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 he
joy of discovery is part of the enormous fun of childhood.
Perhaps the best part. Steve Barg recounts some of those
childhood moments he has experienced and witnessed in "Kids
and Wilderness." His article builds on work by Gary Paul
Nabhan and Steven Trimble in The Geography of Childhood:
Why Children Need Wild Places. Nabhan and Trimble say
that connection with nature in childhood is an important
part of building a healthy culture.
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Photo
by Phyllis Cerny.
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I
worry that the places for free, unfettered exploration are
disappearing from our world — the ephemeral ponds,
the woods at the end of the street, the vacant lots filled
with weeds that we called "prairies." Worse, the character
of modern life makes us as parents less and less willing
to allow our children to go exploring in the wild unsupervised,
with their time unstructured.
Yet
children need the chance to poke in dirt, to turn over a
log and find a salamander, to get eye to eye with a squirrel,
to bring home a seed pod or a found bone for display. I
am prepared to make the case that this is a need as vital
to our health as any other. Our world is so much bigger,
fuller, when we learn about and love the other creatures
in it; our hearts and spirits so much smaller, diminished,
when we do not.
Jens
Jensen, landscape architect of the early twentieth century,
knew intuitively the importance of connecting to the landscapes
in which we live. "Our native landscape is our home," Jensen
wrote, "the little world we live in, where we are born and
where we play, where we grow up and finally where we are
.... laid to eternal rest. It speaks of the distant past
and carries our life into the tomorrow. To keep this pure
and unadulterated is a sacred heritage, a noble task of
the highest cultural value."
Jensen
designed parks to build nature into the culture of democracy.
He helped conceive the revolutionary idea of a "forest preserve"
for the same reason. We hope that this magazine, with our
circle of readers and the participating organizations of
Chicago Wilderness, are natural descendants of that same
impulse.
Jerry
Sullivan connected to the wild world around him at an early
age and never lost his sense of wonder and joy and humor.
(Nature can be funky, after all.) He maintained his personal
relationship to the natural world by watching birds, restoring
habitat, tramping through the woods, writing about his adventures
and discoveries, and by planting native plants in his small
backyard garden.
"Living
with these plants has totally changed my attitude," Jerry
wrote in one of his "Field & Street" columns for the
Chicago Reader in 1998. "Seeing them develop and change
day by day, watching the cycle of their lives through the
year is an experience quite unlike making an occasional
visit to a natural area ... An intimate association with
the rest of nature was the typical human experience through
most of our history as a species ... The loss of that intimacy
has had terribly destructive consequences. How wonderful
that even a city yard can give us a taste of that ancient
relationship."
Recovering
that intimate association, building a culture of conservation,
is what Chicago Wilderness is all about.
And
Now the Envelope, Please ....
The
American Planning Association has awarded the Chicago Wilderness
Biodiversity Recovery Plan its "Outstanding Planning Award
for a Plan." This is a big and wonderful deal, the first
time the APA has recognized a plan whose primary focus is
ensuring the health of ecosystems and their contribution
to the quality of life.
The
Chicago Audubon Society has presented this magazine’s
editor an award for Excellence in Environmental Reporting/Journalism.
Thank
you, thank you, thank you.
Debra
Shore may be reached at editor@chicagowildernessmag.org.
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