"Teaching children about the natural world should be seen as one of the most important events in their lives."
Thomas Berry, The Dream of the Earth
There is something about nature that fills the soul and brings a sense of peace where nothing in the manmade world can. My greatest memories of childhood are triggered by experiences with the natural world around me. I don't think I realized how profound the effects of nature were on me until I began reading Last Child In The Woods, Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder by Richard Louv. Granted, I have only read the introduction and the first couple of pages, but it immediately caused my brain to begin pulling out all these amazing memories of being outside as a child. We didn't play video games much, even though we had a Nintendo, we went outside, even in the 99% humidity and 90 plus degree temperatures of summer in Florida. I gave back to nature, organizing a cleanup of the neighborhood pond and posting signs to Give a Hoot, Don't Polute, but never realized what nature was giving me.
While my memories of the outdoors in Florida are just that, memories, my real introduction to the power of nature came when we visited North Carolina and I saw mountains for the first time. I recall exploring the greenbelt behind my house in Florida as a child, catching tadpoles and watching them turn into frogs. I remember exploring the undeveloped land at the back of our neighborhood. I remember we'd sit in the garage during lightning storms and watch in awe as the torrential rain poured down and then catch toads in the aftermath. I remember looking so forward to the two weeks we'd spend every summer on Longboat Key, where our days from sunup to sundown were spent outside on the beach watching the birds, dolphins, manatees, crabs, sand flees, and playing in the tide pools, and then after dark we'd return to see the moon reflecting on the water, more stars than you could ever see in the city, and the light show of the phosphorescence in the seaweed on the shore.
But then, then we went to North Carolina and I saw something very foreign to me growing up in the population dense Orlando area. I saw vast valleys between towering mountains, I hiked trails where you could hear no human sounds other than footsteps and the occasional conversation, I saw stars like I'd never seen before, caught fireflies, heard babbling brooks, saw deer and bears where they were supposed to live. It was then that I realized that this was important. This made me feel like I'd never felt before. I felt alive, I felt inspired, I felt at home. I carried that feeling with me throughout my childhood and knew, someday, I would live closer to that nature, but it also helped me realize that there was undiscovered nature all around me in Florida that I had overlooked. There are amazing spring fed rivers to canoe on where you can experience that silence I found in the mountains and there are expansive grasslands and swamps full of birds and alligators.
Nature helped me conquer fears. I first spent the night outdoors in college. The first time was on a fraternity campout which hardly counts, but the next time I went on my first backpacking trip to the mountains of Virginia. I'd never done anything like it before. As someone who was painfully shy up to this point, going on a five day trip with a bunch of strangers was unheard of, but nature called. It was a turning point for me that opened my eyes to a world beyond the world of man, hiking for a day and seeing no other people and spending 24/7 outside made me feel like I'd never felt before. It made me brave. It made me share things I never thought I would with people I didn't know. It gave me the courage to become a trip leader myself and give this experience to other people. It gave me the social skills to go into the field of physical therapy where I have to talk to new people on a daily basis.
This is what I want to give to my children. This is why both my kids were camping by 8 weeks old. This is why we try to spend at least a little time outside every day. This is why I take my 2 1/2 year old on a hike and I point out the bees, scat, the fall leaves changing, the deer grazing. I let him touch nature, smell nature, see nature. He is a sponge and I want him to appreciate these things as soon as he can. This is why I take my infant daughter outside to smell the different herbs in the garden and to feel the breeze on her face. This is why when I take her outdoors I don't cover every inch of her body with clothing, I allow here to feel the warmth of the sun on her bare skin or the chill of a cool fall morning. Both of my kids were colicky and the first thing I'd do when they got fussy was take them outside in the fresh air which had an immediate calming effect. I don't think that this is unique to my children. I think all children are born with a desire to be in nature, but it has to be nurtured by us as parents.
I now live in Colorado, the mountains are a stones throw away. I now have an appreciation for Florida's natural beauty that I intend to instill in my children when we go visit their grandparents by taking them kayaking in the mangroves and canoeing in the rivers. As a child I loved going to my grandparents' house because they had a grape vine, a vegetable garden where I'd get to eat fresh peas, tomatoes and green onions, and they kept a compost pile. I now have a garden where I attempt to get used to the Colorado growing season and grow fresh herbs and vegetables so my children can see where food really comes from. I compost all our food scraps and use it to make my garden grow, as well as provide a great home to a lot of earth worms. Experiencing nature, not just understanding it, is invaluable to providing our children with the foundation they will need to improve the world for their generation and beyond.
