“Passion is lifted from the earth itself by the muddy hands of the young; it travels along grass-stained sleeves to the heart.” - Richard Louv
Web editor’s note: This enormously popular book from 2005 and the research it sparked has inspired a world-wide renaissance movement in outdoor education, dubbed “Leave No Child Inside!”, that has helped motivate tens of thousands of educators and parents, and has launched successful environmental education legislation initiatives in many regions of the U.S. For anyone who cares about children and nature, or wonders where the new generations of environmental leaders will come from, Last Child in the Woods is a MUST READ book, the Silent Spring (but with a hopeful twist) of environmental education in the 21st century.
***
In Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv weaves together many strands of current scientific research, as well as educational and personal experiences, into quite a journey. Last Child describes the human costs of alienation from nature, among them diminished use of the senses, attention difficulties, and higher rates of physical and emotional illnesses. As we read, we travel through outrage and despair at the current disconnection between youth and nature, to the health implications of such a disconnect, to how we got here.
Our hope is restored through examples of how we can take part in reshaping our culture to understand and value the creative, cognitive, and restorative properties of nature and provide all children access to the natural world.
He offers that the major current institutional and cultural barrier to nature literacy has to do with nature time being viewed as “unproductive, dangerous, alien, or off-limits.” He suggests that we must shift our value of time spent in nature as “not merely leisure time, but an investment in our children's health…For a growing body of evidence indicates that direct exposure to nature is essential for physical and emotional health.”
Richard Louv presents a clear vision of our current challenges and of a future that will have nature as a respected and essential component of healthy individuals, families and communities everywhere.
I look forward to that future, and am heartened by the knowledge that we are doing everything we can to help bring it about here at Wilderness Awareness School.