Capture the Essence of Earth Day: Help a Child Connect with Nature (Sunday at the Archives #17)

 Atlanta Nature Examiner Articles, Backyard Nature  No Responses »
Apr 202014
 

Take some children on a nature outing this Earth Day!You know that environmentalism has become trendy when “green” starts being used as a verb. Green is the color that the pigment chlorophyll imparts to plant leaves, enabling them to make their own food through an almost magical synergy of air, water, and sunlight.  As such, it evokes the presence of living things, of nature all around us.  It is not a verb that refers to switching one kind of light bulb for another one, or wrapping the hot water heater.

This is not to say that those actions are not beneficial, or important.  Conserving energy by turning down the thermostat or using compact fluorescent light bulbs will not only save money, it will also reduce the burning of fossil fuels that in turn produce greenhouse gases, smog, and even acid rain.  These are important actions in our capacity as environmental stewards, a role we acknowledge and celebrate every year on Earth Day. But just as “green” has its origins in nature, so too does caring for the Earth begin with being in nature. 

Fairs, contests, and appearances by Captain Planet are common ways to commemorate Earth Day.  These events and activities raise human awareness about environmental challenges and how each of us might address them by recycling more and driving less.  But to connect with the heart of what Earth Day is about — the quest to build a long-term, sustainable relationship between human beings and the natural world — the best way to celebrate it is also the simplest.  Provide a child that you know with the opportunity to spend some unstructured time in nature.

Children are the future caretakers of the natural world.  And now, more than ever before, children are not getting the opportunities they need to bond with nature — opportunities that some researchers suspect may be crucial for healthy child development.  They are growing up in sterile suburban developments where doctrines and covenants forbid tree forts and sometimes even look askance at a few branches strewn about the yard.  And they are living highly programmed lives, punctuated by sport practices and away games, music and ballet lessons.  There is so little time and so little opportunity to do what comes naturally to every child — to romp in the woods.

So take your young son or daughter or nephew or niece and lead them on a nature outing.  The children you know will probably will go eagerly, though they may try to bring along a computerized gadget of some sort, depending upon their age and access to those things.  (Resist all such requests.)   For your own part, don’t bring along with you any agendas or lesson plans.  Maybe show the child a place you visited often when you were a child, or just go looking for an oak tree to climb or a stream to follow.  Let the child be Explorer Number One (as this author once referred to himself on outings with his dad, Explorer Number Two).  Have adventures together.  Splash in a stream, turn over rocks, and then return home late for dinner, muddy and scratched.

It will be the most exhilarating, joyful, and beneficial Earth Day you can ever have — at least, until next year.

This article was originally published on April 21, 2010. 

Getting Close to Nature Through a Gap in the Fence (Sunday at the Archives #6)

 Atlanta Nature Examiner Articles, Backyard Nature, Education  No Responses »
Feb 022014
 

A posted gap in the fence along a trail at Newman Wetlands offers wetland access to visitors.

Last weekend, this author took a visit to Newman Wetlands Center, following a familiar half-mile trail of gravel and boardwalk along and through areas of ponds and woods. Fences or railings along most of its length keep visitors to the straight and narrow, preventing them from stepping off trail — and potentially, into the muck.  Gravel and boardwalk surfaces are level, and capable of sustaining heavy foot traffic.  The wetlands themselves are not.  A single deep boot-print in the mud could remain for months.

It was quite a surprise to discover, along the trail, that a section of wooden fence had been removed.  According to a laminated paper sign attached to one of the remaining fence posts in that section, the purpose of this break in the fence was to enable visitors to use “new trail areas”.  Perhaps the plan is to add gravel and perhaps a wetland overlook, with more fence and railings.  Or maybe the gap is there to enable visitors to feel mud underfoot and thorny briars rubbing against their bare legs.

Beyond the gap in the fence, a zone of flattened leaves marked an impromptu path a few dozen feet to the edge of a stream within the wetland.  A bit of bushwacking led to a great spot for photographing some aquatic turtles (painteds and sliders) sunning themselves on a log.  In his enthusiasm, the writer startled many of them while trying to approach, and they plopped into the water and swam away.

The “adventure” was one of the high points of the author’s trip, and marked the only point on the trail where there were “hazards” such as thorny underbrush and patches of deep mud.  There is something unsettling, though, about that gap in the fence.  It is not the gap itself that is troubling, but the fear of what its impact might be.  The same space that provides children (accompanied by adults) and adults alike with a way to get closer to nature can also become heavily compacted and eroded with so many passing feet.  And what of the turtles on the nearby log?  Will they eventually move on, after too many times of being scared off their chosen logs?  No doubt the wetlands would be much better protected if we all kept to clearly marked paths of gravel and wood.

And yet, this line of thought is even more troubling to the author, as an environmental educator.  As Richard Louv has documented so powerfully in his Last Child in the Woods, children today have fewer opportunities to get out into nature than their parents did.  They spend much less time splashing in the water, jumping in the mud, catching frogs and salamanders, and using leaves and branches to construct imaginary realms.  Increasingly, children are growing up in suburban developments whose doctrines and convenants expressly forbid tree forts and wild spaces in residents’ yards.  Where can children go to bond with nature?  “Where do the children play?” as a famous songwriter once asked.

There are so few places left in Georgia, and throughout much of the eastern U.S., for children to connect with the natural world.  So naturally, those few places open to them are in danger of abuse from overuse, because they are all there is.  We need more gaps in the fence, not fewer.  We need a lot more places without fences, or “keep out” signs, or wood-chip paths where nature is to be observed at a respectful distance, like paintings behind ropes in a museum.

This article was originally published on March 31, 2010.

Nature and Childhood: Worlds beyond Names (Sunday at the Archives #2)

 Atlanta Nature Examiner Articles, Backyard Nature, Education, Natural History  No Responses »
Jan 052014
 
Tiger swallowtail butterfly. Photographed June 2011 at Newman Wetlands Center, Hampton, GA.

Tiger swallowtail butterfly. Photographed June 2011 at Newman Wetlands Center, Hampton, GA.

According to the book of Genesis in the Holy Bible, one of Adam’s first actions after being created was to gather together all living things and give them names. Clearly, the human predilection for classifying and naming plants and animals goes back thousands of years. It is most evident today in birders’ life lists: collections of scientific names of all the different birds one has seen over a lifetime. My own bookshelves overflow with field guides, nearly a hundred in all, covering birds, trees, salamanders, moths, mushrooms, and many other kinds of living things. In medieval alchemy, names had power to them, as shown by the fact that to spell refers both to stating the letters in a word and exerting magical influence in the world. Nowadays, to know the name (common or scientific) of a plant or animal is enough for a naturalist to find dozens of images and species accounts scattered across the Web. It is possible to take a digital photograph of a butterfly in the morning and spend the rest of the day indoors and online, reading about the butterfly, its life cycle, host plants, behaviors, etc.

But naming is only one access point into learning about the natural world. And particularly for children, perhaps names are not the best place to start after all. The naturalist Barry Lopez warns, in his book of essays, Crossing Open Ground (pp. 150-151), “The quickest door to open in the woods for a child is the one that leads to the smallest room, by knowing the name each thing is called. The door that leads to a cathedral is marked by a hesitancy to speak at all, rather to encourage by example a sharpness of the senses.” Once we learn a name for something, there is a sense of completion, a suggestion that it is all that is necessary. Yet there is so much more out there to discover. When we take the time to study the more-than-human world closely, we begin to notice how trees and insects have individuality and personality of their own. A label just captures a static form, while living things are always changing. Caterpillars become butterflies, and a holly bush outside my window comes into bloom and suddenly swarms with bees and other flying insects craving nectar.

Thinking back to my own childhood (with many hours spent running barefoot across neighbors fields or tromping through a woodlot behind my house), I recall how few plants and animals I could identify. I knew what poison ivy looked like, and my brother taught me about jewelweed because it could be used to treat poison ivy. There was a shrub that grew in several places in the yard that I was confident was witch hazel; a few years ago, I learned that it was actually spicebush. There were dandelions, bane of my father, resident Lawnkeeper. And then there was Queen Anne’s lace, or wild carrot. My brother taught me that one, too. It’s roots tasted quite similar to carrot, but their texture was much closer to that of many strands of dental floss twisted together. In the front yard, there were black walnut trees that periodically covered the lawn with large green nuts, and in the far front, by the road, a stately sycamore that I learned in school was one of the oldest deciduous trees in the evolution of life on Earth. Animals I knew only by categories: ants, spiders, squirrels. My knowledge of classification was ad hoc and full of holes, having as much to do with uses plants could be put to as anything else.

I am in good company. Even the famous biologist E.O. Wilson recognized that this kind of nature experience may be more important in fostering a love of nature and sense of wonder about the environment around us. In his autobiography, Naturalist, he wrote (pp. 12-13) that “Hands-on experience at the critical time, not systematic knowledge, is what counts in the making of a naturalist. Better to be an untutored savage for a while, not to know the names or anatomical detail. Better to spend long stretches of time just searching and dreaming.” Wilson went on to quote Rachel Carson’s essay, The Sense of Wonder, in which she commented that “If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and the impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow. The years of childhood are the time to prepare the soil.”

How, then, to encourage children to connect with nature, if not by way of field guides? One approach would be simply to encourage children to go on backyard safaris, to see what they can discover and study it closely. All that is needed are long pants and repellant against ticks and chiggers, knowledge of how to avoid fire ants, poison ivy, and other hazards of going adventuring, a magnifying lens, perhaps a jar with holes in the lid, maybe even a digital camera, and plenty of time. I suspect the child will return with tales of sights and wonders you had not imagined before.

Another activity is to choose a few trees and shrubs, observe them closely with a child, and encourage him or her to give them names. Periodically over the seasons, the child can be encouraged to revisit Bendy Tree and Prickly Shrub. How are they changing day to day, and season to season? Are there new visitors to the tree that weren’t there before? Are the leaves just unfurling, or are they perhaps riddled with holes from someone’s latest meal? Eventually, as the child gets to know the plants better, and is on familiar terms with them, he or she may inquire after their scientific names (or at least their common ones). Then it will be time to break out a field guide. The name will add one more layer of knowledge to what is already there, rather than being sufficient by itself. There is so much about nature hidden beneath the names, like salamanders beneath cobbles in a stream, just waiting to be explored.

This article was originally published on April 30, 2012.