Let children experience the natural world

I have noticed that most old-timers in the north country can identify a white-tailed deer, Canada goose, sugar maple, and morel mushroom. Most people of my generation lack this ability. We have experienced the death of natural history.

I am 22 years old and, like many other college students, much of my academic life has been indoors. Often, PowerPoint presentations replace field trips and prepared lab material replaces field naturalist teaching. Biology students can graduate without having taken a field course.

Media have distracted all of us from the outdoors and colonized our imaginations since childhood. It has filled our minds with advertisements, logos and inaccurate Disney representations of wildlife. Why can most elementary schoolchildren identify the McDonald's arches but not a daisy? Why are some attracted to video game simulations of the world over the real thing?

Modern American culture drives us inside, deprives us of curiosity and steers us away from mystery. All of this has impaired our understanding of natural history: observation, question, exploration of species' relationships and life cycle, and cultivation of wonder and love.

This past semester I completed a senior project focused on natural history. This experience has affirmed my belief that contact with the natural world can promote mental and physical health. The act of walking in a park or through the woods can be therapeutic. Sighting wildlife and stalking wild edibles can be exhilarating. Through natural history we can appreciate the deeply interconnected world of which we are a part.

If we acknowledge this connection, if we are striving for longevity and if we are thinking of our children, then we need to respect the natural world. Our health rests on the well-being of life which surrounds us.

I know everyone is not a field biologist or a know-all naturalist (no such naturalist exists). However, I advocate a keener awareness of the curious natural world. I challenge us to unplug, walk outside, engage our senses, tromp in the snow, follow a deer track, sketch a daisy, search for wild morels, keep a journal on migrations.

For those of you in the north country who are already there, I commend you and ask that you share your knowledge of the north woods. Teach your children or mentor a youth. Together we can revive natural history and the wonder and connection that lie within.

Ryan Gillard

Canton