Caitlin Nelson - Nature Walks

this summer at my summer camp, I decided to have a nature club. In high school I had taken field biology, so I thought it would be cool to go on nature walks and attempt to teach them some things. Not only that, but I wanted to get the kids outdoors because I don't think they get enough of it. So one day me and this other counselor decided it would be fun to go on a little nature walk in the woods surrounding the school. Bad idea. As we were walking the kids got more and more ancy. I asked around and to my dismay found that some of them never even played in the woods. They were scared of the sticks of the plants of the bugs, of everything they came into contact with. I felt as if I was traumatizing them because they were acting like it was the end of the world. most of them had never been stung before, had never had poison ivy, had never gotten scratched from running around in the woods. Halfway through the walk they were begging to go inside because they hated it so much, so we had to cut it short. the point of my story is that I never realized how out of touch the upcoming generations are from nature. it was really upsetting to me to see these kids completely unsure of how to interact with the outdoors. I kept thinking back to my own childhood where all I wanted to do was run around outside, and build forts in the woods and catch bugs. I got poison ivy constantly, ticks were no big deal and neither was getting stung. It was just part of being outside. And I loved exploring and playing in the mud and sticks and woods. And todays kids don't know what to do, once you take them off of the playground they are miserable. reflecting on it now, i am seeing how much of a bad influence society is on itself, and how much it encourages limited interaction with nature. And when they do encourage it, it should be fenced off and tame nature, not just the woods. The experience made me more determined to make sure that my children appreciate the outdoors, because I don't want pansy kids who don't know how to urvive without airconditioning, TV, and video games.