Helping Kids Stay In Touch

With Nature

To the Editor,

It was a treat last week to read about Emily Korth, champion rock climber at Clemson University. Thank you for highlighting young athletes who are achieving in nontraditional sports.

Rock climbing is one of the few sports that puts you in direct touch with nature. Getting outside and enjoying nature is critically important for young people in this age where the average American child spends seven and a half hours a day staring into electronic media! Kids today never seem to go outside.

The result is not only an obesity crisis, but something more insidious. Children today have limited respect for and understanding of the natural world. Because they don’t experience the outdoors, they lack environmental literacy. Environmental literacy is simply knowledge of our natural world: how it works and how we interact with it. It is not learned in a book, it grows organically in the child who watches ants, finds bird nests, catches frogs, climbs trees, or even helps their parents with a vegetable garden. Or in the older child who goes rock climbing, camping, and canoeing.

We are raising a generation of unhealthy couch potatoes who might give lip service to recycling and “saving the environment,” but in reality have no actual connection with the natural world. Our children are going to inherit the earth. How can they be knowledgeable guardians if they never step outside?

There are many opportunities to change this. As parents, you can take your children on hikes on the many trails in Newtown’s open spaces, or kayaking on Taunton Lake, or bike riding at Fairfield Hills. The Newtown Forest Association maintains gorgeous fields and woods just for you.

There are organized opportunities also. Sticks and Stones Farm in Newtown will be hosting an interesting array of children’s programming at the farm run by Justin Pegnataro, executive director of the nonprofit Two Coyotes Wilderness School. Aimed at kids up to age 13, their programs explore nature, wilderness survival, and other cool stuff. Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts also have great outdoor programs.

For high school kids, there are several Venture Crews in town. Venture Crew is a co-ed program that is part of Boy Scouts of America. Crew 70 (for which I am a proud advisor), brings teenaged boys and girls on many outdoor high adventures. We have gone rock climbing, caving, ice climbing, back packing, bike riding, and canoeing, among other exciting trips. Next month, we are climbing Mount Washington in New Hampshire, which will complete our goal of climbing the highest peak in each of six states.

Some recent research has shown that children who spend time outside are calmer, have better attention spans, and actually have better eyesight. And my personal experience is that they are happier too!

Kind of interested? You can call me if you want more information. I’m in the phone book.

Tracy Van Buskirk

18 Poverty Hollow Road, Newtown                                June 25, 2011