This holiday season, avoid the mall and commune with nature

I lived at Tekakwitha Woods when I heard my first mall report. It was Thanksgiving weekend, and I was parceling leftovers into Tupperware when the radio announcer launched into a listing of Chicago area malls and their current crowd capacity.

Hmmm. I looked out the kitchen window into the woods. No one there.

I stepped out on the porch and looked toward the field. Not a soul. The current capacity of the woods was quite comfortable and, dare I say, a tad more peaceful than the mall. The crowds here comprised the trees, the grass, the squirrels, the deer, and a lone crow in the steel gray sky.

The mall report triggered some scrutiny: Am I missing something here? Why are the mall lots full while the forest preserve lots are empty?

I confess I've never been a fan of shopping, and malls give me the willies. But I've been told that you can find really cool stuff at the mall. Nature stuff, even.

At the kiosks in the mall you can buy glossy calendars with stunning photographs of serene mountain lakes and spectacular desert sunsets. In the entertainment store you can buy awesome DVDs like "Planet Earth" of PBS fame.

And there's even a nature store where you can buy adorable stuffed polar bears. The money will go to some environmental group working to save the bears from global warming.

Then you can drive home with all your purchases in your SUV and contribute some more to global warming.

It's the malling of nature, and it's big during the holidays when mall reports and reindeer travel the airwaves.

Nature at the mall is a heavily marketed commodity, part and parcel of the frenetic consumption we Americans are so fond of, if not addicted to. We're good at buying things, especially at Christmas, and we value that for which we pull out plastic. Nature is for sale at the mall along with microwaves, iPods and sweaters. It's part of the holiday marketing package. It's part of the reason to go to the mall on the day after Thanksgiving.

At the mall, the artifice of nature is for sale, on sale, and used for selling. You can find nature for your children at the mall and it will be good for them -- while you shop. At one upscale mall in the 'burbs, your kids can play in a forest without having to wear coats or mittens in winter or insect repellent or sun screen in summer.

A little nature area specially designed for Mall Children provides a generic oak tree complete with lots of nooks and crannies for kids to play in, on, and around. There are realistic yet reassuringly fake raccoons and opossums and other friendly animals in this fabricated tree. No worries about rabies or West Nile Virus or poison ivy. It's very safe.

While the kids get a woodsy, albeit ersatz, experience in the mall forest, adults can also get their nature fix -- and their exercise -- at the mall. The long promenades with floral garden courts, flowing fountains and tall tropical plants are juxtaposed with plastic evergreen forests sparkling with imitation snow and populated by fiberglass ungulates that appear to be airborne. Some malls have bird songs piped in, along with or in spite of the beat of the Little Drummer Boy. All this mall nature is carefully contrived and wonderfully conducive to strolling -- and spending. It is, as author Jennifer Price writes in her book Flight Maps, "the mall version of a Thoreauvian outing."

The real woods, in the meantime, are empty. Of humans, that is. Nobody really wants to be Thoreau, after all.

Mall reports and parking lots are as much of a part of the holiday shtick as the image of a portly old dude and his wife living in the pristine wilderness at the North Pole.

The highly touted traits of peace, joy, and love are in the mall and its pretend winter wilderness, somewhere. In this artifice of nature, buying stuff -- lots of stuff -- is somehow associated with peace on earth. Consuming resources is linked to the season of good will to men, and swiping a credit card brings some kind of joy.

But maybe, just maybe, the holiday spirit can be found somewhere other than the shopping mall. Somewhere the parking lots aren't full. Somewhere cell phones are silenced.

During a recent holiday break, I watched two boys at Tekakwitha Woods building a fort. Unplugged, unfettered, and unsupervised, they worked for hours on end, reveling in that elusive thing called joy which we try so hard to conjure up at the holidays.

The spirit of their play was evident, even from my distant vantage point. I didn't sense that spirit in the ersatz forest playground at the mall.

Going out on the proverbial limb, I propose that the forest preserves are the place to be this holiday season.

They are, like the mall, open every day during the holidays. In either place, you can find nature in one form or another, and in either place you can seek the holiday spirit.

But in the forest preserves, you'll find the Real McCoy, for free, with no lines and no waiting. The only traffic jams are caused by squirrels dashing for acorns, the trees are made of real wood, the mud is genuinely muddy, and the snow is cold and wet.

You won't hear a Muzaked "Messiah" overdubbed with tropical frog calls. You won't see plastic snow on fiberglass fir trees. What you will find is peace with the good earth and joy in the real live world. May the holiday season begin!

If you go

• Over the River and Through the Woods: Too much feasting during the holidays? Come out to Tekakwitha Woods from 10 to 11:30 a.m. Friday and work off some of those Thanksgiving calories! This naturalist-led walk will begin at the parking lot of Tekakwitha Woods, proceed through the woods, across the Fox River on the bike bridge and conclude at the nature center. Participants look for wildlife and learn about how the natural world prepares for winter. Call (847) 741-8350, ext. 10 for an update if weather is questionable.

• Little Acorns: Children ages 4 and 5 are invited to this hour-long nature program at Tekakwitha Woods Forest Preserve in St. Charles Dec. 13, from 10 - 11 a.m. or 1 - 2 p.m. (please register for one session). This month we'll have a "Coyote Sing Along" and learn about the wily wild animals. District naturalists will lead the children in a craft, games, and a short hike in the woods. Registration and prepayment of $5 per child are required. Call (847) 741-8350, ext. 10.