I can still remember the sign, be it in snow, bright green or rusty reds, State Land Boundary Entering High Peaks Wilderness With your help we can be sure this Wilderness will always be a special place This past year the official concept of Wilderness in America turned fifty years old. I have tremendous gratitude
This past May a bill was introduced to Congress, commonly titled “Healthy Kids Outdoor Act of 2014.” This is a nearly identical version of a bill that was introduced in 2011 and subsequently was not enacted. The prognosis for this bill is similarly grim; most predictive measures give it a less than 5% chance of
Today’s families are running a great big science experiment, with our children as the guinea pigs. We have moved away from being a nation in love with nature to a nation in love with screens. In one generation, the percentage of people who reported that the outdoors was the most influential environment of their childhood
What Happened to Telling Children to Go Outside and Play? I was 25 when I became a mother, and perhaps I was still somewhat naive. Yet nothing, not even my early science-fiction addiction, prepared me for the bizarre complexities of parenthood. I’m not talking about the sleepless nights, the confusion of soothing a crying infant, or
Immunologist Mary Ruebush, PhD wrote a book called Why Dirt Is Good: Five Ways to Make Germs Your Friends. My favorite Ruebush quotation so far is: “Dirt is good. If your children aren’t coming in dirty every day, they’re not doing their job.” Her point is that all this rot about antibacterial soaps and compulsive
Beaver is out and Blog is in. Another loss for team nature was the decision by the publisher of the Oxford Junior Dictionary to replace dozens of nature-related words like “beaver” and “dandelion” with more relevant words like “blog” and “MP3 player.” As noted wildlife artist and conservationist Robert Bateman observed, “If you can’t name
Lizard’s Mouth, 11:30 am. It is the pinnacle of October weather: aromatic, golden, warm. A group of kids scamper, pell mell, in and around the boulders, folds and caves. They are looking for a suitable, “Hotel room,” for their teacher. Did I mention it was Thursday? That’s right; school is in session. Wilderness Youth Project
“What’s becoming of our children?” people are asking each other. When I was 10, I donned the massive headphones of the 1970s and listened to Simon and Garfunkel sing about a boy sitting on a ledge. I assumed the eerie refrain, which reeled itself deep into some secret passage of my brain, was the voice
