No Child Left Inside

No child left inside... What a great idea... and long over due.

Imagine for a moment that you share something in common with everyone associated with Durango Nature Studies. That something is a deep, a heartfelt connection to nature. When you look at a sunset, you see a painting. When you see the first leaves change in the fall, you feel joy. When you sit next to a babbling brook, you hear music. It’s a connection that is deep - something we all get.

Now ask yourself where that deep, heartfelt connection comes from. Close your eyes for a moment and think back to the first time you remember being outside. Maybe it was fishing with your dad. Maybe it was a picnic with your family. For me it was hunting for salamanders in window wells after a rain.

Those experiences were more than just fun. We learned to organize our day (after all, hunting for salamanders was very important work), and we learned to explore and question the world around us. We gained a connection to nature, to the environment, and to our home. We also learned not to be afraid. Nature was a place to play; it was a play of freedom and joy. It was really fun!

What’s alarming is that the way children play has shifted from outside to inside in a single generation. A study by the Kaiser Family Foundation reports that, during the school year, children ages 8-10 spend an average of 6 hours each day in front of a TV, video game, or computer screen. Six hours!

You might say, “Knowing how to use a computer is a great thing.” And it is. The problem is that as children spend more and more time indoors, they are becoming more and more disconnected from everything outdoors. They are getting lots of information about big ecological disasters like tsunamis and hurricanes, but if that’s the only experience they have with nature, they begin to associate nature and the outdoors with hopelessness and doom. They become afraid.

I don’t know about you, but I vote because I’m passionate about an issue or a candidate. I get involved with my community because I love where I live. I even have my job with DNS because I feel a deep, heartfelt connection to nature and children. The key here is that I’m involved, not because of what I know, but because of what I feel. It is really important have those connections in a community, because that’s where solutions to problems come from.

There are things happening globally that are going to need some pretty big solutions - things like global warming. It doesn’t matter whether you believe global warming is real or that human beings had anything to do with it. The fact is, the polar ice caps are melting, the Sahara is getting bigger, and our oceans are increasingly polluted.

The next 10-50 years are likely to bring changes to the planet that we don’t even understand yet. Those changes are going to require solutions that we haven’t even thought of yet. The people who will have to find those solutions are not those of us who are adults today. They are our kids and grandkids.

Yet, if all they know about nature is fear, if they never have the experiences you and I had when we were kids, they won’t have the passion to care.

As children’s lives shift more and more inside, it’s becoming more and more important to give them a place outdoors in which they can explore and learn. A place where they feel safe. A place where they feel joy. A place where they make those connections, memories like the ones you and I have, so that in 10, 20, or even 50 years they will have found the solutions we need.

If we get them outside today, if we give them every opportunity to roll in a meadow or catch a bug, they won’t be afraid. Instead, they’ll share that same passion for nature and community that you and I do. They’ll see a painting in a sunset and hear music in a babbling brook.

Allison Pease - Executive Director