Eulogy to Sherwood Forest
I think of myself as a positive person. I'm not a doom and gloom-er, and actually get a little agitated when political discussions around me get heated and, well, vitriolic, shall we say? I don't like the contention, nor do I believe that our country, or our society, or the world in general is going to H-E-double-hockey-sticks in any kind of a basket. I always believe there is hope. It keeps me breathing every day.
That said, I read a paragraph this morning that is going to be hanging over me for a very long time. I can tell by the way it pierced itself into the depths of my soul and rang a bell so resonant within me that I had to stop reading and think. Hard. Not that the thinking was hard, nor that I don't like thinking hard, but it happened so fast, I'm still reeling a little at the implications.
That's too big of a build up, I'm afraid -- now you're going to be disappointed, but let me share this with you. The book is entitled "Last Child in the Woods" by Richard Louv. He opens with his son asking him, "'Dad, how come it was more fun when you were a kid? . . . you're always talking about your woods and tree houses, and how you used to ride that horse down near the swamp.'"
Louv goes on to state, and here it is: "He was right. Americans around my age, baby boomers or older, enjoyed a kind of free, natural play that seems, in the era of kid pagers, instant messaging, and Nintendo, like a quaint artifact.
Within the space of a few decades, the way children understand and experience nature has changed radically. The polarity of the relationship has reversed. Today, kids are aware of the global threats to the environment -- but their physical contact, their intimacy with nature, is fading. That's exactly the opposite of how it was when I was a child." (emphasis added)
Here's where I need to use some restraint, because I feel a 48 page thesis coming on. I'll try to not bore you with too many details, but let me say that I am one of those baby boomers who had that kind of childhood. My parents were raised on farms. My dad is a corn geneticist -- a professor who lives to be out of doors, working with his plants. I grew up on a two acre lot in a neighborhood of two acre lots about two miles from the downtown of a moderately sized college town. In the summer, the trees in the valley behind my home were so thick you couldn't see or hear traffic, or even other homes in the area. It felt like wilderness to us. We dubbed one triangle of the woods "Sherwood Forest," and cleared paths and trails and little cubbies that we called our 'houses,' and played from sun up to sun down with no adult supervision. We were warned to avoid the woods near the creek, especially on the other side, the University side, because that was the 'dangerous' area . . . mostly because my parents knew that it was a popular site for off-campus drinking by sneaky college students. The woods and fields by our home felt completely safe to us. I knew those rocks and trees and gooseberry bushes as well as I knew the books on my bookshelves.
In the evenings, if we could sneak out after dinner, we played Kick the Can, and
Stupid and the Jerk, and Sardines until way after the whippoorwills called and darkness wrapped itself around us. Our play was free and easy and open and non-parentalized. No one even wanted to rat out the neighborhood bully because then we couldn't play with him, and he was kind of fun, most of the time.
That kind of free play and natural learning is a crucial part of any childhood. I've already done the rant about how every child deserves a genuine childhood, so I won't repeat it here, but spending hours catching minnows in a creek, or chasing lizards in the wood pile, or discovering the difference between poison ivy leaves and . . . well, anything else, should be part of that in my opinion.
Here's the clincher for me, though. It's not just our connection with nature that's being severed. Just as Louv asserts, even while our children are becoming aware of global environmental issues, they are losing touch with the environment right outside their doors, and it doesn't stop there. We have, I believe, flipped our telescopes around, and are looking at the world backwards. Today, kids are aware of the global threats to (humanity) -- but their physical contact, their intimacy with (humanity), is fading. Instead of getting involved and engaging ourselves in community service and just plain neighborliness, there are cries for our government to take care of the poor and the needy. We're becoming this global society, appropriately concerned for impoverished refugees across the world, but are we good citizens who occupy ourselves with reaching out to our co-workers and even family members who are feeling literally or figuratively displaced? Instead of walking next door and holding my friend's hand and looking her in the eye, I'm just as likely to send a concerned email, which is almost as good. Almost. Maybe.
Am I over-reacting? Do you see the connection? The wider our view gets, the less we see what is at our elbows. I always come back to that silly little song from Sesame Street . . . a bajillion years ago . . . about the kid who drops the candy wrapper on the street and says it's just one, what does it matter? The song reminds him, "But if every kid did it, can't you see what a messed up world this would be?"
Typical of my Pollyanna attitude (Man, I've dated myself so many times in this!), I hear the song in reverse in my head. I figure, if every "kid" just picked up one piece of trash that wasn't his, or helped just one friend to feel happy, or spent just a few minutes every day appreciating and enjoying the world around him . . . "can't you see what an awesome world this would be?"
And for me, there's always hope that that's just what's going to happen. I think it's time to go call my dad and see how he's doing today.
That said, I read a paragraph this morning that is going to be hanging over me for a very long time. I can tell by the way it pierced itself into the depths of my soul and rang a bell so resonant within me that I had to stop reading and think. Hard. Not that the thinking was hard, nor that I don't like thinking hard, but it happened so fast, I'm still reeling a little at the implications.
That's too big of a build up, I'm afraid -- now you're going to be disappointed, but let me share this with you. The book is entitled "Last Child in the Woods" by Richard Louv. He opens with his son asking him, "'Dad, how come it was more fun when you were a kid? . . . you're always talking about your woods and tree houses, and how you used to ride that horse down near the swamp.'"
Louv goes on to state, and here it is: "He was right. Americans around my age, baby boomers or older, enjoyed a kind of free, natural play that seems, in the era of kid pagers, instant messaging, and Nintendo, like a quaint artifact.
Within the space of a few decades, the way children understand and experience nature has changed radically. The polarity of the relationship has reversed. Today, kids are aware of the global threats to the environment -- but their physical contact, their intimacy with nature, is fading. That's exactly the opposite of how it was when I was a child." (emphasis added)
Here's where I need to use some restraint, because I feel a 48 page thesis coming on. I'll try to not bore you with too many details, but let me say that I am one of those baby boomers who had that kind of childhood. My parents were raised on farms. My dad is a corn geneticist -- a professor who lives to be out of doors, working with his plants. I grew up on a two acre lot in a neighborhood of two acre lots about two miles from the downtown of a moderately sized college town. In the summer, the trees in the valley behind my home were so thick you couldn't see or hear traffic, or even other homes in the area. It felt like wilderness to us. We dubbed one triangle of the woods "Sherwood Forest," and cleared paths and trails and little cubbies that we called our 'houses,' and played from sun up to sun down with no adult supervision. We were warned to avoid the woods near the creek, especially on the other side, the University side, because that was the 'dangerous' area . . . mostly because my parents knew that it was a popular site for off-campus drinking by sneaky college students. The woods and fields by our home felt completely safe to us. I knew those rocks and trees and gooseberry bushes as well as I knew the books on my bookshelves.
In the evenings, if we could sneak out after dinner, we played Kick the Can, and
Stupid and the Jerk, and Sardines until way after the whippoorwills called and darkness wrapped itself around us. Our play was free and easy and open and non-parentalized. No one even wanted to rat out the neighborhood bully because then we couldn't play with him, and he was kind of fun, most of the time.
That kind of free play and natural learning is a crucial part of any childhood. I've already done the rant about how every child deserves a genuine childhood, so I won't repeat it here, but spending hours catching minnows in a creek, or chasing lizards in the wood pile, or discovering the difference between poison ivy leaves and . . . well, anything else, should be part of that in my opinion.
Here's the clincher for me, though. It's not just our connection with nature that's being severed. Just as Louv asserts, even while our children are becoming aware of global environmental issues, they are losing touch with the environment right outside their doors, and it doesn't stop there. We have, I believe, flipped our telescopes around, and are looking at the world backwards. Today, kids are aware of the global threats to (humanity) -- but their physical contact, their intimacy with (humanity), is fading. Instead of getting involved and engaging ourselves in community service and just plain neighborliness, there are cries for our government to take care of the poor and the needy. We're becoming this global society, appropriately concerned for impoverished refugees across the world, but are we good citizens who occupy ourselves with reaching out to our co-workers and even family members who are feeling literally or figuratively displaced? Instead of walking next door and holding my friend's hand and looking her in the eye, I'm just as likely to send a concerned email, which is almost as good. Almost. Maybe.
Am I over-reacting? Do you see the connection? The wider our view gets, the less we see what is at our elbows. I always come back to that silly little song from Sesame Street . . . a bajillion years ago . . . about the kid who drops the candy wrapper on the street and says it's just one, what does it matter? The song reminds him, "But if every kid did it, can't you see what a messed up world this would be?"
Typical of my Pollyanna attitude (Man, I've dated myself so many times in this!), I hear the song in reverse in my head. I figure, if every "kid" just picked up one piece of trash that wasn't his, or helped just one friend to feel happy, or spent just a few minutes every day appreciating and enjoying the world around him . . . "can't you see what an awesome world this would be?"
And for me, there's always hope that that's just what's going to happen. I think it's time to go call my dad and see how he's doing today.