Family Friday: Enjoying Nature Around Us

It is the first Friday of October so that means another thoughtful article by Lucas Miller. This month Lucas urges us to notice, appreciate, and enjoy the nature all around us. Take advantage of the great fall weather by getting outside with your family!

In the past couple of years, Last Child in the Woods, a book by Richard Louv, has had parents, environmentalists, and educators contemplating, discussing, and making some pretty big changes.

If you haven’t read it I suggest you do, but I will summarize. Louv presents a heap of scientific evidence and a whole lot of anecdotes that compellingly show that children need nature. They suffer emotionally, mentally, and physically when it is denied them and show tremendous benefits when they are reunited with it. Children have never been more inundated with scientific factoids by multiple cable channels dedicated to wildlife and “discovery” (and singing zoologists) but information is trivial compared to unstructured time spent in contact with nature (that means soccer practice doesn’t really count). His term for our children’s lack of free-time in the natural environment is “nature-deficit disorder.”

Anyone reading this blog probably already intuitively recognized this but Louv’s case is supported by so much research that it feels like we spokespeople for nature are suddenly armed with an arsenal of persuasive arguments that can really change some minds, attitudes, and educational practices.

Professionals and volunteers at parks, preserves, and numerous other organizations are creating opportunities to help your family make contact with the natural world. The Children & Nature Network (C&NN) is a great place to start with a wealth of ideas and initiatives. I also encourage you to seek out the local nature centers, local & state parks, and wildlife societies (Audubon, Master Naturalists, to name a couple). There are so many nature enthusiasts, scientists, and conservationists eager to share their knowledge and get you outdoors. You can participate in scientific endeavors (listen for frog calls, tag monarch butterflies, etc.) or work up a sweat while you lend your muscle to habitat restoration efforts. You can pick up trash on the beaches or just bliss out by a stream.

But remember, you don’t have to load up the camping gear and head half-way across the country to find nature. I was helping clear a trail last weekend with a smart and thought-provoking fellow who is writing his doctoral dissertation about what he calls “marginal nature.” He makes a good case for paying attention to and appreciating the nature at hand. His belief is that the neighborhood drainage ditch can be more interesting (and ecologically diverse) than your neighbor’s spectacular wildlife habitat or even the space we set aside as a “natural area” that is groomed and managed.

Here’s a quote from his Marginal Nature blog that sums it up nicely:

Native and exotic plants colonize open spaces. Insects, reptiles, amphibians, birds, and mammals readily inhabit these unintended “spontaneous” habitats (Sukopp, 1987, Adams, 1994, Kendle and Forbes, 1997, Wheater 1999). The result is a so-called successional mix of native and exotic organisms. What emerges in these margins is the unintended product of human activity and nature’s unflagging expressiveness whose marginality is its defining characteristic both physically and culturally. By traditional landscape standards, these margins are usually not aesthetically pleasing, but they can have their own rough beauty that draws nature writers and others there to seek encounters with “unofficial countryside” (Mabey, 1973) or the “urban wilds” (Pyle, 1993). However, what they encounter is not wilderness or countryside – but a kind of natural place that strains conceptual categories of nature, because marginal nature in the urban landscape is neither pristine nor pastoral, but rather it is a new kind of nature whose ecological and cultural value is an open question.

This “smart and thought-provoking fellow” also happens to work for a sewage treatment plant that is a national model in sustainable recycling and reuse of yard wastes and, yes, human waste. Talk about someone dedicating their life to the living green! Check it out at An Introduction to Dillo Dirt.

I know this is all a bit rambling but it really just comes down to getting families outside. We tend to envision major, outdoor camping adventures but it can be just taking a walk and paying attention to the “weeds,” “bugs” and “eyesores.” Nature is all around us. Sometimes it’s pretty and sometimes it’s not but it ALWAYS rewards closer inspection.

Readers will be excited to hear that Lucas has released his first DVD, “Animals Rock with Lucas Miller.” We’ve had it for almost two months so have watched it quite a bit in that time. The Koala Sisters still love it and, even higher praise, Rich and I continue to enjoy it as well. As I mentioned earlier, the DVD comes in a plastic-free case made from recycled materials so you won’t have any Unnecessary Plastic Guilt. Below is a different DVD selection than the one featured last month to give you another taste. The DVD can be ordered online and, with the holidays approaching, would make a great gift.

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