Stay on the trail. Look, don’t touch. Take only photographs, leave only footprints.
These and similar rules have become a standard component of a refined environmental ethic; any reasonable outdoor education class is going to emphasize them.
I have a confession to make: As a kid I violated every one of those rules, frequently and without guilt. It made me a conservationist.
I roamed freely through the woods and fields. I caught lightning bugs. I turned over rocks to find crayfish. I trapped tadpoles in cups. I followed animal tracks. I built forts and dammed creeks. I dug holes. I chased things.
None of this lessened my respect for the natural world. Quite the opposite. Instead, I wanted to spend every minute I could out there. It started a lasting love for wild things and wild places that has never abated. I suspect I’m not alone in this.
In contrast, a lot of today’s outdoor education focuses on facts, often presented in the context of the earth’s doom and gloom future. An underlining message of this is that nature is separate from humanity and oh-so fragile, something we must never mess with. While the information may be alarming, it’s hardly the way to instill love. It instead makes nature boring, even dreary.
You probably have heard the complaints that kids are not playing outside, are not interested in the natural world. There’s even a term for this, coined by Richard Louv: Nature Deficit Disorder. And yet we insist on putting barriers up so that kids will not want to play in nature. I believe that free and wild play in nature is one of the missing ingredients in building a viable, effective conservation movement.
I’m not alone. Paleontologist and science communicator Scott D. Sampson spends a lot of time on this in his excellent book How To Raise A Wild Child. He notes:
“Fearing that we must protect nature and kids at all costs, we often do more harm than good. Nature connection depends on firsthand, multisensory encounters. It’s a messy, dirty business – picking leaves and flowers, turning over rocks, holding wriggling worms, splashing in ponds. Lacking such experiences, children’s growth is impoverished and they’re unlikely to care for, let alone protect, natural places.”
Conservation writer Emma Marris says that many of these well-intentioned rules endanger “the simple, unsupervised messing about in the woods that so many older adults remember fondly.”
In an article for Slate magazine, Marris writes of a boy who gets in trouble for taking gravel from a state park. Another ranger sees this and realizes, “More than feeling empowered or excited to protect the natural world, now he is going to associate going to state parks with getting into trouble.”
I can already hear the protestations: One kid catching frogs may not hurt anything, but what if every kid did it? Can’t you see the damage caused by unauthorized trails ripping through the wilderness? Doesn’t the natural world have enough to deal with without a bunch of people trampling it?
Such questions raise valid points, of course. Certainly no one advocating a more hands-on approach to nature believes that every national park should be a “free for all” where kids and adults do whatever they want. Conservationists like Sampson and Marris never suggest kids pick endangered wildflowers or rip up sensitive habitats.
As kids, my brother and I caught and kept pet turtles. I would not do that with my son. With many turtle species in decline, keeping them as pets cannot be justified. In an increasingly crowded world, the reality is that there has to be regulations to protect wild things and wild places.
At one point in Yellowstone and other national parks, feeding bears was a favorite way to “connect” with nature. Today, we recognize that this activity is just plain stupid. It results in dead bears and dead humans. I’m not suggesting that everything we did in nature in the “old days” is justifiable today. Far from it.
But what I see is this: For many environmentalists, the “look but don’t touch” philosophy has become a rule for its own sake. It doesn’t matter if a habitat is full of rare species or a weed-infested hillside, kids should not bother nature. Ever. And this indeed does more harm than good.
There is a 1970s science fiction novel by John Crowley called Beasts. Despite some outdated notions on genetic engineering, it should be required reading for all conservationists. In it, humans have just suffered a massive calamity. The remaining people decide that they’ve wreaked enough havoc on earth, and use their technological prowess to construct a giant, self-sustaining tower.
All humans live in this tower and never leave, for any reason. They leave the rest of the planet to nature. This way, people can no longer muck things up.
When I first read this book, I considered this a version of dystopian hell. I have slowly realized that, for many environmentalists, the vision in this book is aspirational. A prevailing philosophy is that we need to leave nature alone.
I see that even in comments to this blog, nearly every time I write about interacting with nature. If I write about fishing, I get notes stating it’s cruel. If I write about hunting shed antlers, I’m depriving rodents of their nutrients. Even a story featuring tips for spotting wolves and bears in Yellowstone generated this comment: “Protect these animals, respect and leave them alone! Just read about them and watch the videos!”
For me, and many others, it’s not enough to watch a nature documentary. And never will be enough. It also denies our human evolutionary history: for much of it, we were inextricably part of, not separate from, the natural world. We still are. Building a tower does not change the fact that we are part of this world, dependent on land, water, air and creatures for our survival.
Sampson argues in How To Raise A Wild Child that unstructured play in nature is essential for children. They need it for their physical and mental health, and their development. And the planet needs it, too. Roaming off the trail, flipping over rocks, causes kids to fall in love with nature. And that love makes conservationists.
The good news is that we can allow this unstructured, hands-on play without endangering species or trampling sensitive habitats.
There are still lots of natural places where kids can and should roam at will. Sampson advocates for wild playgrounds, with trees and brush rather than manicured lawns, and where kids are free to explore. There are many vacant lots, woodlots and parks that could easily allow free play. Conservation organizations could acquire lands specifically for kids, properties slated for development that instead could be open to the much lesser impacts of rock collecting and miniature dam building.
And, as Emma Marris writes: “There are 640 million acres of public land in the United States. Surely there’s room somewhere for a few lousy forts.”
And, in case you haven’t been paying attention, those public land acres are under imminent threat from people who want to sell them. We surely need more kids (and adults) playing on them, and connecting to them, not fewer. If no one goes there, then no one will even notice when these lands come on the auction block. That would be a far greater loss than anything wrought by a group of kids flipping rocks in a stream.
My wife and I are taking this hands-on approach to nature with our own toddler son. As Sampson suggests, our toddler keeps a “nature box” filled with items collected on our outings: sticks and stones and pine cones and bits of lichen. He catches and releases praying mantises and moths. He builds little castles along the river.
A recent weekend national forest snowshoeing adventure quickly got derailed. All that unpacked snow off the trail was just too inviting. We built a snowman, gathering fallen pine limbs and cones to make arms and buttons. As we played, my son suddenly pointed at a tree, “Tiny squirrel!” he exclaimed.
Indeed, a pine squirrel scampered down the trunk and into the snow. As my son giggled, I could see the beginnings of a lifelong fascination, a fascination that leads to love. That love does not come from a video or from environmental education. It comes from being out there as a participating member of this beautiful, awesome, still wild world.
Great article! Hopefully there is a middle ground between the “tower” & the trampeling hordes overrunning nature!! (a bit of sarcasm there). I so enjoy reading your articles – learning something new every time and I’ve been around almost 80 years.
This is a very inspirational
Story!!
I fully agree that I enjoyed nature as a young child growing up. my children did enjoy everything I did as a child, with frogs, garter snakes, fish aquarium , also enjoying walking in nature etc.
As a result they are doing the same things I did, they did .
I am an animal lover and love nature, love our Earth.
My children are the same and now with their children!!
Good topic.
Thank you for bringing this very important part of nature!!!
Marie Patsch
Matt, thanks for your thoughtful missive. Like you, I am a conservationist. I work with private landowners to inform and inspire them to do the next thing to conserve their land. I do not preach or judge their choices. I grew up on Aldo Leopold, Sigurd Olsen and George Vuckelich. Too many folks point to the essay “Heart like a Mountain” by Aldo Leopold but either forgot everything else he wrote or never bothered to read it in the first place.
Humans are part of nature. Because we can reason and have the capability of abstract thought necessary to intuit the concept of a web of life, we are have a special burden to be responsible stewards.
We alter the environment in more ways and to an extent unique in nature. We transported the invasive plants that now infest our prairies, woodlands and wetlands. Our wheat seeds included hitchhiking Russian thistle (tumbleweed) seed. We introduced Africanized bees, starlings and sparrows to the Western Hemisphere. Those invaders are not natural here. They did not evolve here and have no natural enemies. Their uncontrolled growth is as much a threat as any ATV trail or unauthorized firing range.
John Muir and Gifford Pinchot battled with one another a century ago over preservation verses wise use. Fortunately, neither vanquished the other.
So, we too have a responsibility to manage our natural resources. But moreover; we broke it, so it is up to us to clean up the messes we make. We need to learn to live along side the natural world as responsible members and wise stewards. We cannot wall off protected public lands and hire out that responsibility to natural resource professionals. Our public lands become then nothing more than a zoo and its inhabitants pets. Yes, we need to protect special places. But we must not teach our children that nature is “out there.” It is when we learn to live responsibly side-by-side with our neighbors that we will begin to realize the Land Ethic.
I agree with you 100% I never stay on the trails I see more that way, these kids only care about video games there phone, got no clue what nature is all about
Great article! I was an outdoor educator for years and this article is right on. I wish there was more funding (or any funding) for environmental education, especially for experiential play and interdependence with the natural world among elementary school children.
I was always the “don’t stray from the path” type of girl growing up but now it is a whole different story and I find myself lost in nature all the time! Love your articles Matthew.
It all dependes on how many of us are going to do that. It`s called overpopulation.
Rodrigo has hit the nail on the head. Chances are, when you all were playing in nature as a kid, there was plenty more nature to play in. There was more undeveloped land, there were higher species populations. The reason land managers may treat nature as more precious is not because they are spoilsport prigs, but because they are probably way more aware than you of species population declines. You want kids to be feel free in nature? Then have fewer kids, teach them to respect other living things and become an active advocate for land preservation.
You act as though you could not recreate nature. What is the visual of “I am legend” or… the original “Planet of the apes”? What would happen if man were gone? If I don’t mow my backyard (which I didn’t do all last summer) it becomes a natural state again. Nature is not destroyed by children interacting with it. It’s destroyed by people organizing it. “Here are your trails..go only here”. “Here is your playground. We have created your structure, these are your boundaries”.
Here’s the problem with that kind of organizing by people who are trying to “protect” nature. We’re destroying our children’s ability to problem solve on their own. We’re taking away the most effective way of our children developing Executive Functioning Skills. https://www.childrenandnature.org/
If we don’t begin to realize the impact taking our children out of nature is having and is going to continue to have on our future then we will create what it is we fear happening. We create a society that doesn’t love nature and therefore is perfectly okay with replacing it with artificial intelligence and environments. Natural is best. It may not always be perfect…but left to it’s own devices…it evolves.
Our helpful society, although often well intended, has historical destroyed many of the natural components of this planet.
Hiking through a forest off trail doesn’t kill off/cause a decline in species. A person walking through the forest is no different than a bear walking through (other than the fact we don’t usually poo in the woods!).
The problem comes when people leave trash, or try to cut down/debark trees, or pollute natural creeks, or try to feed wildlife, etc. These actions DO cause a problem, and they are all associated with people who didn’t spend enough time with nature growing up, and have a lack of respect for it because of that. You want people to respect nature and be advocates for it? They need to spend *intimate* time in nature. That doesn’t mean walking down an asphalt trail looking at the pretty sights. It means making a deep connection to nature, feeling it is an integral part of your life.
As a side note, ” You want kids to be feel free in nature? Then have fewer kids” is a pretty shitty thing to say.
I just wrote a longer comment (below) about this. Thank you, Rodrigo, for speaking up on behalf of paths and wildlife that are under extreme stress due to people going off-trail. It breaks my heart to see and experience the degradation of Rocky Mountain National Park, up the road from where I was raised and still live, in my lifetime. Too many people trampling the tundra ….
Play and learning go together. Appreciation for beauty and wonder at the complexities of nature are learned in many ways but most joyfully by immersion.
Playing tag among alpine wildflowers would lead to destruction so I didn’t take my kids there until they could be amazed at the sight. Then playing tag didn’t come up as an option.
Common sense rules are needed. But for childhood’s sake we need places where kids can make their own rules and just have fun.
Thank You Matt, and keep fishing!
I’m Gramma… one of the best compliments I have received is… “no, Gramma.. I don’t to go buy my bow and arrows.. I like making them with you!” They love coming over so they can play outside.. get their hands muddy.. and make lots of stuff… they can all swim, snorkle, and paddle board… an Oregonian.
Excellent article. Love it. I was raised this way, and so were my children. While they don’t have children of their own yet, I have encouraged them along the way to keep up the tradition and to encourage their own children someday to do the same.
Well said, Matt!
As an avid scuba diver I’m trying to fit your philosophy into behavior in the wet side of the world. I’ve seen how many interactions in the oceans can leave pretty gruesome marks.
Good judgement is the key of course. We have a tendency at times to love something to death.
Thank you for this article. In our work we like to head off of the main pathways. Off to the areas of real interest where kids can truly indulge their need to explore and imagine and where, as an adult, you can see the connections being made that create not only an interest but a love for the natural world. You cannot replicate that depth of feeling and stimulation in a classroom or by only watching animals on a screen.
Years ago, when speaking with the director of a small nature center in New York state, I was shocked to hear her suggest that during the family nature walks I would be leading we should really try not to touch anything “…if we had to touch anything, pick up so much as a feather, we should make sure to put it back exactly in the same spot we found it.” Though I completed the programs I had agreed to, I crossed that nature center off any potential future employment list. Messing about in nature is how naturalists and scientists are grown. All you have to do is read the biographies or autobiographies of E. O. Wilson, David M. Carroll, Robert Michael Pyle, Bernd Heinrich, Beatrix Potter (mycology), etc. to see the direct link between the freedom they enjoyed in nature as children and their curiosity and scientific discoveries as adults.
A fantastic article, for all of us who “follow the rules” as you describe, “Don’t leave what you bring in, leave what you take, stay on the trails, etc…”
Love this article