Quotes from Richard Louv

The more high tech we become the more nature we need.

Our lives may be more productive, but less inventive.

What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset." —CROWFOOT, CHIEF OF THE SIKSIKA FIRST NATION, 1890

the more we know, superficially, the less we penetrate, vertically.

As we grow more separate from nature, we continue to separate from one another physically.

Joni Mitchell had it right: "They paved paradise / and put up a parking lot." But perhaps, in the near future, we could add a line of hopeful epilogue to that song: then they tore down the parking lot / and raised up a paradise

Now, my tree-climbing days long behind me, I often think about the lasting value of those early, deliciously idle days. I have come to appreciate the long view afforded by those treetops. The woods were my Ritalin. Nature calmed me, focused me, and yet excited my senses.

Genetically, we are essentially the same creatures as we were at the beginning. We are still hunters and gatherers.

That environmentalists need the goodwill of children would seem self-evident- but more often than not, children are viewed as props or extraneous to the serious adult work of saving the world. One often overlooked value of children is that they constitue the future political constituency, and their attention or vote- whicich is ultimately based more on a foundation of personal experiance than rational deciscion making- is not guaranteed.

Roszak argued that modern psychology has split the inner life from the outer life, and that we have repressed our "ecological unconscious" that provides "our connection to our evolution on earth.

thoughtful exposure of youngsters to nature can even be a powerful form of therapy for attention-deficit disorders and other maladies.

Too often, small towns invaded by urban expatriates lose their character and physical beauty to overdevelopment.

Nature inspires creativity in a child by demanding visualization and the full use of the senses.

Another Swarthmore parent added, "Something else was different when we were young: our parents were outdoors. I'm not saying they were joining health clubs and things of that sort, but they were out of the house, out on the porch, talking to neighbors.

It was frightening and wonderful to surrender to the wind's power.

Eventually, most of us figure out that it's people, not nature, who create morality, values, ethics- and even the idea that nature itself is worth preserving. We will live wisely- preserving water, air and everything else intrinsic to the equations we're only beginning to understand- or we won't, in which case nature will fill the vacuum we leave. She is exquisite and utterly indefferent.

My contention throughout this book is that reconnecting to nature is one key to growing a larger environmental movement. That reconnection is visceral and immediately useful to many people's lives. Encouraging personal reconnection does not mean less engagement with global environmental issues; it means more. To act, most of us need motivation beyond despair.

Countless communities have virtually outlawed unstructured outdoor nature play, often because of the threat of lawsuits, but also because of a growing obsession with order.

Based on previous studies, we can definitely say that the best predictor of preschool children's physical activity is simply being outdoors," says Sallis, "and that an indoor, sedentary childhood is linked to mental-health problems.

Nature was still out there. There was less of it, to be sure, but it was there just the same.

new studies suggest that exposure to nature may reduce the symptoms of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and that it can improve all children's cognitive abilities and resistance to negative stresses and depression.

The logical extension of synthetic nature is the irrelevance of "true" nature--the certainty that it's not even worth looking at. (62)

Several of these studies suggest that thoughtful exposure of youngsters to nature can even be a powerful form of therapy for attention-deficit disorders and other maladies. As one scientist puts it, we can now assume that just as children need good nutrition and adequate sleep, they may very well need contact with nature.

Nature inspires creativity in a child by demanding visualization and the full use of the senses. Given a chance, a child will bring the confusion of the world to the woods, wash it in the creek, turn it over to see what lives on the unseen side of that confusion. Nature can frighten a child, too, and this fright serves a purpose. In nature, a child finds freedom, fantasy, and privacy: a place distant from the adult world, a separate peace.