BY DAVID SOBEL

THE KIDS HAVE BEEN UP since seven-thirty playing computer games and watching cartoons. What a travesty for them to be inside on such a beautiful day, you harrumph to yourself. On the refrigerator, you notice the schedule of events from the nearby nature center. “Let’s Get Face to Face with Flowers,” it beckons. Just the thing! It’s a sparkly May morning. Buds are bursting. There’s a warm breeze full of the aromatic scent of the woods just waking up.

You trundle the kids into the minivan. They despondently consent. “Do we have to do a program? Programs are boring,” the older one complains. But as soon as you pull into the parking lot at Happy Hills Nature Center, their faces brighten. They fling the sliding door open and scamper down through the blossom-filled meadow to the shore of the pond. Ross, age seven, pulls off his sneakers and wades in, bent over searching for frogs. Amanda, age ten, plops down and starts making a dandelion tiara. What a good decision, you think to yourself.

Terri, the smiley naturalist wearing the official Happy Hills insigniaed staff shirt, saunters over. “Here for the flower program?” she chirps. “We’re meeting up in the Cozy Corner room to get started.”

Ross asks, “Can Freddie come too?” holding up the fat green frog he has befriended.

Terri’s bright face darkens a bit. “Sorry. Freddie needs to stay in the pond. Did you know the oils from your hands can make Freddie sick?”

In the darkened Cozy Corner room, Terri has prepared a PowerPoint of all the flowers you might see on the trail today. “Here are some spring beauties. They look just like little peppermint candies. But, of course, we can’t eat them. And here’s one of my favorites, Dutchman’s breeches. Why do you think we call them that?”

After about the seventh slide the kids start to squirm in their seats. “Daddy, I have to go pee,” complains Ross. After about the twenty-seventh slide, you too have to go pee.

“And now, let’s see how many we can find,” Terri says. It’s good to be back outside. Upon entering the woods, Amanda notices a red eft in a patch of moss. She takes a few steps off the trail and Terri chastises her: “Remember, Amanda, nature is fragile! When you walk off the trail, you crush all kinds of little creatures you can’t see.” Farther on Ross scampers up into the inviting branches of a tree that has fallen across the trail. “Sorry, Ross, no climbing, too dangerous, we wouldn’t want you to get hurt.” At each flower, Terri circles everyone around and tells them the Latin name, the herbal uses, the pollinator, the . . . Once in a while someone gets to touch the petals, only veeerrry gently. Picking flowers is strictly verboten.

Toward the end of the walk, the trail comes out by the pond, where Amanda finds her discarded dandelion tiara and slips it into her shirt, watching to make sure Terri doesn’t notice. On the ride home, no one talks.

“Well, that was fun,” you enthuse, trying to get the conversation going.

Amanda extracts her dandelion tiara and perches it on her head. “Picking flowers was fun. But we told you about programs, Daddy. Too many rules. It would’ve been fun if we could have just played all together in the meadow.” You find that you agree.

Contrast this experience with John Muir’s recollection of arriving at his family’s first American homestead in remote Fountain Lake, Wisconsin, when he was eleven. Within minutes, he and his brother were up in a tree observing a blue jay’s nest. From there they raced about to find a bluebird’s nest, then a woodpecker’s, and thus “began an acquaintance with the frogs and snakes and turtles in the creeks and springs.” The new world of untamed America was thrilling for John and his brother:

The sudden plash into pure wildness—baptism in Nature’s warm heart—how utterly happy it made us! Nature streaming into us, wooingly teaching her wonderful glowing lessons, so unlike the dismal grammar ashes and cinders so long thrashed into us. . . . Young hearts, young leaves, flowers, animals, the winds and the streams and the sparkling lake, all wildly, gladly rejoicing together!

This is the joy of children encountering the natural world on their own terms, and more and more it is becoming a lost idyll, no longer an integral part of growing up. There are many reasons for this loss—urbanization, the changing social structure of families, ticks and mosquito-borne illnesses, the fear of stranger danger. And perhaps even environmental education is one of the causes of children’s alienation from nature.

I know that’s a puzzling statement. You’re thinking: environmental education is supposed to connect children with nature, to get them started on a lifetime of loving and wanting to protect the natural world. Yes—that’s what is supposed to happen. But somewhere along the way, much of environmental education lost its magic, its “wildly, gladly rejoicing together.” Instead, it’s become didactic and staid, restrictive and rule bound. A creeping focus on cognition has replaced the goal of exhilaration that once motivated educators to take children outside.

Much of environmental education today has taken on a museum mentality, where nature is a composed exhibit on the other side of the glass. Children can look at it and study it, but they can’t do anything with it. The message is: Nature is fragile. Look, but don’t touch. Ironically, this “take only photographs, leave only footprints” mindset crops up in the policies and programs of many organizations trying to preserve the natural world and cultivate children’s relationships to it.

IF YOU WALK THE DRIFTWOOD-CLUTTERED shores along Maine’s crenulated coast, you’ll find a number of ramshackle constructions in the coves. KID’S FORT! NO ADULTS ALLOWED! a hand-lettered sign will warn. The forts are woven into the spruce blowdown at the edge of the shore, or crouched between the top of the beach cobble and the steep, blackberried bank. Planks, lobster pots, buoys, scrap metal, broken ladders, discarded tarps are pieced together to create bedrooms, lookouts, kitchens, storage cabinets. It is clear that deep, unadulterated play is alive in these salty edges beyond the purview of parents. And yet, on many land trust properties on the coast of Maine, fort building is outlawed because of concerns over liability and unsightliness.

I believe that the imaginative, constructive practice of fort building actually fosters the sense of connectedness that land trusts want to cultivate in young people. It’s an instinctive drive to make a home in the world away from the home your parents provided you. When you make a fort, or den, or hideout, it creates a connection to the land, nurturing an affinity for that place. Discouraging these natural tendencies of childhood could actually lead to resentment of, and a lack of commitment to, the land trust’s agenda of land preservation. When I wrote an op-ed piece for the Bangor Daily News articulating this conviction, one Maine land trust board member responded,

Realistically, if the land trust allowed some fort-building along the shore, then how much is too much? Following typical monkey-see monkey-do behavior, if one fort is built, then other people come along and decide to build a second fort, and so it goes. Then we’ve got a neighborhood of forts that has become a distraction and an eyesore to those who want to teach kids to appreciate nature using a light-handed approach. The scale of fairy house construction on another coastal island is testimony to the scourge this can become.

See what I mean?

Head south to Texas and you’ll encounter more of the same. At the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin, the trails ramble through hill country chapparal—hardy shrubs, some cactus, copses of woods. It’s an unfragile, wonderfully explorable landscape. When I asked if children were allowed to go off the trails, to play in the little pockets of woods, the education director looked at me disapprovingly. “Oh no, we can’t let children do that.” The intimation was that this was way too dangerous for the children and would have too much impact on the natural resource. I wasn’t convinced that either of these concerns was well founded or based on data.

It’s true in the inner city as well. When a friend of mine was the education director at the Arnold Arboretum in Boston, she was trying to create programs that encouraged the multiethnic children who lived in the neighborhood to develop a love for trees. When I asked, “Well, do you let children climb any of the trees?” I got the same disapproving look from her. Tree climbing? Just not possible. Sure, I agree that the rare trees in the arboretum should be off-limits, but the big spreading native maples and beeches, the hemlocks down along the stream—why not? Children have been climbing trees for millennia; it’s great exercise, and in the vast majority of cases, they don’t get hurt. Keep in mind that children get hurt from falls in the bathtub, and we don’t prohibit showers. Similarly, children get injured playing competitive sports. We tolerate the risk of injury from field hockey and soccer because we value the physical and social benefits. Why don’t we have the same risk/benefit mindset in relation to climbing trees?

Between the ages of six and twelve, children have an innate desire to explore the woods, build forts, make potions from wild berries, dig to China, and each of these activities is an organic, natural way for them to develop environmental values and behaviors. Instead, the “look but don’t touch” approach cuts kids off from nature, teaching them that nature is boring and fraught with danger. Inadvertently, these messages send children back inside to the dynamic interactivity of computer games. Could it be that our fear of litigation and our puritanical concerns for protecting each and every blade of grass are hampering the development of the very stewardship values and behaviors that we environmental educators all say we’re trying to foster? I believe so.

As a child in his native Scotland, John Muir vigorously embraced the natural world, having described himself as “a devout martyr of wildness”—a wild child. He was also a courageous inventor.

We made guns out of gas-pipe, mounted them on sticks of any shape, clubbed our pennies together for powder, gleaned pieces of lead here and there and cut them into slugs, and, while one aimed, another applied a match to the touch-hole. With these awful weapons we wandered along the beach and fired at the gulls and solan-geese as they passed us. Fortunately we never hurt any of them that we knew of. We also dug holes in the ground, put in a handful or two of powder, tamped it well around a fuse made of a wheat-stalk, and, reaching cautiously forward, touched a match to the straw. This we called making earthquakes. Oftentimes we went home with singed hair and faces well peppered with powder-grains that could not be washed out.

This is probably not the kind of boy you’d want your children out roaming the neighborhood with. Dangerous, unmannered, destructive perhaps. Certainly, you’ve never seen an “Inventing Guns and Shooting Sea Gulls” program on Saturday mornings at the nature center. And yet John Muir helped create the national park system, and his writing has fostered environmental values and behaviors in countless millions of people. My contention is that John Muir’s preservationist instincts grew in part out of these childhood experiences, which probably contributed more to his commitment to the natural world than learning the difference between sedimentary, metamorphic, and igneous rocks in the mandated third grade curriculum.

Or consider how Harvard entomologist and biodiversity advocate E. O. Wilson describes some of his early formative experiences in nature:

I hunted reptiles: stunned and captured five-lined skinks with a slingshot, and learned the correct maneuver for catching Carolina anole lizards (approach, let them scuttle to the other side of the tree trunk and out of sight, peek to see where they are sitting, then take them by grabbing blind with one hand around the trunk). One late afternoon I brought home a coachwhip snake nearly as long as I was tall and walked into the house with it wrapped around my neck.

Wilson, Muir, Rachel Carson, and Aldo Leopold all had such down-and-dirty experiences in childhood. Wilson didn’t just look at butterflies, he collected them. He didn’t take only photographs and leave only footprints, he caught ants and put them in jars to observe them. He was a collector, not a photographer, and he was allowed to indulge his curiosity without the scolding finger of an interfering adult. Generalizing from his own biographic experience, he summarizes, “Hands-on experience at the critical time, not systematic knowledge, is what counts in the making of a naturalist. Better to be an untutored savage for a while, not to know the names or anatomical detail. Better to spend long stretches of time just searching and dreaming.”

Herein lie my two main points. First, environmental educators need to allow children to be “untutored savages” for a while. Nature programs should invite children to make mud pies, climb trees, catch frogs, paint their faces with charcoal, get their hands dirty and their feet wet. They should be allowed to go off the trail and have fun. Second, environmental educators need to focus way more on hands-on experience with children and way less on systematic knowledge. Or at least understand that systematic knowledge can emerge organically from lots of hands-on experience. Between the ages of six and twelve, learning about nature is less important than simply getting children out into nature.

Terri, the Happy Hills naturalist, could have started the flower program right there in the meadow, having everyone make dandelion chains. (Call it “Removing Invasives” if you must.) She could have chosen three flowers to focus on that morning and challenged the children to learn to identify them blindfolded, by scent only. She might have had the children crawl through the meadow to see flowers at woodchuck level or given them dead bees on probes and challenged them to collect pollen from flowers with different structures. Out of these wild experiences, some systematic knowledge would have emerged. And Amanda and Ross might have said, “Wow, I never knew flowers were so cool!”

THINGS STARTED OUT DIFFERENTLY for environmental education. The summer camp movement, one of the precursors of nature and environmental education, emerged at the turn of the twentieth century and was founded on the principle of embracing the vigorous outdoors life. One of its proponents, Dr. Eugene Swan, was the founder of Pine Island Camp, a preeminent Maine camp for boys. He wrote, “It will do you more good . . . to sleep under boughs aslant, by a mountain lake with the trout broiling, than to see the Congressional Library or Niagara Falls.” And he believed that the “heeding of Nature’s ever-calling voice, and an adaptation of our lives to her laws, is going to become a salvation of the American race.” Swan advocated for the character-forming benefits of early morning plunges in the lake, living off the land, sleeping under the stars, midnight rituals, and complex fantastical games. He considered his camp to be “the village of Boyville,” where campers could be swept up by the “great adventure into the magic land of boyhood.” Similar adventures in Girlville soon followed.

He and his camp directors created the War Game, the Whitehead Game, and a raft of other large, complex landscape games that take place over hours or days and challenge boys to run long distances in the woods, creep secretively, detect subtle clues, endure swarms of mosquitos, behave valiantly and heroically. Campers were immersed in, at one with, and consumed by nature. They forded rivers, ate fish they caught and berries they collected, tromped through swamps, climbed trees, constructed forts, followed tracks, captured snakes, did all the things that John Muir, Rachel Carson, Aldo Leopold, and most of the other great naturalists did in their childhoods.

The Boy and Girl Scouts movements emerged not long after. The emphasis here was on primitive living skills—camping in the wilderness, building fires, making bows and arrows, preparing hides, tracking animals. In their original forms, these movements honored the deep inner desire in middle childhood to be self-sufficient, to learn how to survive with nothing but a jackknife and some strands of rawhide. The persistent popularity even today of Jean Craighead George’s books—such as My Side of the Mountain and Julie of the Wolves —suggests that these instincts still persist. The rage over Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games springs forth from this same deep well. These desires are encoded in our genes, compelling children to connect with their wild selves.

From the summer camp and Scouting roots, the environmental education movement emerged in the late ’60s and ’70s. It started out as nature education, but with all the bad news about rainforest destruction, the ozone hole, and toxics in the environment, it soon became dominated by a desire to recruit children to fix all these problems. The tendency to push things down onto developmentally unsuspecting young children, like the pressure to learn to read in kindergarten, led to the creation of a generation of children fearful of the death of the planet at the hands of uncaring humans. A UNESCO definition from the late ’70s says that “environmental education . . . should prepare the individual for life through an understanding of the major problems [emphasis mine] of the contemporary world, and the provision of skills and attributes needed to play a productive role towards improving life and protecting the environment.”

Meanwhile, in formal educational spheres, environmental education wanted to play with the big boys. It wanted to be more like reading and math and science, wanted to be more incorporated into the academic standards. As a result, environmental education got reduced to a set of facts to be mastered, content to be internalized and regurgitated. In the efforts to gain legitimacy and solve pressing problems, all the joy was sucked out of environmental education.

THE BIG QUESTION IS: what’s the most effective way to parent and educate children so that they will grow up to behave in environmentally responsible ways? Or, more specifically, what kinds of learning, or what kinds of experience, will most likely shape young adults who want to protect the environment, serve on conservation commissions, think about the implications of their consumer decisions, and minimize the environmental footprints of their personal lives and the organizations where they work? Interestingly, there’s an emergent body of research that’s starting to clarify the relationship between childhood experience and adult stewardship behavior.

First, a number of researchers surveyed environmentalists to determine if there were any similarities in their childhood experiences that might have led to their having strong ecological values or their choice of an environmental career. When Louise Chawla of the University of Colorado reviewed these studies, she found a striking pattern. Most environmentalists attributed their commitment to a combination of two sources, “many hours spent outdoors in a keenly remembered wild or semi-wild place in childhood or adolescence, and an adult who taught respect for nature.” Involvement with organizations like Scouts or environmental clubs was cited by significantly fewer of the respondents. Chawla found that environmentalists talk about free play and exploration in nature, and family members who focused their attention on plants or animal behavior. They don’t talk much about formal education and informal nature education. Only in late childhood and adolescence do summer camp, teachers, and environmental clubs start to show up as being contributors to the individual’s environmental values and behaviors. It seems that allowing children to be “untutored savages” early on can lead to environmental knowledge in due time.

Some researchers then said: Well, let’s not only look at environmentalists. How about the general public, Joe the plumber? What affects whether they develop environmental attitudes and behaviors? Nancy Wells and Kristi Lekies from Cornell University took on this question, and described their findings in “Nature and the Life Course: Pathways from Childhood Nature Experiences to Adult Environmentalism.” The study is based on interviews with two thousand adults (plumbers, teachers, accountants, nurses, policemen) ranging in age from eighteen to ninety, chosen randomly from more than one hundred urban areas around the country. The researchers compared three kinds of childhood nature experience—wild nature experience, domesticated nature experience, and environmental education. They found that

Childhood participation in “wild” nature, such as hiking or playing in the woods, camping, and hunting or fishing, as well as participation with “domesticated” nature such as picking flowers or produce, planting trees or seeds, and caring for plants in childhood have a positive relationship to adult environmental values. “Wild nature” participation is also positively associated with environmental behaviors in adulthood.

Let me translate and elaborate. They found that wild nature experience in childhood correlates with adult environmental values and behavior. Domesticated nature experience correlates with adult environmental values but not so much with behavior. Perhaps most surprising, the study found that, “participation in environmental education programs (in school, in Scouts, at camp, or in community environmental improvement programs) was not a significant predictor of either environmental attitudes or behaviors.”

Uh-oh! The whole environmental education community kind of flinched when this finding surfaced. But the researchers were quick to say that their surveys weren’t really fine grained enough to differentiate between environmental education experiences that were didactic and distancing versus those that were more hands-on, exploratory, and encouraged that kind of wild nature play that happens in Boyville. Either way, the take-away message remains the same: there’s something valuable in letting children wildly, gladly rejoice together. Catching frogs, making dandelion chains, gamboling through the meadows, playing Sally the Salamander all play a role in encouraging children to grow up into adults who recycle.

Jim Pease at Iowa State extended the investigation into the heartland, where he looked at this same relationship between childhood experiences and adult environmental stewardship behavior in farmers. He decided that he’d focus his study on farmers who took advantage of wetlands set-aside funding, which provides funding to farmers who voluntarily set aside some of their acreage from crop production and allow it to be used by migrating waterfowl. Essentially, they’re taking a reduction in income in order to help wildlife. He identified 300 similar Iowa farmers, 150 who took advantage of wetlands set-aside funding and 150 who didn’t. Then he did comprehensive interviews and questionnaires with all of them about their childhood experiences. He found that the farmers who displayed stewardship behavior had a statistically higher likelihood to report the following childhood experiences: hunting and fishing with parents as children, berry picking and mushroom collecting with parents as children, horseback riding, access to play in natural areas, and reading books about nature.

As was the case with the Wells and Lekies study, wild nature play, both unstructured or structured by parents but with the element of unpredictability in hunting and fishing and riding, were the experiences that seemed to incline the individual toward adult stewardship. In other words, it looks like activities that involve taking and eating (as opposed to just looking and learning), in conjunction with parents who model thoughtful use, are precursors to environmental behavior.

“FOR SPECIAL PLACES TO WORK their magic on kids,” wrote lepidopterist Robert Michael Pyle, “they need to be able to do some clamber and damage. They need to be free to climb trees, muck about, catch things, and get wet—above all, to leave the trail.” Luckily, there are numerous environmental education programs that allow children to play deeply in nature.

One organization that supports children’s freedom to roam, play, even build on preserved land is the Harris Center for Conservation Education. The Harris Center is a New Hampshire education center and land trust with one of the most comprehensive family engagement and education programs in northern New England. The staff recognizes that many adults with environmental values speak fondly of childhood experiences like fort building and attribute their land preservation values to these early experiences. Thus, one of their popular offerings for children is “The Forts, Shelters and Shanties Club.” The public announcement reads,

Build it, live it and love it! If you love building forts and want to find out how to build different styles of forts, shelters and even shanties, here’s your chance. Adventure awaits you in this club, as you create and build a wide range of different styles of outdoor and even a few indoor forts. Also included will be knot tying, fire building and wild tool construction.

During one afternoon a week for six weeks, children develop those foundational skills that were at the heart of Baden Powell’s original conception of Scouting—woodcraft, living off the land, observation. And, from the Harris Center’s perspective, they are also, hopefully, becoming future contributors to land preservation initiatives.

Wildly, gladly rejoicing together has taken root in the heartland as well. For a number of years, the Minnetrista gardens and cultural center in Muncie, Indiana, has conducted a Flower Fairies program. For three weeks prior to the Midsummer’s Eve, a dancer trains local children to each develop a flower fairy persona. This program started out being for girls, but when boys expressed an interest, they were allowed to participate as well. Each child chooses a flower, learns its attributes, and then develops a movement repertoire based on the flower’s attributes. The child and teacher also develop a costume based on the appearance of the flower. For two or three nights around the summer solstice, the center invites the community to come stroll the brick pathways through the preserved Ball Estate Victorian gardens. The candlelit pathways are haunted with glimpses of flower fairies frolicking amid the azaleas, lilies, and periwinkle. A child’s intrigue with fairies, and the desire to be a fairy, is used as the bridge to understanding the unique appearance and character of different flowers. Isn’t this a foundational understanding of biodiversity? Wouldn’t you rather do this than sit through Terri’s PowerPoint?

For a particularly inspiring look at how things could be different, allow me to take you on a down-and-dirty outing with the Wilderness Youth Project in Santa Barbara, California. We assemble at Tucker’s Grove County Park, a sliver of creek and forest nestled in between subdivisions. Not really wilderness, but it feels wild enough and far enough away for children to feel immersed. There are about a dozen children aged seven to eleven—black, white, Latino—three leaders, and a handful of parents. The vibe is upbeat and energetic. No Power Points here. We circle up in the meadow and get our marching orders: explore our way up the dry streambed till we get to a sheltered pool with great mud for a mud fight.

Not far up the trail, there’s a steep bank down to the dry creekbed. A couple of youngsters start to seat-slide down the crumbly bank. It’s messy and a bit fast yet there are no admonitions to stay on the trail. Rather, one leader goes down to the bottom to catch kids and dust them off, while another stays at the top to manage the flow. A few hundred yards up the trail, we come upon a fallen oak. Kids immediately jump up to balance-beam walk along the trunk and limbs then jump off. It’s a little risky. But instead of hustling them along, the leaders realize this kind of spontaneous play is exactly what the children need to be doing.

Round the next bend, we come to a fence with a gate. Most everyone goes through the gate, but one of the boys wants to try to climb over the fence, which is topped with a strand of barbed wire. I brace myself for the typical adult response, “No, José, you might rip your pants,” or “Why don’t you just go through the gate?” or “Let me lift you over,” or “Please stop that! It’s too dangerous.” Instead, as soon as Kelly, one of the mentors, recognizes his intention, she says, “Great idea to try to climb over, José. Would you like me to spot you?” Once he’s over, she crows, “Good job! I knew you could do it.” I’m impressed that his intention is noticed, validated, and encouraged. Moreover, she refrains from over involvement, providing just enough support to make the process reasonably safe but letting him solve the problem. A supportive, can-do attitude prevails, and fear is banished.

When we come upon a child-sized fort, made by a previous group to simulate a wood rat’s nest, the children immediately start to crawl through it. Becka says, “This is so awesome. I am so not afraid in here. I could live here and do all my projects here.” As soon as she is out, she says, “I’m going to do it again,” and there was time for that.

A few minutes later some of the boys find a little hole in the trail and wonder what made it. They probe it with sticks and then decide to hide some treasures in it, cover it up, and look for it on the way back. An hour later—though it’s hard to differentiate this stretch of trail from sections that look just like it, and no adult reminds them to look—they remember the spot and are thrilled to unearth an acorn, a marble rock, a sprig of clover. What an appropriate way to develop observation skills—all self-constructed by the children.

One of the kids captures a big, hoppy bug in his hands and shows it to Mark, one of the mentors. I prepare myself for the boring mini natural history lecture, “Oh, that’s Idiostatus aequalis. We call it a California katydid and it only lives in the west-facing coastal chaparral slopes. It has six legs and three body parts—the head, abdomen, and the thorax, and blah, blah, blah . . .” Instead, Mark says, “Hmm, I wonder what that is? Hey, how many legs does it have? Wow, look at those big eyes—they look kind of greenish to me. What color do they look like to you? What should we call this bug?” Later on, during a snack break, Mark pulls out an insect guide, finds the right page, and passes it to the children who had been looking at the insect. Instead of saying, “I think it’s the California katydid,” he says, “Does that bug we found on the trail look like any one of the bugs on this page?” The whole orientation is to encourage the kids to observe, wonder, see patterns, and make sense of things. Names and concepts, environmental knowledge, emerged organically out of these hands-on explorations.

We arrive back at the meadow, wet, mud-smeared, laughing. One of the children says, unprompted, “Three hours isn’t enough for these trips. We should do five hours. We should do all day! We should build forts and live out here.” It was as if the children had dropped into their wild selves and become creatures of the woods, comfortable and at home in their minds, bodies, and native habitats. It had been just about a mile up and back, but so much had happened. There was never any talk about global warming or endangered species, but there was ample opportunity to become one with the natural world. And all the children were eager to come back and do it again.

This is the kind of environmental education that I believe leads to environmental values and behaviors in adulthood—education that originates in children’s innate play tendencies in the natural world; supports and allows wild nature play; recognizes the importance of hunting, gathering, collecting, and, when appropriate, consuming the natural world; encourages adults and children to explore and learn together so adults can model attention and respect; and supports children’s appetite for imagination and fantasy. It’s environmental education that allows boys to live in Boyville, girls to live in Girlville, and kids to live in Kidville for a while before rushing them out of the woods into Adultville.

As John Burroughs once said, “Knowledge without love will not stick. But if love comes first, knowledge is sure to follow.” It’s our responsibility as parents and teachers to make sure that love comes first.

Article written by David Sobel and reprinted with permission from Orion Magazine. For more information, visit www.orionmagazine.com.

The McKeever Center can assist in fulfilling your science/environmental education requirements. Here are the programs we are currently offering. For more information, visit our website, or contact the center.

DAY PROGRAMS

Attending a day program at the McKeever Center is one way of becoming more involved with the environment. During their brief but valuable visit to the center (usually 4 hours) students will be involved in sensory and conceptual learning adventures. Activities for these experiences may be chosen from nationally known curricula such as Outdoor Biological Instructional Strategies (OBIS), Earth Education, Project Learning Tree (PLT) and Sharing Nature with Children. Grades: K-6^th

EARTHKEEPERS

Our most popular educational program offered at the McKeever Center, Earthkeepers is a three-day, two-night program for 4^th and 5^th grade students. It is designed to engage students in hands-on, interactive experiences that encourage them to build a closer relationship with the natural world. The program deals with four ecological concepts – energy flow, cycling of materials (air, water and soil), interrelationships and change. Students earn four keys as they progress through the program. Grades 4^th- 5^th

SUNSHIP EARTH

This five-day residential program operates on the premise that our ‘Sunship’, which has been traveling on its journey for billions of years, has been running smoothly. . . until now. More recently, human passengers have been tampering with the Sunship’s mechanisms and its future is now uncertain. Four goals are accomplished: planetary awareness, sensory awareness, ecological understanding and environmental consciousness. Sunship Earth is the most comprehensive earth education program available today. The program sets out over five days to awaken the feelings and understandings that will help young people better fulfill their responsibilities as crewmembers and passengers of Sunship Earth. Grades 5^th-6^th

SUNSHIP III

This three-day, two-night program is for 6^th-8^th grade students. The title ‘Sunship III’ reflects the fact that we inhabit the third planet from a medium sized star, the sun. The Sunship III program is adventure-filled, yet intellectually challenging, as students romp through the reasons and rewards for crafting a more ecological lifestyle. Sunship III is about perception and choice in our daily habits and routines. It is about exploration and discovery in the larger context of where and how we live. And it is about examining alternatives and making decisions on behalf of a healthier planet. Grades 7^th-8^th

WEB OF LIFE

This one-and-a-half day residential program engages students in hands-on experiential activities designed to teach basic ecological concepts, heighten sensory awareness and instill feelings of empathy for the natural world. The primary focus of this program is the understanding that all living and non-living things are connected in the ‘web of life.’ Other concepts include community, habitats and niches. Grades 3^rd-4^th

ENERGY AND MATERIALS

We bring this exciting 3-hour program to your school! The program focuses on the formation of fossil fuels and byproducts of their use as well as how materials are recycled. The ‘Energy Detective’ performs an energy audit of your school. The program continues with lunch, as we examine energy in our food and materials in our packaging. The program ends with an activity on worms and each class receives a worm bin. Grades 4^th-6^th

Our three lodges combined can accommodate 156 overnight guests and our auditorium can seat 186 people. There are nine indoor meeting areas available for breakout sessions. The buildings are situated in a circle connected by a paved walkway creating a feeling of community for our groups.

In addition, the center offers two Retreat Houses, each house equipped with five semi-private bedrooms and five private bathrooms. These facilities are used primarily for organizations, colleges and businesses looking for an opportunity to get their staff away from the office, either to engage in long range planning or a staff retreat. If you are interested in renting the McKeever Center, call us at 724.376.1000 or e-mail at info@mckeever.org.

Nancy Bires, a 26-year veteran teacher in the Hermitage School District and doctoral candidate at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, is conducting a study on the long-term influence of the Earth Education program, Sunship_TM Earth on environmental attitudes and actions. The topic for her dissertation is of great interest to her since she did her student teaching at McKeever in 1981, the first year the center offered the Sunship Earth program. Sixth grade students from the Delahunty Middle School in Hermitage began participating in the program in 1981. She has been bringing sixth graders from Delahunty since she began teaching in Hermitage in 1986.

Dr. Bruce Johnson and Costas Manoli from the Earth Education Research and Evaluation Team at the University of Arizona conducted a four-year study on Sunship Earth and Earthkeepers_TM from 2004-2006. The McKeever Center participated in the study along with centers in Arizona and Louisiana. Results of the study indicate that both programs resulted in a higher pro-environmental perception after participation in the earth education programs. Johnson and Manoli suggest that longitudinal research is needed to determine if these changes in attitude continue into adult life and relate to environmental attitudes and actions on environmental issues. The study by Bires will investigate the influence of Sunship Earth six to 31 years after participating in the program.

10^th Annual Nature Art Show

Our 10^th Annual Nature Art Show was a resounding success! As usual, Julie Harris did an excellent job performing on Friday night. The weather was outstanding and the artists did very well. Besides the ‘lookers’ who come to the show, there were lots of ‘buyers.’ We saw quite a few people walking around with framed paintings. The artists were very happy with the event and were pleased on their sales.

Summer Camps

Our series of summer camps continue to grow. All of our camps this past summer were well attended, including the Outdoor Adventure Camp for 12-14 year olds. The campers loved it and can’t wait to come back. The main features of this camp were hiking, canoeing and bicycling, which included day trips to Clear Creek State Forest and Goddard State Park.

Bookstore

Our new bookstore is a hit! Our schools and rental groups are impressed with how it turned out. If you recall, our bookstore was the size of a closet. Instead of re-installing a drop ceiling, we raised the ceiling to expose one of the wood laminate beams and added a tongue-and-groove wood ceiling and a hardwood floor. The bookstore is open to the public, not only our visiting schools and groups.

Just a reminder – if you are looking for a nature gift for someone for Christmas, stop in before the holidays and do some Christmas shopping. You can also order things online at www.mckeever.org. New items include hoodies, grocery bags and string bags.

Summer 2013

Be sure to visit McKeever’s website for information and dates about summer camps and programs. It’s not too early to begin thinking about coming to one of our summer camps.

I want to take this opportunity to update you on what’s happening at the McKeever Center.

1. McKeever’s Website – I want to thank you for your patience as we move towards providing Hemlock Pathways as an electronic newsletter. We removed your name from our postal mailing list. You will be the first ever to receive Hemlock Pathways as an online newsletter. If you happen to receive a hard copy of the Spring 2012 newsletter, it is because we had a difficult time figuring out who to remove from only an email address. When you signed up for the online newsletter, we did not ask for your name, only your email address. Therefore, we are having trouble matching the email address with the postal mailing address. If you happen to receive a hard copy in the mail, to correct this, you can simply drop us an email with your name and we will make sure to remove you from our postal mailing address.

Our website was developed by Greg Barker, a former SRU student. Greg shares a passion for McKeever and provides us with technical assistance all of the time, at little or no cost. We are trying to manage the site ourselves, but this has always been a difficult task. We are environmental educators, not computer technicians. We just finished the spring 2012 edition of Hemlock Pathways. You should be receiving your online newsletter within one week. Again, thank you for your patience. Once we figure this out, it should go much smoother in the future. This is the first one ever for us.

2. We are putting the final touches on a brand new gift shop at the McKeever Center. It will be ready June 18, 2012. We are expanding the shop to include t-shirts, sweatshirts, hoodies, hats, water bottles, coffee and travel mugs, books, CD’s, tote and field bags, and much more. We now have Earthkeepers and Sunship Earth t-shirts. Please consider supporting this new gift shop. I need to find ways to bring in more revenue; we’re hoping this new gift shop brings in more money.

3. We are nearing the end of our fiscal year. As with many state institutions, we’ll find out about our funding once the state legislature and governor pass that information along to the PA State System of Higher Education (PASSHE). PASSHE will then determine our funding for 2012-13. We will operate as a 9-month facility next year.

In closing, please stay in touch with us. We had a very good year. We appreciate your interest and support. People always ask, “What can I do?” My answer is spread the word. Let people know that the McKeever Center offers exceptional environmental education programs and you can rent the center for all kinds of events and functions. Thank You,

This article is brought to you by It’s My Nature Aromatherapy and Herbal Comforts Ne.

In its purest form, gardening is about connecting with the earth and resetting our clocks to the simple, natural rhythms of life. Try as we may, we can’t really speed up a tomato plant and make it grow by our time table. We must adapt and in doing so, gardening offers us a gentle reminder about what’s really important in life: food, water, warmth, a bit of loving attention, and some room to grow.

Gardening is one of the fastest growing pastimes in the U.S., as well as one of the healthiest. Beyond its spiritual aspects, gardening can be a great stress reliever. Digging, raking, planting, pruning, and harvesting are physical activities that provide a constructive outlet for tensions that build up in our bodies. Gardening activities draw on your endurance, give you flexibility and strength, build muscle and strengthen the heart and lungs, as well as helping with weight control.

And with numerous studies showing us that regular physical activity reduces your risk of premature death, heart disease, obesity, high blood pressure, adult-onset diabetes, osteoporosis, stroke, depression and colon cancer, it’s clear that we all must take responsibility for ourselves and do what we can to stay healthy. So if you think you might enjoy gardening, here are some ideas to get you started:

Start small and plant things that you will enjoy. If flowers make you happy, plant a few flowers. Over time you will find what works and what doesn’t. Don’t worry too much about the best way to do things. The most important thing is to just get started.

If you are hoping to reduce stress through gardening, it’s important to make sure that working in the garden doesn’t simply create additional stresses. That means, take it easy. Keep your gardening to-do list short. Stretch before and after working in the garden to minimize aches and pains. Take breaks to sit back, rest and appreciate what you’ve accomplished. Listen to music while you work.

If a large garden sounds like too much work or you don’t have the room, think about trying Micro-gardening. Grow your own plants – food or flowers in containers rather than in a plot of ground. The size of the garden is completely up to you. There’s micro-gardening, and then there’s MICRO-gardening.

If you have access to outside areas such as a patio, balcony or porch, your micro-gardening opportunities increase greatly. You may not even need to buy special pots. If you have old flowerpots, buckets, half-barrels or even concrete blocks, you have the makings of great gardening. Make sure the containers are clean and have drainage holes. If there aren’t any holes, start with a layer of pebbles before adding the dirt.

Herbs grow particularly well indoors. Depending on your cooking style, one plant each can produce all the parsley, dill, thyme, basil and oregano you need for an entire season of meals. Follow the seed packet directions, or buy individual seedlings, and you’re on your way.

Remember that when container-gardening, the plants count on you for their moisture. They might not receive enough rain and dew to grow well, so water the plants when the dirt starts to dry out.

Growing your own makes it easier to get the minimum “five-a-day” servings of veggies and fruits the experts now recommend for health. Recent research confirms that most common fruits and vegetables come packed not only with the vitamins and minerals already known to support good health, but also with “phytonutrients” demonstrated to boost the immune system, retard the aging process, and help heal or prevent many chronic diseases.

Gardening is good exercise, especially if you take a pass on all the latest power tools and put your muscle to the tasks of digging, turning and spreading compost, collecting and spreading mulch, hoeing and picking rocks. Activities like these burn calories, build muscle and strengthen the heart and lungs.

Even a small vegetable garden can save money. To ensure savings, though, a backyard gardener needs to stick to the basic tools and supplies and keep a tight rein on the temptation to own all the newest gadgets. For the biggest savings in energy, dollars and space, look into intensive gardening, the art of producing a lot of food in a small space.

You just can’t beat gardening for stress relief. The simple acts of planting seeds and tending plants can restore balance and perspective during the most wrenching life crises. Research has demonstrated that people heal faster after surgery when exposed to natural scenery – even looking at photographs of green plants speeds recovery. So what are you waiting for? Get started today!

Nature Day Camps

June 11-15, 2012 (Ages 5-7)

July 16-20, 2012 (Ages 8-9)

Our Nature Day Camps are designed to connect children with the natural world through play, adventure and fun – all of which takes place in the natural world at McKeever, it’s trails, forests, streams and the many plants and animals that live there. Throughout the camp, we instill a sense of wonder while children explore the natural world around them. The weeklong camp runs 9AM – 3PM each day. Cost: $95/camper

Earthkeepers Level II

June 20-22, 2012

Earthkeepers Level II is for those students who have earned all four keys and one bead. During this experience, you will gain knowledge about how the earth works by crawling inside the world’s largest leaf, traveling to the “City of the Future” and becoming a part of the Sun’s Bucket Brigade. Other adventures include finding a new magic spot and learning the secrets of becoming a “Nightwatcher.” Cost: $139/camper, includes two nights lodging, seven meals, instruction and materials.

Earthkeepers Summer Camp

July 11-13, 2012

This overnight experience involves students going through the Earthkeepers program, a three-day experience where children earn a set of keys and become an Earthkeeper. A mysterious, unseen character known as E.M. permeates the Earthkeepers program. As the keeper of the keys, E.M. is everyone’s dream of the wizard of the woods. This summer camp is for children ages 10-11. Cost: $139/camper, includes two nights lodging, seven meals, instruction and materials.

Outdoor Adventure Camp

August 8-10, 2012

This three-day overnight camp is for children ages 12-14. Outdoor skills and adventures await, as participants will have an opportunity to hike, canoe and cycle. While honing these skills, we’ll begin working on developing a personal relationship with the natural world. Mornings include sessions on wildlife, ecology, leave no trace and orienteering. Cost: $139/camper, includes two nights lodging, seven meals, instruction and materials.

June 19-21, 2012

This workshop was made possible through a grant from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Education. The workshop has three tracks: Organic Farming/Gardening, Climate Change/Marcellus Shale and a workshop titled “Contemplative Experiences . . . in the service of the earth.”

The participants will spend a half-day (on two days) at local organic farms. Three Sisters Farm has been growing and marketing organic produce since 1989. Here you will find 5-acres of gardens that incorporates the permaculture design principles on their farm. After an in-depth overview of their operation, participants will be assigned tasks and begin their ‘chores’.

The next day we’ll travel to Ellen Benek’s farm outside of Sandy Lake. In addition to an impressive organic garden, the Benek’s produce their own milk, yogurt and cheese from their goats. Once again, depending on what needs done at this time of the year will determine our chores for the morning.

Dr. Randall Wiesenmayer, professor of science education at West Virginia University will begin with the basics of the greenhouse effect and the presentation of evidence that the Earth’s climate is warming. But what mechanisms are causing these changes? Is this just a natural cycle like those that have occurred during the past millions of years, or are human activities the cause?

The last part of the workshop will be Steve Van Matre’s Contemplative Experience workshop. This workshop begins Wednesday evening from 6:30 – 9:30 PM and continues Thursday 9 AM – 5 PM. Steve will conduct this powerful workshop, as participants will have the opportunity to examine their personal relationship with the natural world.

Cost: $110, includes two nights lodging, lunch and dinner on Tuesday, breakfast, lunch and dinner on Wednesday and breakfast and lunch on Thursday, instruction, books and materials.

Contemplative Experience. . .in the service of the Earth.

June 20-21, 2012

In these busy times it is easy to get so involved in our daily activities that we lost sight of where we are going in our lives. This workshop is designed to help us consider our personal relationship with the natural world and our role in the movement to sustain it. This is a time to ponder why we do what we do, and refine our own personal quest to be of service to both the planet’s natural systems and communities and its human passengers.

The environmental movement is the largest movement in human history, cutting across all geographic, political and spiritual boundaries. So where do we fit into that movement personally? What is the abstraction we champion, and how can we share it with others?

Cost: $145/person – includes workshop, Wednesday night lodging, dinner on Wednesday and breakfast and lunch on Thursday. The workshop is from 6:30 – 9:30 PM on Wednesday and 9 AM – 5 PM on Thursday. Once we receive your registration and payment, confirmation will be sent to you with detailed information about the workshop.

Interpretive Design & the dance of experience Workshop

June 22-23, 2012

Join us for a special workshop with Steve Van Matre.

Interpretation is the craft of enriching the experience of leisure visitors in places established for the public good. The world’s parks and preserves, gardens and galleries, museums and monuments are the jewels of our societies, set aside because they represent the natural and cultural treasures we want to celebrate today and share with others tomorrow. As a result, they are mission-driven places which also need to justify and garner support for what they are protecting. An interpreter translates the natural and cultural language of such places for its visitors, while immersing them in the essence of its purpose.

Interpretive designers create the leisure journeys that interpreters implement. Just as we have designers today for the buildings, signs, grounds, exhibits, and other components of our mission-driven public places, we need “interpretive designers” who focus on the most important component, the actual experience of the visitors who come. This is a new profession which works with the whole experience that other designers only facilitate in part. Interpretive designers help sites mold their interpretive facilities around the outcomes they intend rather than the structures they inherit. These designers create the interrelated experiential vehicles of interpretive service.

Interpretive Design is for all those who assist visitors in getting to know their public jewels – leisure sites from Aquaria to Zoos – and who aim to enrich those visitors’ experiences in meaningful and memorable ways.

Cost: $225/person – includes workshop, Friday night lodging, lunch and supper on Friday and breakfast and lunch on Saturday. Workshop is from 9 AM – 5 PM on both Friday and Saturday. Once we receive your registration and payment, confirmation will be sent to you with detailed information about the workshop.

Hardwood Lumber Grading Short Course

July 23-26, 2012

The value of ‘rules conscious’ employees is a more carefully manufactured product, a more profitable yield from the log, and a better sense of the value of the lumber being handled. This four-day course will include a thorough study and explanation of the National Hardwood Lumber Association (NHLA) Rules Book, emphasizing the basics of hardwood lumber inspection.

This popular course gives yardmen, sawyers, edgermen, sales and office staff, and management level personnel an introduction to lumber inspection. Our instructor is Barry Kibbey, inspector and instructor from the NHLA.

The cost of the course is $349 and includes ten meals, lunch on Monday through lunch on Thursday, three nights lodging, instruction and materials. You can register by downloading a registration flyer from McKeever’s website. From the home page, click the calendar tab, and then click on Hardwood Lumber Grading Short Course. You can also contact the center for more information.

The McKeever Center received an Environmental Education grant from the PA Department of Environmental Protection for $6,495. The grant is earmarked towards the training of college students in environmental education activities and programs. Once trained, college students will teach the environmental education activities to school-aged students as a part of their field trips to the McKeever Center.

Philanthropy Class

The McKeever Center was selected as a ‘client’ in Dr. Alice Del Vecchio’s Philanthropy class at Slippery Rock University. In teams of four, students had the opportunity to work with non-profit organizations during the spring semester. Rather than using theoretical models, the students worked with organizations addressing their ‘real’ needs. In McKeever’s case, the students looked at funding, including annual campaigns, corporate donors, marketing and fund raising events. The team also worked on a four-color brochure, provided insight to McKeever’s mission statement and new tag line. McKeever will receive a CD and binder containing all of the work from the class project. I want to personally thank SRU students Jen Hoffman, Tara McHenry, Lindsey Peters and Vicki Ro. They put together an impressive packet of materials and their class presentation was outstanding.

E-Newsletter

So far, fifty-one people signed up to receive McKeever’s newsletter ‘Hemlock Pathways’ as an electronic newsletter. In times of cost cutting, this will reduce our operating costs. If you are interested in receiving Hemlock Pathways online, simply go to our website and click on the NEWS image on the home page. This will prompt you to subscribe for the online newsletter.

Community Service Projects

Is your group looking for a community service project? The McKeever Center provides opportunities to complete such projects. Our biggest need is our hiking trails. With the thousands of students who walk the trails each year, our trails always need attention. Another on-going need is providing attention to butterfly garden and native landscaping areas. If this type of project interests you, please contact the center for more information.

McKeever’s Bookstore/Gift Shop – New And Improved!

If you are looking for something for yourself or a gift for someone, think about giving that nature lover something from the McKeever bookstore. We have short and long-sleeved t-shirts, pigment dyed sweatshirts, fleece sweatshirts, hats, coffee mugs and cups, water bottles, stationery/envelopes of Hemlock Hollow/Rocky Basin as well as a nice collection of children’s books.

We’re looking to add new items such as hoodies, Sunship Earth and Earthkeepers t-shirts, tote bags and field guides. If you have an idea on something we should carry, let us know. Remember you can shop online at www.mckeever.org. From the home page, click on the shopping cart image to access the bookstore.

Our three lodges combined can accommodate 156 overnight guests and our auditorium can seat 186 people. There are nine indoor meeting areas available for breakout sessions. The buildings are situated in a circle connected by a paved walkway creating a feeling of community for our groups.

In addition, the center offers two Retreat Houses, each house equipped with five semi-private bedrooms and five private bathrooms. These facilities are used primarily for organizations, colleges and businesses looking for an opportunity to get their staff away from the office, either to engage in long range planning or a staff retreat. If you are interested in renting the McKeever Center, call us at 724.376.1000 or e-mail at info@mckeever.org.