Recently I took a look at the revised edition of a book entitled Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. Its premise seems to be that children are currently suffering from a lack of interaction with the natural world. They have become either completely desensitized or totally oblivious of the fact that nature even exists! The author and "child advocate" Richard Louv, claims that children have been so thoroughly deprived of significant experiences in the natural world that they have come dangerously close to regarding it as a distant abstraction, an old wives' tale (not that kids would care to know what that is) or some kind of foreign legend.If Louv's observations are correct, I think we're pretty freakin' screwed. What ever happened to Captain Planet? He's our hero! Gonna take pollution down to ZERO...Gonna help us put asunder all the bad guys who loot and plunder! I can just picture Captain Planet, sitting on a curb with a copy of this book...brown-bagging some bottle and sobbing after each swig...
It's about time we began educate children to feel a degree of reverence for the natural world. The last bits of magic that are left-- the few things that will inspire us weary victims of commercialized, 2 dimensional brain rot-- exist almost exclusively in nature. Luckily, my parents and grandparents instilled a sense of deep respect and love for all things natural. When I was five, I remember adopting a tree and naming it 7Up. Yeah. In fact, most of the books I was read were saturated with animals, references to nature, metaphors involving nature, allegory, analogies, fables...etc. So I guess what I'm trying to say (without being too preachy) is...go for a little walk with your kids! Feed some ducks. Go stargazing! Make a game out of naming the flora and fauna in your backyard! Read "Make Way for Ducklings"...visit Green Briar or the Thornton Burgess museum...Make Beatrix Potter a household name. Just sit outside for a while and enjoy the intricate mystery that we are so fortunate to be surrounded by! It will restore and delight you, I promise.
