualizations, discussions, and other methods to get the students to access and experience their imaginations. So, don’t blame this on genomics and molecular biology – it is a broader thing that has convinced this generation that the highest intellectual achievement that humans can do is memorization.
Hello,
It has been a long time since I put life aside to finish a book. With each page of Last Child in the Woods I connected the seasons of my life to your words and now have a better understanding about why nature has always been so important to me.
Your comprehensive, yet ever so personal, view of our environment- far and near -evokes the same childlike wonder my three-year-old granddaughter shows on our many “expeditions” into a nearby forest. Whether we are collecting moss (I call it God’s carpet), watching snakes basking in the pine tree, or resting under a towering oak, her youth and my years seem to blend together into a timeless moment.
Reading your book is sure to enrich my humble blog, curiousaboutnatureblogspot.com
Joyanne Walmsley-Hammond
Richard,
It is, indeed sad that we are not giving our children & grandchildren enough time to “stop & smell the roses” or name the “birdies”. I feed many species of critters in my back yard & am always trying to educate my grandkids on their names & habits. Keep up e good work & I will do my best to do what I can.
I taught Outdoor School for Penn State University’s Environmental Center. We taught earth science, orienteering, team building, journaling and more to 5-7 grade school groups. We’d get reports from teachers before students came for their week-long experience with us. “Difficult” students were always identified, usually struggling with some form of ADD.
I consistently found that students who were unruly in a classroom did just fine outdoors. They may have been the kid that tried to trip someone when they were unloading the bus, but by the end they had become a better “team” player and were riding away with tears in their eyes.
I asked some crying students, “Why so sad? You now have one more happy memory!” They told me the reason they cried was that they loved learning that week and didn’t want to go back to regular school.
It’s good to know that our elected officials are voting in favor of getting kids out of school buildings and out into the world they’re supposed to be learning about. I hope that students are soon spending at least one whole day a week at “Outdoor School” – very soon, all over the world.
Melissa
Norfolk, VA
Richard, et al,
Kudos on your efforts to date. You are so right, the future will be better–awareness has a way of improving things. The inexorable decline of the role of in-situ exposure as a key part of educating anyone, not just children, in the natural sciences–or physics, or accounting, or most any topic–is one of the many negative unintended consequences of the otherwise noble quest to provide basic education for every child that began as an incredible dream in the 18th Century. While our world will no doubt sustain the system of centralized, costly, inefficient schools for another two decades or more, I am advocating for the initiation of a reboot of public education to start over and redesign it from square one. If you could do that today, would your resulting system resemble much of what we have today?
I appreciate your closing thought: “We believe that you and thousands of other people like you will help shape the coming era, a time of human restoration through nature.” I would modify it to read “…a time of human restoration through community.” As you will see on All New Public Education (click through on my name above), I see public education as beginning at conception and extending to two or three days after death or each and every human being. Everyone is a student throughout their lives and, as soon as they have something to share, everyone is a teacher. Lessons are taught in the kitchen, the park, the office, the museum, and anywhere there is something to observe and learn from. And yes, there is online collaboration, for communities need not be dependent on physical proximity.
I will soon include your concept and content in All New Public Education for the obvious alignment in a common good. Your thoughts on ANPE would be appreciated as well. Together we strive to redirect mankind off the tangent that the industrial age set us on, back to a path through the world we live in–for as long as we live in it.
Again, congratulations and many thanks for all you have invested and all you are still committed to do for this worthy vision.
Stephen Dill
All New Public Education
Richard -
Thanks for this amazing article, I love your writing! I’m only just discovering your blog (through an Environmental Education colleague) and your posts are fantastic – but this was my favorite!
Cheers,
Cynthia
I am currently supporting a submission for a grant for obesity reduction in the community to help start a rowing club on our local lake. Your work here is a most valuable help to all local ‘outdoor’ agents.
Richard,
Reading your column almost offsets a reading of the grim misdirected California State Parks, Off-Highway Motor Vehicle Recreation Division 2008 Strategic Plan. The basin premise of this document is flawed: OHV recreation is a sustainable environmental enhancement. To help make their point, on page 8, Last Child in the Woods is referenced adjacent to a photograph of a child, riding a motorcycle on a dirt road, completely encased in the appropriate protective gear, including a fully padded helmet. They use your words to promote this activity as healthy and capable of instilling caring values for the natural lands of California. By implication the young rider is pursuing an activity that will connect him (her) with the natural world. The picture is nearly identical to the one accompanying your blog with the child walking on the road.
This is a ludicrous position for a State Agency charged with protecting the environment for future generations to take. It is deeply cynical to use your words to promote children riding OHVs as a healthy recreational pastime. Many of the riders begin at an early age (sometimes below 5 years) to experience nature in a synthetic cocoon of speed and sound, while their central nervous systems are developing and acutely sensitive. Their bonding (probably at the cellular level) is with a machine, noise and vibration, not the natural world.
OHV riding, and its associated trails, is known to be one of the most destructive human activities on the functioning of the natural systems in our wildlands. It is queer indeed that the state chooses to endorse OHV recreation as an environmental enhancement, when research shows that its effects cannot be mitigated. It appears to me that the OHV Division suffers from nature-deficit disorder. Perhaps you can suggest a cure. At the very least please suggest they stop promoting you book in their strategic plan.
Pat Flanagan
Environmental Educator
Richard and all,
I am privileged to give nature tours as a docent at Konza Prairie Biological Station. On a Bison Loop tour with a busload of 42 5th graders, I was holding forth about the history of bison, how they almost became extinct. About 30 bison including calves were a few yards from the bus, so the kids could get a good look. The discussion turned to how some animals and plants are domesticated and others are wild and will not be domesticated like big bluestem, bison, zebras, deer, antelope and elk.
A girl began frantically waving her thin arm over her head, “Can you milk a bison?” That question raised the hairs on the back of my neck. What a gift that question was to open a discussion and to let the children’s imaginations go.
That question opened up many strategies for me to use to mine the curiosity of children and adults whether we are out on a 3 mile hike through the tall grass or sitting on a bus scanning the horizon for bison.
I find that children and adults are eager to discover what nature has to offer them. I applaud the efforts of everyone working to get children and adults out in nature.
Diane Barker
To Pat Flanagan:
Thanks for the note. I’m definitely not keen on introducing more motorized vehicles to natural areas or to moving away from the “traditional park” model (if traditional means natural), as mentioned in the report. I’ll be looking into this. Thanks again.
Rich
I had been reading reviews of your book and was thrilled to pick up the National Parks edition while visiting the Jedediah Smith Redwoods National Park this past September. Thank you for such an insightful look into the healthy development of our children.
I see that you will be visiting my “neck of the woods” in March with a presentation in Reading, PA. WELCOME. You’ll love our area. There are wonderful facilities for outdoor experiences.
Fortunately, our two sons and now our grandchildren are able to explore outdoors in our still somewhat rural neighborhood. It would be wonderful if all children would be able to enjoy what we have.
Best wishes continuing to spread your message.
Louise
Richard Louv and Nature Deficit Disorder…
Their objective rings true: give children of all ages the chance to experience what you are teaching—hands on and in context—so that so much more is learned and appreciated than the one or more learning points of the lesson and the experience is so…
As a psychologist who has spent too much time working in ‘adolescent treatment centres’ and psychiatric hospital units, I am very aware of the consequences of the disconnect with nature. In relaxation imagery, no one ever suggests, ‘and imagine yourself in a shopping mall’, it is usually a nature scene.
Artists of all stripes tend to refer back to nature.
I would like to issue an invitation to anyone in the Victoria BC area, to include the following event, if you are coming to hear Richards presentation. The art exhibit has been extended till the end of March.
And I beg your indulgence in a blatant promo to bring people closer to nature and wildlife.
OASES presents: An Afternoon with Wildlife.
*Don’t miss this one! Come and be wowed by visits from a number of live animals, and become informed about lemurs, porpoises, lizards and birds of prey.*
John Creviston, former curator of the Crystal Garden Conservation Centre, will speak about the incredible life and habits of the Solomon Island Skink. These unique lizards have a family structure rarely found amongst reptiles, and have a “grasping” tail used when climbing through their rainforest habitat. Two skinks, each about 2 ft. long, will be in attendance.
Anna Hall will talk on the always fascinating porpoises. Anna, a PhD candidate in Zoology, is considered an expert in these mysterious mammals. She recently spoke at the reception for the “Celebrating Wildlife” art exhibit, and was so well received that she was asked back by popular demand.
Jeff Krieger of Alternative Wildlife Solutions will discuss the life and antics of raptors. Live birds will be present, including a red-tail hawk and gyrfalcon, so that the beauty of these normally shy animals can be appreciated. Some basics of falconry will be discussed by Ben Wallace, president of the BC Falconry Association. A flying demonstration might also occur.
Lisa Gould PhD, professor of Biological Anthropology/Primatology at UVIC will give a talk on some of her favourite creatures…lemurs. There is a lot more to them then just being the stars of a TV series “Lemur Street”. Come and learn what Lisa has been doing on her trips to faraway Madagascar, and what could be done to help these primates and the people who live among them.
Please be sure to enjoy the display “Celebrating Wildlife”. This exhibit features a variety of sculptures, prints and photographs depicting local and exotic wildlife. Some of the artists will be in attendance and may be persuaded to discuss how they Celebrate Wildlife through their artwork.
When: Saturday, March 7, 2009. From 3-5 pm.
Where: Victoria Arts Connection, 2750 Quadra Street, (just north of Hillside).
*Admission is free, but please support all our presenters in their efforts to help wildlife.*
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For more information or to interview presenters please contact:
Herman Surkis at 250-472-6995, oases@shaw.ca, and visit oasesconservation.org
I’m helping to start an intergenerational preschool, opening fall 2009. We will have seniors living in one wing and a nature and art-focused preschool in the other. We hope to be getting these two generations together outside every day for gardening, walking in the woods, or just reading a book together in the shade of a big tree. We never stop needing the healing power of the natural world.
3/1/09
I wrote to call your attention to some remarkable kids here in Portland, OR. Christopher and Adrian are birders and scientists. I’ve known them since Kindergarten.
See today’s front page of the Oregonian . http://photos.oregonlive.com/oregonian/2009/02/birders_passion_turns_into_sci_2.html For all who are passionate about kids and nature, I think you’ll be delighted.
Meg
Although I think Eric takes a bit too long to get there, his point is quite valid: common points of view in any locality have blinders enforced by mainstream media, and those blinders are hard to remove.
It is unfortunate that Media can propel itself in the wrong direction by perpetuating a storyline or angle the audience has come to want to hear more of only because media outlets propagated it in the first place. It would take too much airtime to correct a misinterpretation.
These days in the PRC, I think the national government tries to tell a more globally nuanced story than it has in the past, but it is trying to do so towards a population it has trained expect to be wronged by traditional powers even as it exerts its own.