Nature Deficit Disorder

"I love lamb's quarters and I remember playing in large patches of them at the back of a field when I was little. We would pull out enough to make little tunnels going into a "room" in the middle . . ." wrote Laurie yesterday in a comment on my edible weeds post from a few days back. And that helped me make my decision for today's FoodShed Summer Reading Pick of the Week. I recently finished reading an excellent book named Last Child in the Woods, written by Richard Louv. It took me forever to read because every few pages I had to put it down and head outside.

Do you remember playing in the woods as a child? Riding your bike down dirt paths? Turning over rocks to see bugs? Watching a leaf flow down a stream? Tracking animals? Finding bird's nests? Chasing butterflies? And, of course, the big memory captured so beautifully in many movies (most recently, The Bridge to Terabithia), building a treehouse? Well, turns out that today's generation of kids is doing less and less of this. Fishing is down. Camping is down. Being outdoors in unstructured play is down, down, down. As a result, this generation is experiencing what Louv calls "nature deficit disorder." No, it is not a medical condition, but he goes into great detail, with much scientific supporting evidence, about how this lack of connection with nature affects children both short-term and long-term cognitively, socially, emotionally and ultimately in their lack of commitment to conservation efforts. As a supporter of local food systems, I consider it a cause for alarm that an entire generation is disconnected with nature.

After I read Last Child in the Woods, we changed the way we walk to school in the morning, going slightly out of our way to traipse across a little bridge and through a stretch of woods. Within days, we knew everything in the world about tulip poplar trees, which were in full bloom and which we had never noticed before. We learned that if we waved our hands over the water when we crossed the bridge, the fish would appear. We saw a dead mole and studied it long enough to describe the differences in appearance among moles, chipmunks, hamsters and mice. And we met a lovely grandmother who walks her fluffy little dog in that stretch of woods every morning.

And that was just the beginning. A bunch of neighbor kids and mine were digging a hole in my yard and my husband asked as we watched from the kitchen window, "What are they doing?"

I said, "They're digging a hole."

He said, "Why?"

I said, "Because they're digging a hole."

We wondered if they were building something, and sure enough, after reading this book, I knew they were. They were building memories that would make a difference the rest of their lives in how they thought about nature.

Last Child in the Woods is a great book to read now, at the beginning of summer, when months of infinite possibilities await with the most basic of tools. Mud. Sticks. Friends. And time. But be warned. It is an easy book to put down. Because nature calls.