Richard Louv

“She was one of those exceptional children who do still spend time outside, in solitude. In her case nature represented beauty - and refuge. "It's so peaceful out there and the air smells so good. I mean, it's polluted, but not as much as the city air. For me, it's completely different there," she said. "It's like you're free when you go out there. It's your own time. Sometimes I go there when I'm mad - and then, just with the peacefulness, I'm better. I can come back home happy, and my mom doesn't even know why."     The she described her special part of the woods.     "I had a place. There was a big waterfall and a creek on one side of it. I'd dug a big hole there, and sometimes I'd take a tent back there, or a blanket, and just lie down in the hole, and look up at the trees and sky. Sometimes I'd fall asleep back there. I just felt free; it was like my place, and I could do what I wanted, with nobody to stop me. I used to go down there almost every day."     The young poet's face flushed. Her voice thickened.     "And then they just cut the woods down. It was like they cut down part of me.”

“The woods were my Ritalin. Nature calmed me, focused me, and yet excited my senses.”

“Kids and adults pay a price for too much tech, and it's not wholesale.”

“There's a generation now that didn't grow up in nature. Some of these adults are parents and they know that nature is good for their kids but they don't know where to start.”

“We tend to block off many of our senses when we're staring at a screen. Nature time can literally bring us to our senses.”

“Leave part of the yard rough. Don't manicure everything. Small children in particular love to turn over rocks and find bugs, and give them some space to do that. Take your child fishing. Take your child on hikes.”

“Our kids are actually doing what we told them to do when they sit in front of that TV all day or in front of that computer game all day. The society is telling kids unconsciously that nature's in the past. It really doesn't count anymore, that the future is in electronics, and besides, the bogeyman is in the woods.”

“Unlike television, reading does not swallow the senses or dictate thought. Reading stimulates the ecology of the imagination. Can you remember the wonder you felt when first reading The Jungle Book or Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn? Kipling’s world within a world; Twain’s slow river, the feel of freedom and sand on the secret island, and in the depths of the cave?”

“No other youth group like the Scouts has trained so many future leaders while at the same time being a nature organization with its outdoor focus.”

“A lot of people think they need to give up nature to become adults but that's not true. However, you have to be careful how you describe and define 'nature.'”

“Countless communities have virtually outlawed unstructured outdoor nature play, often because of the threat of lawsuits, but also because of a growing obsession with order. Many parents now believe outdoor play is verboten even when it is not; perception is nine-tenths of the law.”

“We are telling our kids that nature is in the past and it probably doesn't count anymore, the future is in electronics, the boogeyman is in the woods, and playing outdoors is probably illicit and possibly illegal.”

“A generation of children is not only being raised indoors, but is being confined to even smaller spaces. Jane Clark, a University of Maryland professor of kinesiology . . . calls them "containerized kids"--they spend more and more time in car seats, high chairs, and even baby seats for watching TV. When small children go outside, they're often placed in containers--strollers--and pushed by walking or jogging parents. . . Most kid-containerizing is done for safety concerns, but the long term health of these children is compromised. (35)”

“An environment-based education movement--at all levels of education--will help students realize that school isn't supposed to be a polite form of incarceration, but a portal to the wider world.”

“Kids are absolutely starved for positive adult contact.”

“The logical extension of synthetic nature is the irrelevance of "true" nature--the certainty that it's not even worth looking at. (62)”

“These days, unplugged places are getting hard to find.”

“Joni Mitchell had it right: "They paved paradise / and put up a parking lot." But perhaps, in the near future, we could add a line of hopeful epilogue to that song: then they tore down the parking lot / and raised up a paradise”

“Natural playgrounds may decrease bullying.”

“How can our kids really understand the moral complexities of being alive if they are not allowed to engage in those complexities outdoors?”