This chest had held my mother's art supplies. She made her living as a greeting card artist. She began working in Kansas City, at age 16, for Hallmark Cards and over the years became known as one of the best free-lance greeting card artists.

I grew up watching her work. I would stand next to her art table and watch her hand move the brush expertly across the paper and then move to the right, to the chest, where she would dip it into blotches of paint or stir the brush loudly in an old fruit jar of water.

The paints and an airbrush and her heavy tape dispenser and her scissors were kept there. From time to time, the tape or the scissors would disappear, and she would call out irritated to her two boys to bring them back. But she never banned us from her desk. The squares of blotter paper she cut out were just right for our drawings, and our drawings littered the floor below the table.

Over the years, she covered the chest with layers of spilled paint and ink and tattooed it with cigarette burns. She was always leaving her cigarettes burning.

Not long ago, I decided that the time had come to go through the chest and refinish it and give it a new life. I sat on the garage floor and sorted through the treasures she had stashed there over the years. They were jumbled in time and space.

Among them …

A list of Ghostbuster action figures, written by my son Jason when he was in kindergarten.

A wallet-sized photograph of my father when he was in his 20s, very solemn and grown up.

An envelope postmarked September 1, 1931, 7 PM, with a grocery list written on it by my grandmother, preparing for my mother's seventh birthday party. "Large dice for Pauline. Roller skates, $1.17 … 15 gifts, 5 cents ea., two cakes. .50." Fifteen names were written on the envelope: Betty, Patsy, Bertha, Carl, Pet, Stanley…

A story recounting a family fish tale: "The gar the kid and the kid's brother. A true story by Jason F. Louv. Once upon a time there was a kid his name was Rich and his brother and once they were floating in the water behind the bote and the parents in the bote caught a gar it struggled they were scared they throt it off the bote the end."

A genealogy, in my mother's handwriting, of her family: "All were farmers except for one Herr, who was a lawyer. Only interesting fact was about Thomas Mifflin. He was a Brigadier General in the Revolutionary War . . . " The Streeters, she wrote, came "across the U.S. to Nebraska in covered wagons."

Bottles of ink, squeezed tubes of paint. An address book from the '50s. A letter my mother, as a little girl, wrote on lined notebook paper in tortured, just-learned cursive: "Dear Arthur. How are you? I am fine. I love you very much. Where were you Saturday and Sunday. I wanted to play with you. This is why I wanted to because I didn't have anybody to play with. Alice was gone to the lake and Marjorie went to her Grandmother's house to stay one month. And now I have no one to play with. Will you please tell me what grade you are in, Arthur. For the first time in school I am using ink..."

Blotter paper, tracing paper, nozzles to an airbrush.

Her husband's—my father's—death certificate.

A 1933 letter from my grandfather, who I never met because he died when my mother was 9 years old. He was a supervisor for Kansas City Southern railroad. The letter is to someone named Charlie: "Business is picking up a little and people are more hopeful—the railroads are doing some better especially in freight traffic—we're all wondering what will result from Roosevelt's proposed rail central plan . . ."

An old column of mine.

Stacks of roughs for my mother's greeting cards. Correspondence from the greeting card publishers. Deadlines set. Deadlines met. Lists of cards to do: "Madonna child, Lambs, Angel, Christ, Angel Head & Wings, Blue Sky, Profile Child, Santa on skis..."

A hand-drawn card from Jason to her: "We were meaning to tell you . . . you're a great grandma. Merry Christmas."

I finished sorting the contents of the chest and packed them into cardboard boxes, then dragged the chest to the middle of the garage. A neighbor came by. "That's very old," he said, inspecting the unfamiliar tongue and groove joints. It had originally been in my grandmother's house in Independence, Mo. I spent the next six hours bent over the chest, leaning into the grain.

Perhaps it was the noise from the electric sander, or the repetitive motion, or the concentration, but as I wore away the years, I heard my mother's voice. We talked all afternoon.

"Richy, your drawing is wonderful." A deep red stain was fading. "Have you seen my tape?" I heard her laughing. I heard her swear. "I don't like antiques. I like contemporary." She told me about my grandmother, and about my grandfather. The green lifted. "See what your brother's up to." Cigarette burns vanished. "Do it right or don't do it at all." I heard a sound like the ringing of a bell. It was my mother's brush in the old fruit jar.

Year after year, decade after decade, perhaps even a century, lifted from the wood. The sawdust began to smell fresher, newer, expectant.

I stood back and looked at the chest. A few of my mother's marks remained. I thought: Perhaps I have gone too far; I should have left more of her there.

I heard her say she was pleased.

The chest, now quiet, is in our family room.

It remains unfinished.

_____________________________________

Richard Louv is the author of eight books, including "THE NATURE PRINCIPLE: Reconnecting with Life in a Virtual Age,"  "LAST CHILD IN THE WOODS: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder," and "THE WEB OF LIFE" from which this piece is adapted. He is chairman emeritus of The Children and Nature Network.

In 1982, I bought an IBM Displaywriter — a “word processor” as we called the first post-Selectric writing machines. The Displaywriter was the approximate size of a Chevy Vega and sounded like a garbage truck. As the years passed, I stayed on the leading edge of communications technology.

Now that I own three computers, a Kindle, an iPhone and an iPad, I just may have gone over the edge.

Understand, I recognize the benefits of technology, otherwise I wouldn’t be using the Internet or refrigerating my food. And the Internet has certainly been essential for building the children and nature movement.

But consider a few recent findings, reported here in the Twitter tradition of 140 characters, more or less:

• The Internet can be a real a downer. British psychologists have found a  link between excessive Internet use and depression, or at least a warning sign of depression.

• When we use GPS, we can lose ourselves. New research suggests overuse of GPS devices may reduce our ability to develop “mental maps,” possibly by changing brain structure.

• Can high-tech make us big babies? An Oxford University neuroscientist warns social networking technology may be “infantilizing the brain into the state of small children …”

• Speaking of babies...The medical journal Pediatrics reports children who watch fast-paced cartoons perform worse when asked to follow rules or delay gratification. Some technology developed to enhance cognitive abilities of infants or adults may slow learning.

• Lucy, I’m home. Lucy?  A UCLA study showed unrelenting electronic media use breaks down basic family communication, reducing traditional greetings to grunts.

• What were we talking about?  The info-blitzkrieg has spawned a new field called “interruption science” and a newly minted condition: continuous partial attention. Constant electronic intrusions leave interrupted workers feeling frustrated, pressured and stressed, and less creative.

• The more sophisticated our tablets, the fewer books we'll finish. One year ago, 46% of publishers considered iPads and similar tablets the ideal e-reading platform; that figure has fallen to 31%. People are realizing that a more powerful tablet “can fragment the reading experience, or stop it in its tracks.”

That last statement is by New York Times reporters Julie Bosman and Matt Richtel, who give a pass to the now old-fashioned black-and-white Kindle because it lacks the full menu of Internet distractions.

I can relate. Lately, I’ve been reading (or at least finishing) fewer books and enjoying what I read less. When traveling, e-books are great, but I miss that satisfying feeling of settling into a good book, the feel of it in the hand, the spacial reality of it. That pleasure has been displaced by a queasy feeling that, even as I read an e-book, I’m being lured by the sirens of e-mail, by that weather app that shows the next storm rolling in.

To be fair, a list of bad side effects, like the warning labels on the packaging of pharmaceuticals, do not tell the full story. The point isn’t that technology is bad, but that daily, monthly, yearly, lifelong electronic immersion, without a force to balance it, can drain our ability to pay attention, to think clearly, to be productive and creative.

What to do? Match screen time with stream time. Research suggests that the best antidote to the downside of electronic immersion will be an increase in the amount of natural information we receive. And let's go one step further: children and adults can develop “hybrid minds” by seeking the benefits of both virtual and natural reality.

___________________

Richard Louv is chairman emeritus of The Children and Nature Network and the author of "THE NATURE PRINCIPLE: Reconnecting with Life in a Virtual Age," which includes a chapter on the "hybrid mind," and "LAST CHILD IN THE WOODS: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder." 

In economically challenged neighborhoods, towns and rural areas, the impact of toxic dumps is well known. The evidence makes it clear that when we poison nature, we poison ourselves. But there’s a second, related threat that is less familiar.

People need nature for healthy development. We know that. What we don’t know enough about is the natural capacity of different ethnic or economic communities.

In The Nature Principle, I introduced the term “natural cultural capacity” to describe the strengths and capacities of different cultures to connect with nature, often in unexpected and underreported ways. The new growth of urban immigrant agriculture comes to mind – Somali community gardens in inner-city San Diego, for example; also, how Latino families often use parks as places for family gatherings, and the long-neglected history of African-American environmentalism. Some good work has been done in these arenas (Audubon’s study on Latino attitudes, for example), but we need a much deeper understanding of both equity and capacity. Here are 12 questions to explore:

Many other questions should be asked about equity and capacity. But this truth is clear: Every child needs nature.

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?

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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?