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Blog Posts: 2016
Celebrating 10 Years of the Children & Nature Network
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The New Nature Movement, Post 11/8
Photo: Storm over Anza-Borrego Desert, © R.L.
O
ur story – our shared yearning to reconnect children to the natural world – represents one of the few concerns in America that brings people together across partisan and religious lines.
To change a society, as the philosopher Ivan Illich wrote, “you must tell a more powerful tale, one so persuasive that it sweeps away the old myths and becomes the preferred story, one so inclusive that it gathers all the bits of our past and present into a coherent whole, one that even shines some light into our future so that we can take the next step…”
So, today, how do we shine that light? We must continue to support the birthright of all children to a healthy environment and a connection to the natural world, and to teach the responsibilities that come with that right.
We can work to reduce climate disruption and the biodiversity collapse by opposing policies that destroy people and the rest of nature, and by making the case that human beings protect what they love and love only what they know. More than ever, building a future generation of conservationists will depend on helping children and adults fall in love with the natural world.
We can emphasize the healing powers of the natural world: for mental and physical health; for the capacity to learn and create; and for the reduction of violence. We can promote family nature clubs, and similar approaches, as ways to seek meaning and solace in a difficult and alienating time. We can offer Vitamin N for the soul through places of worship. And we can encourage pediatricians, psychologists and other healthcare professionals to prescribe nature.
Read Full PostReturn to America II
Thinking about president-elect Donald Trump, and the mystery of his rise, I pulled a copy of my first book, “America II,” from a bookshelf. The book was published more than three decades ago. It was based on months of travel around the United States. To research it, I followed Americans to where the U.S. Census said they were moving, and asked them if they had found what they were looking for.
Although the book has long been out of print, a few reviewers have rediscovered it, and what they wrote reminded me of its basic themes. This morning I flipped through it, wondering if I had overreached. My conclusion: Not on most counts, unfortunately.
The following excerpt is from the introduction of “America II,” first published in 1983:
The America we know is dying, but a second America is rising from the body of the first. This second nation – America II – can best be seen in the South and West, but it exists, in varying degrees, in every state of the Union. It has a physical form: a very different kind of city; a radically changed rural and small-town life; a revolution in shelter; a new workplace. But the second America is also a state of mind: a powerful yearning for opportunity, for old values and new technologies, for refuge and escape.
This book is an exploration of what it’s like to live in America II, or on the outskirts of it. It’s about the people left behind, but mostly it’s about the people who are moving, about condo dwellers and pot farmers, corporate utopians and private police, rural entrepreneurs and urban escapees, computer programmers and unemployed wanderers. It’s about people trying to get control in an economic and social environment that seems out of control. It’s about the search for home, the creation of new nests from the sticks and mud of our fantasies of what home should be. This book is about the unintended consequences of that search.
Read Full PostAn invitation to take C&NN's Vitamin N Challenge
Share with others how you connect your family and community to nature. Pick one or more of 500 actions from Vitamin N: The Essential Guide to a Nature-Rich Life, try them out for a day, a week or a month — and tell your friends and the world about your experience. Please use hashtag #VitaminN — or send an email to vitaminN@chiildrenandnature.org.
Today, parents, grandparents, pediatricians, teachers and others are looking for ways to connect children to the natural world. This summer, to bring together that motivation with ideas from the community, the Children & Nature Network (C&NN) is launching the #VitaminN Challenge. The challenge is an opportunity to get more nature into our lives and to share ideas. C&NN co-founder Richard Louv’s new book, Vitamin N, presents over 500 nature-oriented actions for families, organizations and communities. In addition, C&NN’s online resources and a list of similar books, blogs and nature-focused websites offer a wide range of ideas that will help you take the Vitamin N Challenge. But, most importantly, C&NN is looking to YOU for ideas for getting more #VitaminN! Here’s how to participate:
Read Full PostVitamin N: The Essential Guide to a Nature-Rich Life, by Richard Louv, National book launch San Diego April 19
C&NN press release by Jackie Green
On April 12, Algonquin Books published Louv’s ninth book, a much-anticipated companion to Last Child in the Woods and The Nature Principle.
VITAMIN N: The Essential Guide to a Nature-Rich Life
500 Ways to Enrich the Health and Happiness of Your Family & Community
Featured recently on CBS This Morning and NPR’s Diane Rehm Show, Vitamin N is a comprehensive and practical guidebook for the whole family and the wider community. It includes actions for parents eager to share nature with their kids, and also for grandparents, teenagers, teachers, health care professionals, mayors and anyone else who wants to create a nature-rich life. “Issuing an imperative that everyone should heed, this important new book provides the tools to reclaim the wonders and health benefits of nature.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review. Here’s a sampling of what families and communities can do:
The School of Nature: Greening Our Schools May Be The Real Cutting Edge of Education
First published by the Children & Nature Network.
Outside Atlanta, after returning from a class hike through the woods, an excited six-year-old grabbed his head and said, “There’s so much nature and I only have two eyes and one brain and I think it’s going to explode!”
A teacher at the nature-based Chattahoochee Hills Charter School shared that story about her student with me a couple weeks ago. Telling it, she seemed just about as excited as the six-year-old, though she did not grab her head.
We were watching a CBS This Morning television crew roam the grounds. They were working on a piece about schools that emphasize the natural world as a learning environment (barring a Trumpian implosion or other massive world event, the segment will run on April 8th, sometime after 8 a.m. Eastern time). Here’s what they saw: a series of classrooms, each in its own building; the front of every classroom is glass to let in natural light, and teachers can open that side of the room to the elements. Surrounding the school is a forest laced with walking trails. From deep in those woods came the sounds of young laughter, running feet and learning.
Read Full PostAt Chattahoochee Hills Charter School, students spend about a third of their time learning in the outdoors.
The 7 Best Stories and Trends of 2015: For children, families, communities, and nature, it was a very good year
First published by the Children & Nature Network.
I
n a world filled with dismal news, 2015 was a banner year for the new nature movement. Here’s a sampling of some of the inspiring trends and stories from the past year.
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