No child left inside

Never in my growing up years could I have imagined that it would literally take an act of Congress to get kids to re-connect with the natural world in a meaningful way. The legislation was introduced Apr 22 (Earth Day) by Senator Jack Reed and Congressman John Sarbanes. It's called the No Child Left Inside Act of 2009. The goal is to ensure that students have a "high quality" environmental education.

How about this for a summer lesson plan: unplug the TV, join the library's summer reading club, check out a book or two on something pertaining to the natural world, plunk down under the apple tree in the back yard, feel the cool ground and the ants crawling over your legs as you read. Keep checking out books at least until you've completed the required number of books for the reading program. Make sure to get a sticker to adhere to your certificate for each book you've read. (I distinctly remember one summer, each sticker I got was another segment of a caterpillar.)

Here's another: provided you've finished the school year with passing grades pitch a tent in the backyard and lay out there every night with a friend or sibling and after you're done telling stories to one another, listen to the crickets chirping, watch the magic of lightning bugs, and look up at the expanse of stars above, and wonder.

Here's another: help your Mom and Dad and grandparents with gardening and lawn care, and the "putting up" of vegetables and fruit for the winter. Enjoy the fruits of your labors. I remember visits to my Grandparents' farm with a garden alongside the house that extended from the road to the back of the house. Dinner consisted of corn and tomatoes and raspberries picked less than an hour before with a side of homemade biscuits (and raspberry jam) and topped off with fresh pie.

Here's another: Find some adoptive grandparents who have a farm and spend a week getting a glimpse of what life on a farm can be like. At Grandma and Grandpa Phillips' farm I remember drinking fresh milk, feeding the chickens, gathering eggs and walking through the troughs of a freshly plowed field to take a bottle of cold water to my Grandpa, with Brownie dog alongside.

Here's another: Go to the county fair every fall and make sure to visit the swine and cow barns then check out the prize-winning produce and flowers in the 4-H barn.

Here's another: Family trips every summer (some in a pop-up camper) to places like the Smokey Mountains, Mammoth Cave, Niagara Falls and the Wisconsin Dells.

Here's another: Figure out a way to go to "camp" every summer for at least one week. (I was at camp usually two weeks every summer for Girl Scouts, 4-H or church. I distinctly remember one week of primitive camping with the Girls Scouts, constructing our own latrine and lean-toos.)

Then there was the week-long canoe trip venture with the Girl Scouts my final year in high school. It took three of those days to traverse 90 miles of the AuSable River, bringing all our food and supplies with us in the canoes. We floated down the river for hours without seeing signs of humans (and especially no litter).

Here's one I don't recommend but it was a lesson: Get lost in a large national forest in the twilight hours and find your way out (Yes I did, I was high school age and had with me my younger brother).

It's no wonder then, that I took the "long way" to visit friends in North Carolina, traveling the Blue Ridge Parkway and then returned via the Shenandoah National Park byway. It's no wonder then, that on my way back from a car trip to Maine I bypassed the highway for a scenic excursion through the White Mountains in Vermont and New Hampshire (in October). It's no wonder that this past Saturday I took the Parkway route to get to a destination.

If nothing else, check out the book, Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv:
http://www.childrenandnature.org/book/

And most of all don't ever get too old or too cynical too experience wonder.

As I go on in life, day by day,
I become more of a bewildered child;
I cannot get used to this world....
I could wish my days
to be bound each to each
by the same open-mouthed wonder.
-Robert Louis Stevenson

America, The Beautiful
O beautiful, for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America! God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea.
- lyrics by Katherine Lee Bates

What am I doing?! It's time to sign off and go outside to play!