What Are We Missing?
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The year my son turned six we held his birthday party at a neighborhood park. We found a great site right next to the slides, swing, and assorted climbing structures. We had brought sidewalk chalk and bouncing balls for everyone. Within minutes after arriving, the children had all disappeared. They were hiding in a giant bush at the back of the playground. For almost an hour it was their clubhouse/fort/castle. It never occurred to me to say “Honey, would you like to have your party in a bush this year?” But that was apparently what the children most wanted. Until it was time for cake, that is.
It would seem that this generation of children just doesn’t have many chances to hide in a bush with their friends. Why is this? As a society at this moment, we simply don’t have the time, we don’t have the space, and we don’t see playing in a bush as something valuable to our culture.
And why should we value playing in a bush? Why would we, as adults, feel the need for free time in nature?
First, I always believe in the value of doing what our heart calls out for. Your heart knows, your soul knows, your inner child knows that being outside is good. Your heart knows that looking out a window at trees feels better than looking out at a wall. Your heart knows that something about standing on the edge of the ocean having the worries blasted out of you by the blustery winds has the power to change the course of your week.
But there is another voice inside us saying that, really, this is goofing off. When children are hiding in bushes, and when adults are standing on the back porch starring blankly at the dappled sunlight on the grass, they are not accomplishing anything.
We need to start doing things that don’t accomplish anything in particular immediately. This is urgent. This will not wait until you are retired. (Just last week a retired volunteer said to me, “I really have to take a sabbatical. One of these days I am just going to disappear for a month.”) It takes practice, and if we don’t start young, it will be hard to learn later in life.
In 1890, Henry James defined two kinds of attention: directed attention and fascination. Directed attention is the kind of attention we use when we’re being productive, doing tasks like writing, or proof reading, or homework, or preparing our taxes. Fascination, or “involuntary attention” is, on the other hand, what happens when you are watching a bug crawl up a blade of grass, or an eagle circle in the sky.
Rachel and Stephen Kaplan did a study on this topic, finding that too much directed attention leads to what they call “directed-attention fatigue” because “Neural inhibitory mechanisms become fatigued by blocking competing stimuli.” This leads to “impulsive behavior, agitation, irritation, and inability to concentrate.” In an article for Monitor on Psychology, they wrote, “If you can find an environment where the attention is automatic, you allow directed attention to rest.”
The Kaplans did a study of office workers and found that those with a window looking out on trees, bushes or large lawns were less frustrated and found more enjoyment in their work than employees without such a view.
In his most recent book: Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder, Richard Louv has gathered together some of the growing research about the effects of spending time in nature—or the lack thereof—on our mind, body and spirit. Much of the information I’ve put together here comes from this book. For instance, there are a growing number of studies that show how proximity to nature has measurable benefits to both mental and psychological health.
Howard Frumkin writes in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine about a 10-year study finding that patients whose room had a view of trees went home sooner than those who had a view of a brick wall. A study out of Cornell University’s environmental psychology program showed that “Life’s stressful events appear not to cause as much psychological distress in children who live in high-nature conditions, compared to those who live in low-nature conditions.”
In addition to the physical and psychological effects on us of our contact with nature, we also must consider the impact of this contact on our eco-system. Most people who camp as adults were taken camping by their parents. Most adults who care about the natural world established that wonder-filled relationship as children: building tree houses, fishing, throwing rocks into creeks. When you read stories about Teddy Roosevelt’s childhood experiences in nature, it seems only logical that he would have been the one to put his presidential weight behind the national park system.
Our children are the future’s conservationists—or not. Will children raised indoors grow up to camp in our national parks? And if they do not love the open spaces, how will they vote when housing pressures increase? How will this generation of voters and activists know that those national treasures are worth preserving?
And we as UUs have a particular investment in our own connection with the earth, with the web of life. This connection with nature is one of our deepest sources of renewal, inspiration and wisdom. Whenever we are intimate with the natural world we revisit the knowledge carried by our tradition: that we are not separate from beings who are not human, from things made not by human hands.
We must make sure that the way we live our lives honors our articulated theology. If we don’t spend time with the natural world we lose the chance to grow deeper in that wisdom and inspiration, to develop a mature understanding of our interconnection, to let it guide and inform our lives. What better way could we share this knowing, this value, with our children than by giving them time to be fascinated by the natural world?
So why aren’t our children given the time to be in nature? Now that higher test scores are the main focus of our schools, recess is being shortened or even eliminated, because this is time legislators feel could be better used preparing for tests. But studies suggest that nature can be used as a therapy for ADHD, in some cases replacing medication or behavioral therapy. Remembering the Kaplan’s research, it seems that regular breaks in nature would restore the ability to focus and could improve test scores.
Children lose some of the time in nature that previous generations have enjoyed because they participate in more organized sports and other adult-programmed activities. And they lose their connection with nature as they spend more and more time with technology. Today’s children spend an average of 30 hours a week in front of the TV. Schools increasingly emphasize technology; curricula are geared more towards visiting a website about the rainforest than toward being fascinated by local flora and fauna.
We adults have less time to spend in nature ourselves. We spend increasing energy on our daily commute, as housing and jobs sprawl apart. And, as Juliette Schorr writes in The Overworked American, we are working more hours than at any time since the industrial revolution over a century ago. If we don’t value our time to wander in nature, the external pressures of test scores and commutes quickly push aside our time for wild places.
The locations for such fascination and exploration are disappearing as well. Local open spaces are designated as playing fields and structured playgrounds, which researchers have found encourage less creative, and more competitive play. Most adults of my generation can think of a spot of “left over” land, around the edges of organized development, where they played as children. I had a creek through my back yard growing up. My husband had a patch of open lots in his housing development where he and his friends played. The development where my son is growing up is all filled in. The creek down the street has chain link fence on all sides.
Yes, we are blessed with a very lovely park just a couple of blocks away, but current parenting practices being what they are, I would never let a kindergartener walk by himself to the park. My generation ran to the park after school and had only to be home in time for dinner, but this generation is never out of sight of an adult. And parents aren’t the only ones letting fear come between children and self-organizing wild places. Who has the liability insurance to allow children to climb a tree, much less build a tree house in this overly litigious age? The park near my house has play structures, paved paths, picnic tables, a skate ramp and several grass playing fields. And one really cool bush.
For my son’s generation it is no longer legal to build tree houses or pick flowers in our open spaces. Though researchers have observed that children have more creative, imaginative play in natural play areas with “loose objects” than children playing in constructed play zones, public parks and open spaces are increasingly designed for particular purposes. We are to stay on the path and look.
We know that the wild places are in danger from too much contact with us. We know that we need high density infill housing to preserve open spaces and reduce the carbon footprint of lengthy commutes into the sprawl. But the downside of this sensitivity is that because there is so little nature left, kids are taught “don’t touch”—read about it in a book or see it on a screen.
So this month I offer you a spiritual practice. Find yourself a bush, a tree, a nook, a path, a place on the edges of life organized by humans. Visit it when you are burned out, and let your attention go deep into the particular life of that place. Visit it when it rains, or when the sun comes out, and see how it responds and grows.
Spring is a particularly exciting time to notice a place, because change happens so quickly and with such artistic flourish. Take a child or a friend to your special place, and see what they might notice that you have missed. And when you know it well, and it becomes part of you, remember that this ordinary bit of wildness is just as much a miracle as the Amazon rainforest, and as deserving of our attention.
Environmentalism is not just about protecting the earth: it is about letting the earth renew you, letting it transform you, body, mind and spirit, and letting the earth and all her creatures be your companions on this journey.
In the summer of 2007 Darcey and her partner, Eric and son, Nick moved to Ithaca, New York to lead a more family-centered life. In 2008 she was called to serve as Parish Minister of the UU Church of Athens and Sheshequin and has served as their settled minister ever since. Rev. Laine also provides ministry for the UU Fellowship of Big Flats, and the Unitarian Universalist Church of Cortland. These congregations taught her the blessings of small-church ministry.
In 2014 Darcey completed her training in Spiritual Direction, a one-to-one practice for spiritual searching and growth, and enjoys providing Spiritual Direction to members of our congregations and to the community at large.
- Spiritual Practice - July 1, 2020
- Hungry Hearts - March 1, 2019
- Grief - October 1, 2014
