Conscious Choice Seattle: Inside Out

August 2005 | Cover Report

Inside Out

We’ve got this all wrong. Kids stay inside too much. They remain in structured programs too long. Some local camps and national researchers look to rediscover the genius of kids in nature.

By Ritzy Ryciak

Ladybugs are in the air, on the grass and trapped in tousled hair. Bright red bugs wobble their way up miniature thumbs and fingers, as a group of little people, not yet in kindergarten, giggle with delight.

"Can I hold it?” whispers a 4-year-old girl with white blond hair and eyes intently focused on one of the bugs. “Oh, I really want to hold it."

It is an overcast morning at Discovery Park’s Visitor Center in Magnolia and the Yellow Zebras, a group of 10 novice naturalists enrolled in Discovery Park’s summer camp, are en route to story and snack time beneath a giant Douglas fir tree. The ladybugs are an exciting surprise on the walk.

"It tickles,” squeals a pigtailed girl, watching the bug wriggle up her wrist. The mini-hikers take turns letting the ladybugs crawl up their arms and when it is time to go, the insects are gently placed atop nearby maple leaves. The group pauses to make sure that the bugs are comfortable in their new surroundings.

We protect the things we love.

"I believe that kids start out full of wonder and it gets diverted,” says Barbara Brower, a geography professor at Portland State University. “It is a quiet kind of wonder watching a ladybug land on your finger."

So quiet that, like the ladybug, it could fly away.

Barbara Brower knows something about wonder. She grew up exploring the wild places with a father as renowned for his environmental achievements as he was for his reverence of nature.

"My father brought the ability to be curious about nature to his life and to others,” says Barbara. “He was such a complete‘gee whiz’ character about life in general. That was his gift."

Her father is the reason that today, the Grand Canyon remains un-dammed and California’s greatest Redwoods still stand.

David Brower, who died in 2000, is considered by many to be the father of today’s environmental movement.

Wonder years

David Brower’s love for the natural world began in childhood.

From his earliest years, David, the Sierra Club’s first executive director, marveled at the dandelions poking out of the sidewalk in San Francisco, the serendipitous encounters with nature in places where you wouldn’t expect it.

That early enjoyment of nature shaped all he would do later to protect it. He saw clearly the connection between the wonder we experience as children and the adults we become.

“I have hope that we will stop smothering the genius of children,” wrote Brower in his book, “Let the Mountains Talk, Let the Rivers Run.” What gives them a chance to blossom? Being outdoors.”

What happens though, if children don’t get outdoors?

Gee whiz curiosity is not something that Barbara Brower sees happening with kids who are glued to TV and whose lives are shaped by shows like “American Idol.”

A national survey conducted by the University of Michigan found that since the late 1970s, children have lost 12 hours per week in free time, including a 25 percent drop in play and a 50 percent drop in unstructured outdoor activities. There’s a lot less playing in the woods and building forts on the beach. Exploring Web sites has replaced stooping over an ant hill. Staying within the chalk lines of organized sports trumps a roaming game of hide and seek at one of the Puget Sound’s bountiful parks.

"What we have now is a generation of parents who believe that their kids have to be learning and competing all of the time,” says Bill Doherty, professor, therapist and director of the Marriage and Family Therapy Program at the University of Minnesota. “It is a big broad cultural shift led by middle-class parents to help their kids succeed in a competitive world. I think that parenting has become a form of product development."
Doherty, a keynote speaker for this month’s Take Back Your Time Conference (August 4 to 7) in Seattle, attributes the cultural shift to the insecure global market place that we live in. It is a fear-based reaction–and tree lovers should be worried.

Take Back Your Time’s national coordinator, John de Graaf, fears that our increasingly frenetic way of life is crowding nature out. “Tacoma school districts are even banning recess for elementary school children,” he says. “So there’s not even time for them to play.”

Doherty grew up five blocks from Fairmount Park, a famous Philadelphia public park filled with forest and streams that seemed to go on forever. He certainly found time to play.

"My favorite memories with nature are when I was alone,” he recalls. “I remember watching ants do their work and following little streams. These small things were very contemplative and there was a kind of spiritual quality that I think has stayed with me."

Calling outdoor ed

Under the canopy of a tree, beneath leaf litter and humus-rich soil, fourth graders, perched on hands and knees, excitedly dug in the dirt. It was a lesson in worm habitat and a gold mine had been uncovered. Celebration and flying loam were in the air.

"I don’t think that they had ever really experienced worms in this way before,” says Susan Tallarico, education director for the Seattle Audubon Society at Magnuson Park, remembering a worm scene from Audubon’s summer camp. “We were using a hand magnifying glass to look at segments of the worm body and every one of those kids was so excited to find their own big night crawler worm."

Many of the worm hunters had never held a worm before, and some kids previously found them gross. This day was different.

"Part of wonderment is looking at the world in a new way,” offers Tallarico, a high school biology teacher who left the classroom for outdoor education and never looked back. “I have just been blown away by the spark of energy, motivation and wonder that occurs when we get kids outside."

For his part, Bill Doherty believes that communing with nature takes time and spontaneity.

"Developing a relationship with nature is not the same thing as earning merit badges,” he explains. “It is a relationship. Not an achievement."

Birding alone

While many summer camp programs offer nature experiences within a group setting, the Mercer Island Slough, a 320-acre wetland park in Bellevue partnered with the Pacific Science Center, works to balance group interactions with solitary time. Amidst biology lessons on slug slime, owl pellets and wetland ecology, students (kindergarten to eighth grade) are given the opportunity to stake out their own eagle perch.

"Kids go out and find their own personal spots,” says Apryl Brinkley, program supervisor of Mercer Slough Environmental Education. “There is not a lot of noise and for 20 to 30 minutes they have time to reconnect with their environment."

Brinkley has been pleasantly surprised by the success of the eagle perch. Kids not only appreciate the time alone but they also take pride in their personal place.

"Many kids bring their parents to their eagle perch and show it to them,” adds Brinkley. “The spots are special to them and they want to share them."

“I suppose it is kind of the kids’ equivalent to meditation,” says Denis Hayes, founder of Earth Day, referring to the unstructured time that kids spend in nature.

Hayes, who now directs the Bullitt Foundation in Seattle, remembers the days as a 10-year-old boy when there was nothing to do but scuff around without an agenda or structured learning experience. There were no teachers present to explain Eugene Odum’s Fundamentals of Ecology or the entomological significance of a dragonfly.

"It was time alone,” says Hayes. “Though I don’t remember feeling alone because I was surrounded by life."

Through a child’s eyes

Kale Hoff-Zweig, a 5 -year-old member of Discovery Park’s summer camp, may not yet contemplate the interconnectedness of all living things, but he does understand the link between insects and birds.The Swallow swallows the creepy-crawlies that fly.

Discovery Park, complete with ponds, meadows, beaches and forests is just one Seattle setting that offers a convenient way to enter nature without leaving the city. At the beach, Kale picks up shells, examines them and returns them to where he found them.

"He understands that that shell is somebody’s home,” explains his mother, Paula Hoff-Zweig. “Kids are more respectful of the environment when they learn about it."

"There are so many ways for kids to get plugged in electronically,” adds Rachel McClinton, mother of 5-year-old, Aidan, a campmate of Kale’s at Discovery Park’s summer camp. “ But I want Aidan to roll around in the dirt, observe the bees and the scent of flowers. I just want him to feel all of his senses."

Ritzy Ryciak is a Seattle writer and biology teacher who writes regularly for EM. She wrote the July cover story on meditation.

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