Amazement

As naturalists, we like to believe we’re helping people appreciate their natural world – and we maybe try to ask -  and answer  - questions that make us all think.

But my editors often wanted those questions to go a bit further and make people uncomfortable  . . . make ‘em SQUIRM – get them to think outside the box.

So I’ll start with this question:

Is there anything that we naturaists, or writers, are doing that’s making a nickel’s worth of difference?

Oh sure, we urge people to go hiking and birding and skiing and just enjoying the outdoors. And I’m sure people feel refreshed and rejuvenated after they’ve done so.

But  -  let’s get real cynical and play the devil’s advocate for a minute:

Are we - REALLY accomplishing anything?  Have we helped anybody make a connection? Have we made a difference?

When our politicians won’t vote a small increase in mileage standards for cars,  - or ratify a treaty on global warming,  - and we declare the national importance of rebuilding New Orleans below sea level,  - and we all live in bigger and bigger houses, - and Congress is trying to dismantle the Endangered Species Act,  - and the last two presidential debates hardly even mentioned the word environment – when our society seems bent on degradation of the planet – have we succeeded as educators or environmentalists or resource managers or even as citizens?  Have we failed to help people see the connection?

Maybe it’s because we – society as a whole – have become jaded. Are we losing what Rachel Carson called the “sense of wonder?” Or maybe the capacity to be amazed?

And if we’re no longer amazed -- could it be just because nobody just goes out to play in the dirt any more?

How many of you know of the book, Last Child in the Woods, by Richard Louv? He makes a pretty good case that kids simply don’t play outside anymore, and therefore have lost their connection to the land.

Ken Finch, a former president of the Association of Nature Center Administrators, argues somewhat the same thing. Even if kids DO get outside, it’s too often in an artificial, structured setting where they don’t really interact with nature.

Did any of you ever get to meet Sylvan Runkel? He was a character – an Iowa naturalist -  who knew how to make you feel amazed. Maybe because he never ceased to be amazed himself. When he was 80 years old, he’d still be exuberant to find a mushroom, or see a spring wildflower, or walk in a prairie.

And he’d encourage kids to get muddy, climb trees, play in the dirt, jump in a pile of leaves, or throw rocks in the water, or wade in a crick. (As a farm kid, I say CRICK. CREEK just never has sounded right . . .)

Sylvan would lead kids – of all ages - on nature hikes. And he’d be amazed to find a stinging nettle, which he’d explain was nature’s version of a hypodermic needle. And he’d talk about the amazing way that fungi recycled dead trees into topsoil. And how vultures (amazing birds) clean up dead animals. And how trees silently, constantly move hundreds of gallons of water from roots to leaves (“Listen to that tree pump,” he’d say, with amazement.)

He’d even be amazed at bird poop – because when birds eat berries, and then poop, they plant seeds – and fertilize them – to grow more shrubs to produce more berries and more nesting sites and for more birds.

Then Sylvan would point out that natural communities are so successful, so productive, because they have so many citizens – plants, animals, insects, even bacteria - that work together. They’re connected. .

And then he’d allow that maybe human communities could learn a few things from Nature’s communities.

Sy has been dead for 12 years – but people still tell stories of how much he influenced their lives (I’ll bet Larry could share a couple . . .) – how he connected with them, and helped them connect with nature’s citizens.

Maybe it was because Sy had a pretty strong connection himself – and it started as a kid, in the outdoors. As a toddler, he spent summers with his grandmother in her log cabin in southern Illinois. Back home in Moline, Illinois, on the banks of the Mississippi River, Sylvan and his sisters would swim, boat, hunt, and fish in the big river, and climb the bluffs. And their parents were all for it - they encouraged the kids to be “as free as birds.”

And in 1925, right after high school, Sy hitch-hiked and rode freight trains west to spend a summer seeing the country. He fought forest fires for awhile, then caught a freighter back through the Panama Canal to New York. And then he hitch-hiked back to Moline.

Would today’s parents condone that kind of adventure?

But those kinds of experiences became the foundation for Sy’s career in conservation and environmental education – teaching others to read and appreciate that landscape, and its citizens.

Sylvan went on to spend a summer in an Oregon fire tower, was on a forest fire crew in Idaho, and attended a forestry summer camp in Michigan. After college, he worked in the woods in northern Wisconsin, helped Iowa farmers plant trees, and eventually headed up a CCC camp in Iowa. That lead to a 40-year career with the US Soil Conservation Service – and another 20 years in retirement as an environmental educator and a naturalist, and wildflower book author, and even a guest naturalist on TV programs.

I wonder, will it still be possible in, maybe 50 years, to tell that kind of story about some of today’s kids?

Nowadays, kids are more likely to go to the mall than to the CRICK!  (or even the creek!)  And a summer vacation is a trip to Disney Word, rather than a visit to Grandma’s log cabin and woods and crick.

But Sy had the chance to “get acquainted” with Nature. He later taught that if we got acquainted, Nature would feel like home. And if it was home, we’d want to take care of it.

And that’s kind of our approach now, too – even though nobody has a grandmother who lives in a log cabin. We still know intuitively that we should give our kids opportunities to get acquainted with Nature.

For example, down east of Des Moines is the Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge.  A great place, where the goal is to re-create for visitors what the tallgrass prairie looked like. They’ve planted prairie flowers and grass where the corn and soybean fields used to be, and they’ve brought in bison and elk and jackrabbits – and there’s hope they can reestablish prairie chickens.

But what they’re really proud of is the Prairie Learning Center – a multi-million dollar, state-of-the-art visitor center, with mounted bison and nifty murals and life-like dioramas and interactive educational displays and recorded bird calls and a movie theater. Kids can come there and do prairie arts and crafts and paintings and hike on a trail. And go the gift shop and buy ceramic bison and prairie coloring books and buffalo-chip Frisbees.

It’s an inviting place. I’ve taken my family there, and I’ve given programs there. I’ve sent friends to see it.

But then I think back to one of my first introductions to prairie, more than 30 years ago, before the prairie learning center.  I was writing about a naturalist who led his gradeschool students out into a tiny prairie remnant – and simply asked them to lie down.

The kids giggled and sprawled out in the grass -  But before long they grew quiet, as they began to absorb the smells of the prairie soil, the feel of the itchy prairie grass, the sight of the clouds overhead, the sound of the insects. Who cared if they knew the difference between bluestem and switchgrass or goldenrod and coneflowers? They EXPERIENCED the prairie. And I’ll bet they’ll never forget the sensation of just lying on the ground and looking up.

It’s a different experience than learning about prairie in a nature center. Now don’t get me wrong! Nature centers can be GREAT –IF we’re careful to use them as doors we go through on the way TO the outdoors – rather than a window through which we see the outdoors off somewhere in the distance.

We must be sure that we don’t fall into the trap of relegating Nature to a place, a building – when Nature is really all around us – it’s the community we live in. And we’re an integral part of that natural community.

I hope we’re not teaching people to think that nature is a stuffed deer head on the wall or the turtle in the aquarium or the snake in the terrarium, or maybe an interactive computer game about the rainforest? And that you must stay on the trail and don’t touch and - don’t get muddy!

Any nature center should be merely the introduction to connecting with the prairie or a woodland or a swamp, where kids can go and just explore.

And that place to explore doesn’t have to be big or fancy or pristine or even very “natural.” But it does need to be unstructured, says Ken Finch – that former nature center administrator I talked about.  His own kids’ favorite place is a digging pit – just a big hole in the backyard – that’s the hit of the neighborhood.

I can believe that.

When our 3-year-old grandson came to visit us, almost the first thing he said was “Grandma, can we dig in the dirt?”

We’ve got bird feeders and nature books, and toy tractors and balls, and he loves to help us cook – and yet his first priority was DIRT  - digging in the flower bed with Grandma.  I think it’s an instinct that kids need to have their hands in the dirt – to touch the earth. And his little brother, who’s now 2, is absolutely fascinated with BUGS. Any kind of bugs. Ants, caterpillars, centipedes, flies, spiders, lightning bugs. He just squeals with delight when he spots them, and wants to touch them, and pick them up and name them.

And, whether we admit it or not, adults need those experiences, too – both mentally and physically. Studies by University of Michigan psychologists found that the psychological health of cancer patients improved dramatically when they spent time simply gardening or walking in the woods. Residents of public housing were less aggressive and more civil to their neighbors when there were trees nearby. And prisoners who simply had a view of farmland from their cells needed less health care.

Nature affects brain function, the researchers concluded. Our brains need the rest and recuperation of “soft fascination,” such as a relaxing walk on the beach or in the woods. Watching TV or a ballgame may SEEM relaxing, like a change from work – but it really doesn’t give the brain a chance to rest or wander.

Kids, especially, need that  “soft fascination” – unstructured outdoor time to just let their minds wander. If we don’t give them that opportunity, they may lose touch with Nature.

LOSE TOUCH with the EARTH? How can we lose touch with the place we LIVE?

Well, last year, I gave a program on outdoor writing for fifth graders. We took some time so they could use their senses to observe their surroundings, then to (hopefully) describe those sensations in words.

It was a TOTAL FLOP. During the day, hardly any of the kids could name one thing they’d seen, heard, smelled, touched, or tasted – other than lunch. They seemed oblivious to the cicadas that were calling, the breeze in a pine grove, the gurgling of a nearby stream, the scolding of blue jays, the clouds overhead, the smell of fresh-mown grass in the park.

And these weren’t urban kids. Most lived on farms, or in small, rural communities. But they apparently had not spent enough time outdoors to “get acquainted” with their natural surroundings. Or maybe their senses had been numbed by TV, or by computers, or by music played too loudly, or the roar of their ATVs or minibikes?

And they probably had orders from their parents and teachers to not get dirty or wet, and to not be late for the next class session about archery or animals or first aid or canoeing.

Here’s another example:

Have heard the saga of Iowa’s Child – the Iowa Environmental Project – the indoor rainforest? It first was planned for an Iowa City suburb, and they rejected the proposal, and it bounced around for awhile and now may be built near Lake Red Rock, southeast of Des Moines.

Our Senator Chuck Grassley  - who claims to be a fiscal conservative! - got a $50 million federal appropriation for the project. And the promoters are trying to raise tens of millions more. And it’s supposed to become a tourist attraction, and it may give a boost to the local economy,

But will it REALLY help people CONNECT with their community?

After they visit “nature” – an artificial rain forest under a 3-acre dome that’s heated during the Iowa winter by fossil fuels – they’ll get back in their cars, powered by petroleum pumped from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge – and drive on Interstate 80 through what once was one of the grandest ecosystems on earth – the tallgrass prairie.  And the people will know more about the rainforest of the Amazon than they do about the amazing prairie that was the foundation for the black soil in their Iowa back yards.

Is it about MONEY?

A cynic like me might say that just playing outside has lost favor because it doesn’t MAKE MONEY for anybody. Big corporations have persuaded us that we need an indoor rain forest, or fancy playground equipment, or nature centers, or paved trails. Corporate America doesn’t want kids to play outside.

Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods, complains about the “commodification” of Nature.  We feel compelled to build a nature center, or an indoor rain forest. The schools might have an ecology field trip, or require a report on the environment.

Or – once a year – we celebrate Earth Day.  Once a year.

Does that remind you of people who faithfully go to church on the sabbath, or maybe even worship more often – but they still don’t grasp -  or practice -  the most basic concept of all religions: LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR?

Has the environment turned into just one more thing we feel obliged to think about – occasionally? If it isn’t too much trouble?

Instead of our home – that natural community with the resources that we must protect to actually survive – we’ve allowed “the environment” to become yet another special interest.

SPECIAL INTEREST?  Survival of our planet is special interest?

A poll in the 1970s – soon after Earth Day and the media frenzy around it - said that about half of Americans thought that protecting the environment was the biggest concern facing the country.

Want to guess how many Americans think that today? Try about 1 %.

And here’s another sobering poll for those of us whom Rush Limbaugh would label “environmental wackos.”

In 1996, 32 % of people in a poll agreed with the statement that most people active in environmental groups “are extremists – not really reasonable people.”  By 2000, 41 % of people in a similar poll agreed that environmental activists are not reasonable people – they are extremists.  Does that mean I’m here amongst a bunch of wild-eyed radicals?

Now other polls still seem to say that about 2/3 of Americans consider ourselves to be conservationists. But maybe that’s as long as you don’t pin us down and ban the use of weed killers on our dandelions or require our SUVs and minivans to get better gas mileage or ask us to make any other sacrifices . . . .

We seem to have a hard time making a personal CONNECTION between conservation and some of the critical issues that we face – say global warming, or the need to end our dependency on foreign oil.

But what if we persuaded people that conservation is PATRIOTIC? Make it a national goal? A VISION!

Then it’s not a special interest – it’s a way to CONNECT PEOPLE.

If it’s a matter of national pride, then maybe we’ll find a way to make it happen.

 “With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it, nothing can succeed.” Abraham Lincoln said it a century and a half ago. “Consequently, he who molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions.”

Why haven’t we molded public sentiment for the environment?

“If only people understood, . . . .” we lament . . .

But is it more than understanding?

Nature writer John Burroughs thought so.

“Knowledge without love will not stick,” he wrote, “ but if loves comes first, knowledge is sure to follow.”

SO do we get kids to LOVE the earth by taking them to nature centers or watching wildlife videos or giving them regular environmental education classes?

Or do we just let them do what they love to do:  “play in the dirt?”

So what if they get off the trail, or dig a hole, or stomp on an anthill, or maybe even build a tree house? At least they’re CONNECTING with the earth.

One more example using our grandson. We took him on a short canoe trip, where we saw eagles and herons and fish and animal tracks -  which I wanted desperately to show him and tell him ALL about.

 And you know the best part of it for him? Throwing rocks in the water. And wading in the mud. And throwing more rocks. And getting wet and dirty.

And just being outside.

In1981, a  survey found that kids spent 86 minutes per day outside

By 1997, it was down to 42 minutes – less than half.

What do you suppose it is today – 10 years later? 20 minutes?

Why? There are lots of excuses.  Our hectic lifestyle. Fear? Safety? Urban areas without open space? TV? Computers? Homework? Shopping malls?

But instead of grumbling, let me dream just a little.

I’d like to think that the environment one day will be the umbrella, the link, that will bring us together, that will CONNECT us.  Democrats, Republicans, Red, Blue, religious, not-so-religious.

Maybe that connection to the Earth is one thing - something - we have in common.

Have you heard of the book “The Creation – An Appeal to Save Life on Earth, by Edward O. Wilson? Wilson is a famous naturalist who says scientists and evangelicals should stop quarreling and focus on protecting the planet. Whether we believe life was created by God in an instant - or evolved over billions of years -  people of all faiths need to unite to preserve habitat and reverse global warming.

Are we treading on thin ice to bring religion into the debate? I don’t think so.  Don’t most formal religions teach that we should respect and care for the earth, and for the people that were put here by some all-powerful force – maybe even a creator?  We adults worry about whether that’s politically possible or correct – but kids probably don’t.

Richard Louv’s young son posed it pretty bluntly:

“Are God and Mother Nature married, or just good friends?”

How do you answer that?

            Or, if not religious, are our connections spiritual?

            What’s spiritual?

A rabbi friend of Richard Louv said simply “to be spiritual is to be constantly amazed.”

            I like that.

Now I don’t necessarily consider myself a religious person – but I guess I must be spiritual, because I seem to be constantly amazed.  I can be amazed, mystified, by a snowflake, or a junco, or a fox squirrel, or a Minnesota mosquito, or a leafless bur oak, or the call of a loon.

And maybe I’m in good company . . .. Albert Einstein wrote that “the most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and science.”      Fundamental.

Let’s hope that all humans will learn to cherish that beauty of the mysterious; and share amazement about the Earth, the Earth’s CITIZENS, and life itself  – ALL forms of life.
And maybe what we really need to do most is to allow our children – and ourselves, and our fellow citizens  – to simply be amazed.