Experience real-life from nature's point of view
The kids spilled out of the school bus full of enthusiasm for their field trip at Tekakwitha Woods. Before the naturalists could greet the class, one boy announced that he knew everything about nature already. He watched nature shows on TV.
The boy proudly expounded on his vast knowledge of marine creatures and African mammals and exotic reptiles as the group headed down the wooded trail to the river.
The trail wound deeper into the woods, and the boy grew quieter. At the water's edge, his bravado gave way to reticence. He would not roll up his pant legs to step into the stream. With gentle encouragement from the naturalist, he finally conceded to step in. Just a little bit.
"Oooooh!" he exclaimed. "It's cold!" Yes, it is. It's cold and wet and full of life.
The kids were instructed to search for aquatic macroinvertebrates - little water critters - living under the rocks in the river. Ankle-deep in the moving water, our remote-controlled-nature expert could not muster up the courage to submerge his hand and pick up a rock. Again, the naturalist encouraged him.
At last he plunged his hand in the water. Up came his hand with a rock in its grasp. Feeling all the squirming life forms and slimy algae hugging the rock, the boy's face lit up.
"I just didn't know it would be ... so ... alive!" he stammered.
The touch of nature
Ah, the difference between the virtual world of video and the real world of here-and-now, living, breathing, swimming, flying, reproducing, dying, decomposing life! This is the real McCoy. This is where it's at, where it all begins, and where it all goes on: Water, sunlight, green plants, swimmy little things that eat slimy green things, bigger things that chow down on the little things, things that devour dead things, and new life rising from old life.
There is an entire generation - no, make that several generations - of Americans who have lost touch with the natural world.
"In the space of a century, the American experience of nature has gone from direct utilitarianism to romantic attachment to electronic detachment," writes Richard Louv, author of "Last Child in the Woods," And it's not just the kids.
It is, after all, adults who put the DVD into the DVD player for their toddlers. It's grown-ups who model the addiction to iPhones and Blackberries. It's parents with credit cards who buy the Wiis and the iPods. It's Mom and Dad who drive the family to the mall instead of, say, a forest preserve for an afternoon of together time.
What are the consequences? And who cares? With a shake of the head one can say "It's a shame, but you can't fight progress." Gizmos and the GNP are pretty well ingrained in Homo sapiens at this stage of our evolutionary journey.
At what price?
Poverty in spirit is one hit we take from the tyranny of technology. Poverty in pocketbook is another. Perhaps, as savings vanish with the vagaries of Wall Street, we cannot afford to support our pricey gizmology habit. Skyrocketing expenses may force us to cut back on our trips to the big box stores and curb our cravings for more and more stuff. We might even have to drive less and walk more (remember walking?).
There's a price tag on everything in our market-driven society. But you can't put a price tag on a young boy discovering life in a stream on a lovely autumn day. Some intangible things have value beyond bank accounts.
Back to nature
Want to invest in some value with guaranteed returns? Put down the remote, get out of the house, and leave the iPod behind. Take your kids to a forest preserve. It's free. Let them play in the creek, run through piles of leaves, climb a tree, scramble over fallen logs, peek under rocks. Jump in and join them! "These are places of initiation," Robert Michael Pyle writes in "The Thunder Tree," "where the borders between ourselves and other creatures break down, where the earth gets under our nails and a sense of place gets under our skin."
I don't know what became of our virtual nature expert from that fifth-grade field trip. He is college-age now. Perhaps he's headed toward a lucrative career in cyberspace. But there's a chance that he has also forged a lifelong connection with real time, real space, real places, real animals and real plants. If the latter, he will be a wealthy man. And we will be wealthier, too.