Dust was rising as massive earth graders rumbled across a now-blank plain. Seemingly overnight, they had sliced away the horizon. Later came rows of mini-mansions devoid of color or individuality or visual meaning, and shopping malls, one after another after another after another, with the same anchor stores, the same stucco, the same cars, the same dreamlessness.

Perhaps you’ve shared this feeling – this solastalgia, as Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht calls it: a form of human psychic distress caused by the loss of nature.

The disappearance of that horizon serves as example and metaphor, a reflection of how our society is out of balance, often overwhelmed by technology. Every day, it seems, we’re enervated by empty calories, empty suits, empty politics, empty financial institutions, empty architecture, empty schools, empty news -- emptied land.

Do we live in the age of emptiness?

Shift the view just a bit, and the world fills with possibilities. By restoring our kinship with other species, we restore ourselves. Imagine nature-rich and nature-smart homes, neighborhoods, schools, parks, urban and rural farms, workplaces, whole cities. To build this kind of a world, we need more than conservation. We need a new nature movement, not one that urges us back to nature, but forward to nature.

The eco-theologian Thomas Berry, a man who knew the power of practical dreaming, said the "Great Work" of the 21st century would be to reconnect our humanity to the reality and spirit of nature, to the fullness of life. Instead of settling for an age of emptiness, we could be entering one of the most creative periods in human history.

It’s a choice.

_________________________

Richard Louv is author of THE NATURE PRINCIPLE and LAST CHILD IN THE WOODS. He is also chairman emeritus of The Children & Nature Network 

Photo: RL

You want to reconnect with real life in a virtual age.

• You hunger for authenticity; you believe in nature’s power to create a deeper sense of personal and regional identity.
• You can be of any race or culture, you can live in an inner-city, suburb or small town, and you see your connection to nature as a birthright.
• You're a biophilic architect on the cutting edge of green design.
• You’re a nature-smart developer who creates or rebuilds neighborhoods that connect people to nature.
• You’re an urban planner or public health official who believes that creating more nearby nature builds better health, tighter social bonds and a smarter workforce.
• You’re an employer using biophilic design to create a more productive workplace.
• You’re a nature-smart homeowner determined to create a healthier, happier, restorative home, yard and garden.
• You’re a pediatrician or other health care professional who prescribes nature for your young patients and their families.
• You're helping a hospital, children's mental health center, nursing home or other health facility encourage healing through nature.
• You’re an ecopsychologist, wilderness therapy professional, nature therapist, camp counselor, docent, or park ranger working as a “park health paraprofessional.”
• You’re a “new agrarian” -- an organic farmer or rancher or urban gardener.
• You're a locavore, dedicated to consuming locally grown food.
   
• You want to reignite all your senses.
• You’re a nature-smart teacher who takes your students outside because you understand the power of nature to help them learn.
• You’re an artist, writer, photographer or musician who knows the power of nature to stimulate creativity, and you use your talents to reconnect people to nature.
• You’re an outdoor recreationist who restores nature.
• You're a citizen naturalist.
• You care about the human relationship with nature, whether you're liberal, conservative...or other.
• You’re a law enforcement official who believes nature can play a role in crime prevention and prison recidivism.
• You’re an attorney who protects the forgotten human right to our connection to nature and the responsibilities that come with that right.
• You’re a mayor or county official or business leader looking for a new way to envision your region’s future.
• You’re done with despair; you want to create a newer world.
• You’re ….

This is a partial list, based on "The Nature Principle." Where do you see yourself?

_________________________

Richard Louv is chairman emeritus of The Children & Nature Network and author of eight books, including THE NATURE PRINCIPLE, and LAST CHILD IN THE WOODS.

C&NN keeps track of the movement, offers a single place on the Web to learn about the growing body of research, and most important, provides a way for people, especially at the grassroots, to network – to learn from each other both online and in person at our national leadership gatherings.  The site contains links to news, human interest articles, analysis, and the best collection of publicly-available abstracts of studies on children and nature, from England, Australia, Scandinavia and elsewhere.

In the best sense, this is a leaderless movement, and a well-connected one.

As of today, nearly a hundred cities, states, provinces and regions in North America have created their own campaigns to connect children and families to nature. The movement is reaching inner-cities, suburbs and rural areas across the globe. Many physicians in the UK and United States are “prescribing” time in nature to their young patients. In the U.S., we’re seeing changes in local, state and national policies and increased media coverage of the issue.

We’re seeing a growing popularity for nature-based education. We've worked to honor what we call Natural Teachers -- the English teachers, the art teachers, the biology teachers who insist on getting their students outdoors. Conservation groups, large and small, have launched major initiatives to connect children to nature. We’ve seen thousands of families band together to create family nature clubs. Even as urbanization continues around the world, we see growing interest in transforming our cities into places rich with nearby nature.  Young people are stepping forward, often from inner cities, to become what we call Natural Leaders of the movement.

These are just a few changes we’re seeing, but we don’t know if these positive steps will continue. The barriers remain. For example, electronic media use by children and youth in the U.S. has increased in the past five years to more than 53 hours per week, up from 44 just five years before. Obesity and other health-related risks continue at epidemic rates among children and youth, as well as adults, here and abroad. Children’s ability to recognize wild species continues to decline, and the first wave of denatured young people is now in their early parenting years.

Along with many other groups, our goal is to create deep cultural change. Some people don't think that's possible. We do. I'd like to invite you to join the movement, if you haven't done so already, and to explore the Children & Nature Network web site. Thanks -- and Happy New Year!

__________________

Richard Louv is chairman emeritus of The Children & Nature Network, where this essay first appeared, and author of eight books, including THE NATURE PRINCIPLE, and LAST CHILD IN THE WOODS.

In the March 2009 issue of Orion Magazine, and then in a more detailed chapter in “The Nature Principle,” I sketched out a case for that right; not as legal argument, but as moral stance. And I emphasized that this birthright is accompanied by a responsibility to protect and care for the natural world.

That idea had already begun to take root as part of the children and nature movement. In 2007, California adopted the first statewide children's outdoor bill of rights, followed by similar symbolic statements in other states, including Florida, Maryland, North Carolina, Kansas, and most recently Wisconsin. Cities and regions around the country have embraced similar declarations. 

Now the concept is spreading internationally.

Henstra, with Thomas van Slobbe, one of the Netherland’s most prominent conservationists and director of the wAarde Foundation, have launched The Child's Right to Nature Initiative. Their goal is to enshrine the right to nature in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) or other relevant UN documents.

As Henstra points out, this “relatively new concept” is not currently recognized as a specific right in the CRC, nor in any other UN human rights treaty. Yet, it fits the purpose of the CRC, “which is to ensure a healthy development of children.” The only other UN document that hints at this right is the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, but that focuses more on the human right to a healthy environment.

This is a subtle but important distinction. The environmental justice movement has made an effective case that people who live in economically depressed neighborhoods and regions are the most vulnerable to toxic dumps, and that all people have a right to clean air, soil and water. But what about the intrinsic, natural benefits of nature to human health, wellbeing, and cognitive and spiritual development?

In November, Tony King, head of policy for the Scottish Wildlife Trust, wrote in an editorial for the British newspaper The Guardian, “When people talk of human rights in the context of nature conservation, they often mean protecting the rights of people in the non-industrial world to make use of the obvious things nature provides, such as firewood, food and traditional remedies.” But natural habitat offers even more than that.

King cited the “growing and compelling body of evidence that regular and ready access to a wildlife-rich environment is essential for children's health and wellbeing.” As a result, governments can and should articulate that “every child and young person has the right to grow up and live in a high-quality, wildlife-rich environment with ready access to the physical and mental health benefits, developmental advantages and play opportunities it affords.”

To move in this direction is both moral and practical. In a recent e-mail, King elaborated: “The position I am taking is a hybrid moral/utilitarian one (perhaps moral-plus would be a better way of putting it). There is a government focus of preventative spend[ing]… I am working to raise the importance of environmental and biodiversity investment in this context.”

Henstra and Van Slobbe plan to press ahead with their international campaign with the support of The International Union for Conservation of Nature‚ National Committee of the Netherlands and other organizations, says Henstra.

King wants his country to do more, too. He cautions that all “forty-three rights recognized by the (CRC) are important, and some clearly more fundamental than others; a number of countries struggle to ensure that even some of the more basic rights are recognized and some actively obstruct them.” But, he adds, “Nature is good for people: Let's recognize the right of every child to live and grow up in a wildlife-rich world.”

Rather than becoming mired in legalisms, the debate about this forgotten human right should take place first at the cultural level – in our schools, places of worship, living rooms and neighborhoods. This is a moral and utilitarian conversation worth having, one that illuminates the interdependent issues of our time: the conservation of nature and the preservation of our fundamental humanity.

__________________

Richard Louv is chairman emeritus of The Children & Nature Network, where this essay first appeared, and author of eight books, including THE NATURE PRINCIPLE, and LAST CHILD IN THE WOODS.

Photos are of Annelies Henstra and Jason Louv, age four.

One December, I wrote a newspaper column about Linda Evangelist, of El Centro, California, who did not enjoy shopping. 

Linda and the members of her family decided that, rather than buying each other presents, each would write a love letter to the other family members, to be read aloud on Christmas morning. The love letters would list at least twenty-five reasons why the person receiving the letter was loved or valued.

Among the reasons her son Brad (then a teen-ager) gave for loving his dad: "You would bribe me to go get ice cream late at night after Mom went to bed."  Among the reasons her two sons gave for loving their mom: "You come up with weird ideas like this one." Among the reasons the brothers gave for loving each other: "You rode me on your handlebars to school when I was in junior high," and "You were considerate enough to put your banana peels under the couch." And so on

Christmas morning love lists became a tradition in the Evangelist household—and in other homes, as well. One year, at Christmas time, a talk-show host on L.A. radio station KFI read the column over the air. The idea began to spread. So I decided that my family had better get on board, too. 

That year, we sat down and wrote our own Christmas love letters. Here are a few items from my love lists.

Among the reasons I listed in my letter to my son, Jason: "You let me read you bedtime stories, even though you're 12. You protect your brother even when he irritates you. You make a mess I wouldn't trade for anything. I can trust your word. You teach me about UFOs and comics. You work hard for a goal. You try to do what's right, even when it's hard to know what that is. You treat people with respect. You're dreamy and imaginative. You like me to watch 'X-Files' with you with the lights turned off, and you tape it for me when I'm not home. You love your family. You sing to yourself. . ."

I listed the following reasons, among others, for valuing and loving my 6-year-old, Matthew: "Every night when I tuck you in, you laugh at my joke: 'Can I take your glasses off so your nose can grow?' You like to fish even more than I do. Your enthusiasm for every moment. The way you snuggle. The way you laugh when I give you a belly beezle. You stand up for yourself. You love Rex the Wonder Dog, even when the rest of us have had it with his whining. . . "

My list for Kathy included: "You gave birth to Matthew and Jason. You care deeply about your patients at work. You're honorable in every part of your life. I trust you. You don't pick up my socks. You took care of my mother, and me, when she was dying. You go family camping when you'd rather get room service. You introduced me to the joys of room service. You read better books than I do. The scent of your clothes. The way you look when the covers are wrapped around your face ... "

We wrote these Christmas love lists for a few years, and put these time capsules in a safe place. The ones the boys and Kathy wrote to me and to each other were lovely. Fishing and other family adventures in nature were mentioned, including my propensity to appear to be lost in the woods, and more private things.

Then the boys were older, and then they were off to college, and now they’re young men on their own. The ritual faded.

 Perhaps we should revive it. Your family might want to try it, too. It's just an idea. Life's short.

__________________

Richard Louv is chairman emeritus of The Children & Nature Network and author of eight books, including THE NATURE PRINCIPLE, LAST CHILD IN THE WOODS, and THE WEB OF LIFE (Conari Press, 1996), from which this essay is adapted.

The photo is from a walk in New York during a blizzard.

When I reached the far side, Mrs. Townsend would wave me into her cottage. A widow, she lived alone and published our little community newspaper. I do not remember her first name. Adults did not have first names in those days. In the fading light, I would sit down on her settee, and she would sit in her wingback chair on the other side of the fireplace, which was always lit on winter evenings. I handed her my column.

“Typed. How nice,” she would say. Then she would lean back and read it, and I would hold my breath. When she began to laugh, the fire seemed to grow brighter and hotter.

This is how I became a columnist. When I was 13, my friend Pete Sebring stood up at a meeting of the Quivira Lake Fishing Club – an assembly of older men, retired, who drank more than they fished. Pete told them that I should write the monthly fishing club column. They all turned and looked at me. Fresh prey.

Most of the fish in the lake were collecting pensions, too. So I wrote about the fish that no one caught.

One evening, Mrs. Townsend told me a story. “Richy, there is a lady across the lake, on the other side of your cove,” she said. “She doesn't go outside much. She is very depressed. But this lady knows when your deadline is. Every month she calls me and asks me to read your column to her over the phone.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because it makes her laugh.”

I learned then that a writer does not write for thousands of people, but for one person – perhaps the lady across the lake.

Mrs. Townsend died a few years after I left Kansas. Her cottage was torn down and replaced by a California-style stucco monstrosity. As for the lady across the lake, I never learned who she was, but I still write for her.

__________ 

Richard Louv is chairman emeritus of The Children & Nature Network, and the author of eight books, including THE NATURE PRINCIPLE, LAST CHILD IN THE WOODS, and THE WEB OF LIFE. He was a columnist for The San Diego Union-Tribune from 1993-2007. This blog entry is adapted from his final column. 

The little things. The click of your wife's makeup bottles and brushes in the bathroom in the morning, the subsurface sound of them, a kind of music. The accompaniments: the older boy's bedroom door opening and shutting in haste, a faucet running, a gust of wind in the eucalyptus, the last rain on the window. The little things are what we remember, what we know, of family life. Of life.

The large events have their place, but even the large events of a family's passage are assembled from little things. The rush to the emergency room and the way the air feels there and the brave little chin thrust up beneath the mask, the small choked cry and the sound—especially this sound—of the thread being pulled through the wound, and the way the little hand holds tight to your finger. The little things.

Without realizing it, we can neglect the little things.

Though I have never divorced and my vow is for life, I have experienced a broken relationship or two. Grief does not attach itself so much to the empty space left by the other person, a loss often too abstract to grasp, but to the little things. The vertical space in the closet where familiar clothes once hung. The smell on the pillow or, on the street, a stranger's accent that conjures up a silenced voice.

When our parents and loved ones die, little things come back. Returning home after a death, you find a quilt that wrapped around you long ago, and you remember how the hands felt as they tucked you in. You find yourself startled by the way the dishes are arranged in your parent's kitchen cabinet; you are surprised because you know the arrangement, and you did not know it was so familiar until you looked at it within the context of loss.

The impression most remembered from my grandmother's death is not of the large fact of her body in the casket, but of coming into her cold kitchen a few days afterward and seeing the jar of mincemeat cookies, which she often made for me and my brother. In the jar, then, they were covered with mold.

Just as family grief is articulated by little things, so is joy. Here is an exercise: Go through your house when everyone is away and, in the silence, look for these little things.

In my house, I see the drawing of Wyoming with the owl in the tree singing, "Ho, ho, ho," and the little wooden toolbox, with the name Matt carved on the side, filled with crayons, some of them peeled. The smell of them connects you in time. The crumbs on top of the toaster, the empty cereal boxes left out, seem suddenly precious. So do the stacks of games—Candyland, Clue, Monopoly. Each family's Monopoly is stamped with its own unique patina of worn corners and stained Chance cards. Little things.

The fishing rods leaning against the corner of the garage, some from my own childhood, some bought for the boys. The rods stand tall together. Shelves filled with books; most of them old, neglected friends, each with a story to tell.

A balsa glider on the stairs. At the top of the landing, a small landscape, a stop-time mountain scene painted in oils by the boys' grandfather. Once, twice, the bullfrog in my older son's room harrumphs, because spring is coming; in a distant time, when my sons or my wife or I, alone or together, drive past some stream or pond surrounded by reeds shaking with redwing blackbirds, we will hear this particular booming sound and in it recognize these years of our family life.

In the largest bedroom, the smell of a comforter; and in the closet, my wife's clothing hangs neat and fresh. And all around the room the bottles of roses, which she has carefully dried over 17 years, all the roses I have given, not one missed. And beside the bathtub a thick, red, scented candle with lots of time left in it.

Here is the next part of this exercise: When your family is home again, listen to them, watch them, wait for the sounds and smells and tilted chins and the shouted competitions between the children and the sighs of the house as it slips into sleep. Hold these things. These little things are everything.

__________ 

Richard Louv is chairman emeritus of The Children & Nature Network and author of eight books, including THE NATURE PRINCIPLE, LAST CHILD IN THE WOODS, and THE WEB OF LIFE (Conari Press, 1996), from which this essay is drawn.

The photo was taken during a visit to the shack where Aldo Leopold and his family lived for several summers, as they restored the land, and Leopold wrote portions of The Sand County Almanac.

Photo by John Johns

Could they be the group with the most influence on human habitat in the future, particularly when it comes to the connection between children and adults to the rest of nature?  “Because of their training, landscape architects are big thinkers, or tend to be,” says my friend, Vicki Estrada, a landscape architect, urban designer, and president of Estrada Land Planning in San Diego.

Asked to speak at the conference, I offered a starter list of suggestions for how landscape architects, and the rest of us, could truly green our cities:

"Nature is not a place to visit, it is home." -— Gary Snyder

Afew months ago, at the Minnesota Arboretum, several hundred people from a variety of sectors – tourism, housing development, health care, education, and others – came together for a conference focused in part on the Nature Principle.

I was especially intrigued by the remarks of Mary Jo Kreitzer, a nursing professor at the University of Minnesota and director of the university’s Center for Spirituality and Healing. She said the state should make it a goal to become the healthiest state in the country, and that viewing the future through the prism of the Nature Principle could help Minnesota reach that goal.

Getting a handle on the future isn’t easy for cities, regions and states. Civic future-envisioning groups – with names like “Envision San Diego 2020 “(not a real group) – are one way to do that. These earnest efforts to take the long view sometimes accomplish great achievements. But lately they’re running out of ways to frame the future. After all, only so many regions can become the “new Silicon Valley.”

Traditionally, these envisioning groups focus primarily on economic competition (our Silicon Valley is better than yours). What if they tried something new? And asked a different set of questions?

What would a city or state’s health care system look like, if it maximized the benefits of nearby nature and wilderness to the mental and physical health of a region’s human population? What would that region’s future education system look like? Could an investment in creating more nearby nature reduce obesity, save health care costs and improve student testing? Many of us think so.

What about its residential or commercial developments (and redevelopments)? Could incorporating nature into the planning of revived or new communities dramatically increase the quality of life, not to mention property values?

If more nature were woven into everyday life – if natural watersheds were revived, if community gardens and other forms of urban agriculture (including immigrant agriculture and high-rise farms) were encouraged, what would the economy and spirit of the region be in, say, ten or twenty years?

And if natural open space were protected and new parks created, what would the effect be on human civility and the crime rate? A host of new studies suggests the answer would be profoundly positive. What would our homes and yards look like, feel like, were the Nature Principle applied?

What would be the long-term impact of a region-wide campaign that truly greened businesses and workplaces? We’re not talking here about just saving energy costs, but about creating human energy, through biophilic design, which is linked to higher productivity, lower employee turnover, and more creativity in the workplace. How would all of this, and more, shape the natural capacities of children of this generation and the next?

On so many levels, such an envisioning process would be fundamentally different from the usual way that urban regions and states think about their futures. Tired approaches focus on one-upping the next town over, or other states, or on building an economy at the expense of other regions. But a community that applies the Nature Principle nurtures life itself – which helps every species, including humans, everywhere.

Why not envision that future?

____________________

Richard Louv is the author of THE NATURE PRINCIPLE and LAST CHILD IN THE WOODS. He is Chairman Emeritus of the Children and Nature Network. Photos: From the Cincinnati Nature Center and EVA-Lanxmeer in Culemberg, The Netherlands. Added perspective: A column by Neal Peirce on greenscaping cities in Nation's Cities Weekly

Take California, for instance. In coming months, as many as 70 parks, many of them in or near urban areas will close, according to California State Parks Director Ruth Coleman. This, she says, is the only way to absorb a $33 million parks budget cut over the next two years. “California has never closed its parks in its history, through two world wars and the Great Depression," Coleman said two weeks ago, in her keynote speech at the annual C&NN Grassroots Gathering.

Why is the future so often portrayed as a post-apocalyptic dystopia, filled with human brutality and stripped of nature? 

For decades, our culture has struggled with two addictions: to oil and to despair. But what if our lives were as immersed in nature as they are in technology every day? What if we not only conserved nature, but created it where we live, work, learn and play? What if something large and hopeful is already forming out there; what if we're part of it?

November 4, 2001

NEW YORK -- It’s midnight at ground zero. During the day, the endless funeral procession crosses the Williamsburg Bridge or comes up out of the subways or arrives on streams of yellow taxis. People cry on the way to the towers, a Haitian cab driver will tell you. Or they’re quiet, as if holding their breath.

The smell is famous by now, a new kind of celebrity. But it only comes now and then, when the wind shifts. During the day, ground zero is dominated by the familiar spine and its attachments; the teeth and skeletal fingers reaching up toward the lost bowl of the sky. But at midnight, the fingers and the teeth disappear, and you see something else.

From the chain-link fence at the edge of the abyss, two blocks from where the south tower once was, you see black tarps draped like mourning crepe over surviving buildings. High up, the tarps billow, as if breathing. At the center is the light: high-intensity lamps mounted on racks. Now, instead of clawing fingers, you see a cathedral -- shining medieval spires, smoke rising around them like incense. The structure, blinding in its beauty, is a statement of hope and faith and sweet defiance.

Look closer, and you see something moving behind the spires, a long-necked machine, prehistoric, its head dipping and rising, jaws gaping and closing. You look away.

“As long as it’s burning, we can’t get away from it,” someone says, but the speaker is unknown. Perhaps the comment comes from one of the two young men wearing black leather jackets, or one of the contemplative Hassidic Jews, standing at the fence in long dark coats and flat black hats, hands folded behind their backs; or the young guy wearing shorts trying to capture this scene in his 2-inch digital viewfinder, as if he could.

Only about 20 people are gathered here. These pilgrims are respectful, solemn. If they talk at all, they whisper. Janet Fout and Laura Forman, from West Virginia, stand at the fence. They’re in New York this day to receive an award for their work fighting mountaintop removal in West Virginia. Fout turns to Forman and and says, “It reminds me of Buffalo Creek.”

She is referring to the 1972 slag heap flood that threw a wall of water and coal refuse 30 feet high down a valley, killing 125 and leaving 4,000 homeless.  “One woman still sleeps in her clothes because she’s never sure when the flood will come again,” Fout adds, then falls silent. Forman begins to weep, and whispers, “But this, this . . . “

Ground zero is a black hole, a gravitational field so fierce that it sucks matter into itself; galaxies can disappear into such a hole, where they are condensed to an infinitely small speck of darkness or light, no one knows for sure. You are struck not by the enormity of the scene but by a strange intimacy. A tailor’s sign, barely legible under a coating of dust: “Repairs and Alteration.” Steam rises from manhole covers. Tanks of nitrogen line the sidewalk. In the lobby of a closed apartment complex at 110 Greenwich St., people have used their fingers to scrawl cryptic messages on caked glass and marble: “Put on mask.” “Dead man walking.”

Most of the adjacent businesses are closed, but some defy the abyss.

Laughter and the sound of glasses clinking come from Moran’s Ale House & Grill, an Irish pub inside the converted St. George’s Chapel. A plaque quotes James Joyce: “A good puzzle would be to cross Ireland without passing a pub.” On the door, someone has taped children’s crayon drawings of hearts, rainbows, smiling clowns. One says, “God bless our firefighters. All your friends will watch over you from heaven. Love, Katie Pentek, Girl Scout Troop 1735, Sayreville, New Jersey.” Above it, a depiction of the U.S. flag: “We will rebuild; these colors do not run.”

Most flags along the street are modest in size -- quiet, understated, like the people at the fence. But one business is an exception. Scores of flags cover its red awning, thrust out over the sidewalk. This is the Pussycat Lounge, which bills itself as “Wall Street’s favorite sexy watering hole,” located in a building that once “housed a notorious bordello.”

Wonderful. Bars in churches, sex joints clothed in red, white and blue. Here’s a New York thumb in the eye to freedom haters and lethal moralists from any country.

Suddenly, a great roar shakes the sidewalk. Two flatbed trucks rumble toward the fence, carrying sections of corpus -- twisted pipes and girders. Workers in yellow slickers employ high-pressure hoses to blast dust from the rolling tires. “Asbestos,” explains a hard-hatted worker with the hint of a moustache. He looks all of 17. “Don’t want them tracking it through the city.” The trucks seem to shake off the water. They rumble past like great locomotives and disappear into the night.

Midnight has come and gone. A Pakistani taxi driver named Nassar Humayum picks you up.

“Nassar, like the space agency, but with an ‘r’,” he says. Has anyone harassed him since Sept. 11? “No . . . oh, one man. He saw my name and began to scream and swear at me, and I asked him, ‘Sir, are you OK?’ I told him, ‘I understand how you feel, sir.’ And he said, ‘How can you know what I feel?'" The driver continued, "He lost his job at the Trade Center. He lost his apartment. ‘Do you know how many people died?’ he asked. ‘Yes, I do,’ I said, ‘and I cried myself, many times.’”

The cab passes under the Williamsburg Bridge. In apartment windows above, you see fresh Christmas trees, and in the sky, a full moon. “God bless this country, there is no country like this,” Humayum says. “I know there are good people. There are bad people. It’s OK. I have to make a living.” He drives away from the black hole toward the lights of the great city, toward morning.

-----------

The photograph is of a sculpture by San Diego artist James Hubbell, 
in the mountains east of my home. 

A few months after I wrote this column for the San Diego Union-Tribune, Laura Forman, who, with Janet Fout, fought against mountaintop removal, was standing at a microphone during a demonstration. She suddenly slumped to the ground and died from a heart attack. She was a young woman. To this day, Janet (now Keating) continues to lead the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition. She also advocates for those working to connect children to the natural world.

1. With gas prices on the rise, families are rediscovering both the joy and the cost-effectiveness of getaways in nearby nature, including regional, state or national parks. As Outside magazine puts it, "near is the new far."

2. Unless we're talking about a new bass boat or a high-tech tent, nature toys are free or cheap, and they encourage self-directed creativity. In 2008, the National Toy Hall of Fame in Rochester, N.Y., inducted the stick, which it called not only possibly the oldest toy, but "possibly the best."

3. Green exercise is free. In the United Kingdom, and now in the United States, families are eschewing commercial indoor gyms. Groups of families form " green gyms" and meet once or twice a week to hike, garden or take some other type of exercise in the natural world.

Research suggests that green exercise may be better at improving a number of health indicators — including blood pressure and mental acuity — than the same amount of energy expended in an indoor gym.

4. By planting trees and preserving open space, we can improve energy efficiency, reduce the carbon footprint and protect property values. Studies by the Trust for Public Land show that adjacent parks and nature trails are consistently associated with higher home resale values. One recent study shows that, even in inner cities, the greener the neighborhood, the lower the rate of obesity. Playgrounds with more trees generally have lower crime rates.

5. Back-yard or community gardens offer improved nutrition and, for the wider society, reduced long-distance shipping costs.

6. To shorten the recession, we'll need to teach better and work smarter. Students learn better when schools promote place-based learning in the largest classroom of all: the natural world. In Scandinavian countries, where "all-weather" schools require students to spend time outside every day, kids get fewer colds and flu. And outdoor classrooms cost less than brick and mortar.

7. Nature also can help us build social capital. In hard times, we need cohesive neighborhoods and supportive kinship networks more than ever. The family that plays outside together stays together. In the U.S., parents are forming family nature clubs; at almost no cost, these clubs are changing lives.

True, nature's no panacea. Reducing our society's nature-deficit disorder can't pay the mortgage or immediately replace a lost job, but doing so could help reduce stress, and improve our health and our sanity.

So it's time to reduce the nature deficit.

We're seeing some progress. A growing national network of thousands of individuals, families and organizations is building a movement to leave no child inside. Families are partnering with other families. In North America, more than 90 regional and statewide campaigns to get kids outside have emerged.

To create these campaigns, educators, health care professionals, conservationists, kids, college students, government officials and businesspeople are joining forces — sometimes out of economic self-interest. They're also acting from their heart. Future generations should have the right to a walk in the woods, and so should we.

The investment in the children and nature movement won't put our grandkids in debt. And, especially in a recession, the dividends will be priceless.
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Richard Louv is founding chairman of the Children and Nature Network. He is the author of "The Nature Principle: Human Restoration and the End of Nature-Deficit Disorder," and "Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder."

He wasn’t being cute. Recent studies of the human senses back that statement up. “We need people who have both ways of knowing the world,” he added. In “The Nature Principle,” I tell that story to describe what I call the “hybrid mind." I make the case that one goal of modern education should be to encourage such flexible thinking. Is education moving in that direction? Some schools are, but too many are putting all their eggs on one computer chip.

Almost as an article of religious faith, school districts are flooding students with computers and other Internet-connected gadgets. Yet, as The New York Times reported on Sept. 3, 2011, "to many education experts, something is not adding up." Schools are spending billions on technology "even as they cut budgets and lay off teachers, with little proof that this approach is improving basic learning."

Few people would deny that digital skills are needed in an increasingly digital world, but even some promoters of educational technology are expressing reservations about the size of the investment compared to the available proof of success. Tom Vander Ark, former executive director for education at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and an education technology investor, admitted to the Times reporter, “The data is pretty weak. It’s very difficult when we’re pressed to come up with convincing data.”

In an online discussion last week, one educator described how her school “spent millions” on teaching technology, even as “the class sizes are growing. And our kids have 10 minutes of recess, gym once a week and no time outside.”

Meanwhile, long-proven approaches are given short shrift. Though educators have known for decades about the clear link between music education and better performance in math, In the Leave No Child Behind era, music programs were among the first to be cut from curricula. Similarly, more recent research has suggested time spent in more natural environments (whether it’s a park, a wilderness or a nature-based classroom or play space) stimulates the senses, improves the ability to learn, and helps students connect the dots of the world. Yet, in legislators' eyes, recess, field trips, and nature experiences barely register.

Research in this area remains a frontier in the academic world, but evidence is growing. Schools that use outdoor classrooms and other forms of nature-based experiential education report significant student gains in social studies, science, language arts, and math.

Children are more likely to invent their own games in green play spaces rather than on flat playgrounds or playing fields. Green play spaces also suit a wider array of students and promote social inclusion, regardless of gender, race, class, or intellectual ability. One study found that so-called at-risk students in week-long outdoor camp settings scored significantly better on science testing than in the typical classroom. At the Human-Environment Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois, researchers have discovered that children as young as 5 show a significant reduction in the symptoms of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder when they engaged with nature.

Cognitive and behavioral benefits accrue well beyond school boundaries. In inner-city housing projects in Chicago, investigators found that the presence of trees outside apartment buildings were predictors of certain behaviors: less procrastination, better coping skills, greater self-discipline among girls, better social relationships, and less violence. Educators benefit, too. Canadian researchers found that teachers expressed renewed enthusiasm for teaching in schools that engage their students in natural settings.

Many of the available studies describe correlations rather than cause and effect. More rigorous research is needed. But to many educators, this body of evidence is at least as convincing as the data supporting the digital classroom.

Abstracts for these and other studies, with links to the original research, can be found on the Children & Nature Network Web site and a deeper synthesis is available in a report from C&NN. In the current cost-conscious political and economic climate, it’s time to give nature – not only environmental education, but the nature-based classroom as a learning environment – a closer look. An outdoor classroom in a nearby park, vacant lot, or the woods behind the school, is a lot less expensive than building one more brick-and-mortar classroom, and possibly more effective. That’s something to keep in mind as the new school year begins, as well as a useful consideration next spring.

We often hear from legislators and some educators, as an article of faith, that children lose knowledge during the summer months. What about a different approach? During summer and other out-of-school time, rather than immersing children in the same experiences, we should offer them an entirely different learning environment – one that we know stimulates all of the senses, including a sense of wonder, and a sense of humility.

Additional Resources

Excerpt in Outside magazine from a chapter in “The Nature Principle” about the Hybrid Mind

"Want Your Kids to Get Into Harvard? Tell ‘em to Go Outside!”

Grading the Digital School: In Classroom of the Future, Stagnant Scores, The New York Times, Sept. 3, 2011

C&NN Report: Children’s Contact with the Outdoors and Nature: A Focus On Educators and Educational Settings, adapted from C&NN Annotated Bibliographies of Research and Studies by Cheryl Charles,Ph.D., President, Children & Nature Network, and Alicia Senauer, Yale University.

Learn more about C&NN’s Natural Teachers Network.

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Richard Louv is the author of THE NATURE PRINCIPLE: Human Restoration and the End of Nature-Deficit Disorder and LAST CHILD IN THE WOODS: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. He is Chairman Emeritus of The Children and Nature Network.