Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder by Louv, Richard (the two towers ebook .txt) 📕

in the whirlpool of the storm drain. A good hard rain meant mudpies were in the making and my creative juices, like the rain in the gutters, began to flow. If a storm unleashed its full fury with thunder and lightning, I huddled bravely on the red-metal glider on the big front porch with others emitting appropriate cries of awe or terror. Fluke storms associated with unexpected cold fronts, transforming giant raindrops to icy hail, were the best of all—the sultry heat of a summer day magically dissipated. Hail as big as golfballs made great missiles to hurl at imagined foes.

Sometimes on a summer night close to bedtime, I would fill a jar with lightning bugs, bring it inside to my darkened room, and marvel at the iridescent and random illumination these marvelous insects emanated—liberating one in my room and returning the remaining jarful to freedom. Quietly I would lie in bed, watching this flying light-form, now isolated like me, from others of its kind. Soon mesmerized and calmed by the occasional tiny signal light, I drifted off to sleep.

Almost since the birth of her daughter, Julia Fletcher, mother and child spent time together in nature, not only in the mountains, but also in the semi-natural nature of their own yard. This time heightened Julia’s powers of observation. Janet recalls, “One of our favorite games was making names for unusual colors we saw in nature. ‘That one’s candlelight,’ Julia would say as we watched the sunset. I used to tease her that she could always go to work naming new colors for the Crayola crayon company!”

Janet and Julia also invented nature games. As they wandered through the woods, they would listen for “the sounds they could not hear.” Janet called this game “The Sound of a Creature Not Stirring.” A list might include:

sap rising

snowflakes forming and falling

sunrise

moonrise

dew on the grass

a seed germinating

an earthworm moving through the soil

cactus baking in the sun

mitosis

an apple ripening

feathers

wood petrifying

a tooth decaying

a spider weaving its web

a fly being caught in the web

a leaf changing colors

a salmon spawning

And then this list might expand beyond nature, such as the sound that occurs . . .

after the conductor’s baton ceases to rise

Although Julia’s adult life is just getting under way, Janet believes that early attention to nature’s details played a major role in Julia’s speech development, writing, and artwork, and that her daughter’s keen attention to detail will continue to serve her well. “Unlike many of her peers, Julia is not easily impressed by ‘stuff,’” says Janet. “What’s real, what’s enduring—a view from a mountaintop, a soaring bird of prey, a rainbow after a summer’s rain—these things leave a lasting impression on her.” Janet’s sphere of motherly influence has waned, of course. Her daughter spends less time outdoors. But Julia has not lost her love of nature, solitude, and simple pleasures. “These values are rooted deeply in those early years,” says Janet, the years when she and Julia listened to the sounds of creatures not stirring.

Coming to Our Senses

One of the world’s leading experts on butterflies, Robert Michael Pyle, teaches children about the insects by first placing a living butterfly on their noses, so that the butterfly can become the teacher.

“Noses seem to make perfectly good perches or basking spots, and the insect often remains for some time. Almost everyone is delighted by this: the light tickle, the close-up colors, the thread of a tongue probing for droplets of perspiration. But somewhere beyond delight lies enlightenment. I have been astonished at the small epiphanies I see in the eyes of a child in truly close contact with nature, perhaps for the first time. This can happen to grown-ups too, reminding them of something they never knew they had forgotten.”

Perhaps the eighth intelligence is the intelligence within nature, the lessons waiting to be delivered if anyone shows up.

This is how Leslie Stephens views the educational necessity of nature. An at-home mother especially attuned to nature, she grew up in San Diego, a self-described “tomboy,” roaming Tecolote Canyon with her Weimaraner, Olga, by her side. In those years, Tecolote Canyon was a wild place, at the edge of a housing tract, filled with chaparral and sage. Coyotes and deer found their way there through suburban tracts. Her family spent most summer afternoons at Shell Beach in La Jolla, and every August she traveled to her grandparents’ home at Ryan Dam, on the Great Falls of the Missouri River in Montana. When she was thirteen, the arm of the canyon where she played as a child was plowed up by bulldozers, and homes were built.

When she became a parent, her family moved to the edge of another canyon, called Deer Canyon. It is, she says, “our little wilderness, narrow and deep.” She wants her children to learn from this edge of another universe, as she did. The canyon stimulates not only their spirits, but also their intellect. She tells how, when she was a girl, her canyon taught her a broader definition of shelter, and gave her “a deep understanding of how the world works”:

A child who is allowed to run free in a place that is natural will very quickly begin to look around for a special shelter. The interior framework of bushes is inspected and judged for its suitability to act as a fort. Trees, especially mature ones, provide towering castles, and the best climbing branches are claimed as “rooms.” In contrast, the exposure a child feels running across a grassy, sunny slope or wide, open field allows her to feel the lack of shelter. It is only through experiencing both opposites that children begin to understand each part more deeply.

Nature also teaches kids about friendship, or can. Sure they can learn that elsewhere, but there’s something different about friendship forged outdoors.

When I was my children’s age, after school or on weekends anyone who wanted to be with friends just headed down to the old oak that grew along the seasonal creek. It was a