Abby Quillen

Freelance Content Marketing Writer and Editor

Nature

6 Ways to Nurture Your Family’s Connection with Nature

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Most of the new parents I know are anything but negligent. They take their toddlers to storytime and enroll them in swim courses, dance classes, and music lessons. They serve fresh vegetables, read picture books, learn baby signs, and take workshops in infant massage and child development. A storytime leader at my local library jokingly refers to my generation of moms and dads as “PhD parents.”

But with all the scheduling, classes, and shuttling around, we may be in danger of neglecting something that’s actually more crucial to our children’s health and development than workshops and classes – unstructured playtime in nature. Numerous scholars and environmental psychologists are sounding an alarm, arguing that kids today are at risk for developing what Richard Louv, author of the 2005 bestseller Last Child in the Woods and Chairman of Children and Nature Network, calls “Nature-Deficit Disorder.”

Humans need to experience nature.

Both adults and children have an innate affinity for the natural world and an urge to connect with other forms of life which Harvard researcher Edward O. Wilson coined “biophilia”. Unconvinced? Consider the following findings:

  • Workers who could view a nature setting from work were more satisfied, felt better challenged by their jobs, and reported better health than co-workers who couldn’t view nature. (Kaplan, R. & Kaplan, S. (1989). The Experience of Nature: A Psychological Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.)
  • Surgical patients randomly assigned to a room with a view of trees required less pain medicine, healed faster, and were discharged sooner than those with no window or a view of a brick wall. (Ulrich, R. (1984). View Through a Window May Influence Recovery from Surgery. Science, 224, 420-421)
  • A view of green plants and vistas helped highly-stressed rural children relieve anxiety. The more plants, green views, and access to natural play areas the kids had, the less stressed they were. (“Nearby Nature: A Buffer of Life Stress Among Rural Children.” Environment and Behavior. Vol. 35:3, 311-330.)
  • Girls living in inner-city Chicago Public Housing with views of greenery had more self-discipline, increased concentration, and reduced impulsive behavior than girls the same age living in identical housing in more barren areas. (Journal of Environmental Psychology, 22, 49-63.)

Unstructured play, especially outdoors, benefits kids.

We don’t just need a view of nature either. We need to get out in it. Research, like studies conducted by doctors Hillary L. Burdette and Robert C. Whitaker, has shown that playing outdoors alone or with friends, siblings, or parents not only helps kids stay fit, it helps them :

  • pay attention
  • solve problems
  • sleep better
  • interact with others
  • avoid depression, anxiety, and aggression.

Kids are communing less with nature.

The research may be in, but those long summers many of us remember from childhood, where we roamed the neighborhood, collected bugs, made mud pies, and headed out for  week-long family camping trips seem to be going extinct. Children’s playtime fell 25% between 1981 and 1997, and that trend has undoubtedly continued in the last decade.  Moreover, by 1990, the radius kids were allowed to roam shrunk to 1/9 of what it was in 1970.

Why?

  • We’re busy. Americans work about five weeks more per year than we did in 1970. And the bad economy is making people even more hesitant to take time off. When workers are able to take a few days off, many feel they should stay connected to work via cell phones, laptops, and blackberries.
  • TVs, computers, video games, and hand-held electronic devices compete for our attention. The average person watches more than four hours of TV a day.
  • We’ve become scared of nature. The widespread fear of sun exposure in the last few decades (possibly resulting in an epidemic of Vitamin D deficiency) exemplifies how anxious many of us have become about the Great Outdoors.

6 Ways to Nurture Your Family's Connection with Nature #parenting #nature

Six easy ways to re-connect with nature

1. Institute a family green hour.

If you’re a scheduler, pencil a “green hour” into each day. At that time, let your kids enjoy unstructured playtime in the backyard, a garden, a neighborhood park, or another safe and accessible green space.

Remember, connecting with nature is necessary for adults too. During your family’s green hour, get outside, work in the garden, draw or write in a nature journal, or just relax and observe your surroundings. You can connect with other families who schedule a daily green hour here.

2. Take a nature walk.

Pack a lunch and head to the forest or the city park. Nature walking is not the  time for feeling the burn. Set a slow pace and observe birds, plants, tracks, insects, scat, rocks, and the sky. Bring along binoculars, a magnifying glass, field guides, or just your curiosity.

3. Feed the birds.

Install a bird feeder outside one of your windows, and observe the birds that come and go. Feeders don’t have to be expensive. Kids can even make their own. Read up on what kinds of birds live in your neighborhood. Different birds like different kinds of feeders. Don’t stress if you don’t see any action right away. It takes awhile for birds to find a new feeder. Attract even more birds to your yard by designing a bird-friendly landscape.

4. Watch the sky.

If you can see the stars from your backyard or patio, make a weekly stargazing date with your family. Find tips for what to look for each week here. You can also track the moon’s cycle here.

If you can’t see the stars from your abode, check out your local astronomy club. They often host free dark sky meet ups, where you can look through telescopes and learn about the constellations from dedicated stargazers.

5. Stare at the Clouds.

Connecting with nature doesn’t have to be hard work. Stretch out on the grass and gaze up. If you like what you see, check out the Cloud Appreciation Society’s website, or get your hands on a copy of one of their books: The Cloudspotter’s Guide and The Cloud Collector’s Handbook.

6. Take a Camping Trip.

If you’re trying to save cash on your summer vacation this year, camping is the way to go. You’ll need some basic gear – a tent, sleeping bags, a flashlight, water, a first aid kit, and plenty of food and water. You’ll probably also want a lantern, camp stove, and a good book.

You don’t have to go far from home, but the more off the beaten path, the better. Resist the impulse to over plan. Enjoy waking with the sun, spending long days wandering and relaxing, and talking and singing around the campfire at night. (Tip: leave the cell phone in the car.)

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How does your family connect with nature? I’d love to hear your ideas.

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Out of the Wild

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Colorado Central Magazine recently published my humorous essay “Out of the Wild.”

Out of the Wild

by Abby Quillen

I grew up in Central Colorado, and most weekends my family piled into a canary-yellow 1975 Chevy pickup and pitched down rutted-out, rock-strewn roads to hike, explore, or cross-country ski at places with names like Mosquito Pass, Missouri Gulch, and Cochetopa Creek.

By the time my sister and I were 18, we’d both sucked in the thin air on top of a 14,000 foot mountain, run across high-mountain meadows, visited too many ghost towns to list, waded barefoot in ice-cold streams, and spent countless nights sleeping with only a tent and a sleeping bag between our bodies and the hard, cold ground.

Like any wilderness adventures, our outings weren’t always predictable or safe. My dad delighted in driving down twisting and switch-backed mountain roads, often with precipitous drop offs on one side. My mom spent most of our rides clutching the truck’s dashboard, taking in sharp intakes of air through her teeth. “Slow down, Ed,” she’d hiss. “Watch the road.”

Despite my mom’s careful backseat driving, my dad managed to get our truck stuck in some precarious places, notably on a ledge on Mount Princeton and another time in the mud up the North Fork.

Both my sister and I have scars to remember our excursions. When Columbine was nine, she talked my dad into letting her skip school and accompany him and a friend on a cross-country ski trip over Old Monarch Pass. They ended up stranded for several hours after nightfall, and my sister got frostbite on one of her feet.

A few years later, when I was eight, I raced my cousins down a steep section of the Colorado Trail during a family camping trip. I tripped and gashed my upper lip, scraped my chin, and more permanently, chipped my front tooth.

Today my own son is almost two, so I reflect on my childhood quite a bit. When my husband and I aren’t changing diapers or trying to serve a balanced diet to someone who spurns vegetables, we converse about how we might not ruin the little fellow.

We live in Eugene, Oregon, and there’s plenty of wilderness to explore around here. But we mostly amble down sidewalks, explore city parks, and bike down paved paths.

While I delighted in marmot and pica sightings as a kid, my son is more familiar with city creatures – the gray squirrels who run along our fence and taunt our cats, the ducks and nutrias who swim around the litter in the canal by our house, and the seagulls who dive for trash in the grocery store parking lot.

My husband and I want to get out in the wilderness more. But we tend to gravitate toward activities that fit into our son’s nap schedule and where there’s no danger he’ll toddle off a cliff face.

I don’t think we’re alone. In the 30 years between my second birthday and my son’s, everyone’s gotten more concerned about safety. We’re supposed to strap my son into a car seat until he’s seven. And according to Oregon law, he should wear a helmet when he’s riding his Strider bike, which doesn’t even have pedals.

Lately some folks are decrying the increased restrictions on children. Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods, warns against something called nature deficit disorder. And movements with names like Free-Range Parenting are cropping up.

Of course I don’t want my son to be deficient in anything, especially something as integral to my childhood as being outdoors. So last weekend my husband and I decided it was time to introduce my son to the wilderness. We were heading across the Cascades to visit my sister in Bend, and nothing says nature like crisp, high-desert air, windswept expanses and snow-capped mountains.

But on our first day in Bend, after my son took his nap and we were all ready for an afternoon hike, the sky turned black and rain started pelting from the sky. We decided to head to a pub for an early dinner instead.

The next day we’d planned a visit to the High Desert Museum, but afterward, we stopped for a hike at the nearby Newberry Volcano. It was a scenic jaunt to the caldera, and my son managed the two miles mostly by himself. But the trail was paved, so it didn’t exactly feel like a wilderness excursion.

No problem, my husband and I thought. We’d just stop for a hike on our way back to Eugene the next day. The drive is beautiful, with dense Douglas fir forests and breathtaking views of Mount Jefferson and Three Fingered Jack. There would be numerous places to stop for a hike.

When we saw the sign for the Headwaters of the Metolius, I told my husband, “This is it. I’ve heard it’s beautiful.” So we followed the signs, parked, and started walking … on an asphalt path. It’s well worth the short walk to see the wide, sparkling Metolius River bubble out of an underground spring. But a hike it is not.

“We’ll just stop somewhere else,” my husband assured me as we got back in the car. But my son had other ideas. By the time we turned back onto Highway 126 he was fast asleep.

We’ll have to save my son’s introduction to the wilderness for another day. I’m hoping maybe my parents will be up for a hike when we visit Colorado this summer. Will it really hurt anything if my son wears a helmet on the outing?

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Slow Summer Living

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Summer is meant to for slowness. Savor it and get outside. #summer #powerslow

Remember those long summers from childhood? My family spent lots of weekends camping each summer – going on hikes, reading paperbacks in the shade, wading in streams, taking afternoon naps, and telling stories around the campfire. Back at home, my sister and I rode our bikes all over town, walked to the swimming pool most afternoons, made mud pies, captured bugs in jars, read dozens of books, and just played.

Recently I stumbled upon journalist Kelly Wilkinson’s blog Make Grow Gather. She’s on a mission to relive one of those slow, lazy summers from childhood.

This summer, I am attempting an experiment. An experiment to take back summer. Like when I was a kid and thought everyday could be warm and empty and mine.

She made a summer to-do list. Here are a few of my favorite things on it:

Walk barefoot • Take a nap outside • Make suntea • Pick berries • Spend time in hammock • Go on picnic • Make herb water • Hang birdfeeder • Grow vegetables • Go to a farmer’s market • Read the Sunday papers outside • Learn a summer constellation • Go camping •  Read a summer book • Pick wildflowers • Blow a dandelion • Watch fireflies • Make lemonade • Watch a meteor shower • Eat a watermelon • Take a walk on a dirt road

In our house, summer is an opportunity for me to work and write a little bit more, since my husband is home more to watch our son. And that works out great, because after so many months of tearful morning goodbyes and refrains of “Dada gonna be home soon?”, they’re both pretty excited to spend more one-on-one time together. But Wilkinson’s inspired me also to make old-fashioned summer laziness a priority in the next two months.

So I’m planning to spend lots of time here…

and here…

and in our other favorite escapes, and to just really enjoy these long days with my family. So I’ll probably be posting a little bit less during the next two months. But hopefully you’ll be too busy catching fireflies, picking berries, blowing dandelions, and gazing at stars to notice.

Living Local

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Living Local #carfree #sustainable

A few years ago, Kurt Hoelting, a wilderness guide and commercial fisherman living in the San Juan Islands in Washington, took an online quiz to calculate his carbon footprint. He was living fairly simply, so he was shocked to find that his carbon footprint was gigantic. The culprit? Air travel. So Hoelting made a resolution. He would spend an entire year only traveling within a 60 mile circumference of his house and using only public transportation, his bike, his kayak, and his feet. He wrote a book about his experience called The Circumference of Home.

In an interview Hoelting said that his experiment made him see the world from a new vantage point. His first adventure was walking a 130 mile circle around the Skagit Basin and Whidbey Island, and he expected a nice, long wilderness hike. But he was shocked at how complicated walking turned out to be, because our world is built for cars, not foot-travel. As Hoelting walked, he noticed “nooks and crannies” of wildness everywhere that he’d been missing when traveling by car.

Hoelting’s experiment made me think about my own walks. I love to walk, and I’ve walked nearly every day for as long as I can remember. Thus for much of my life, I’ve been exploring circles around the different places I’ve lived. Recently I was on a walk in the hills near my house. It was a route I’ve taken dozens of times before. But this time I noticed something I’d never seen before: at the end of a cul-de-sac, it looked like there was a path leading into the trees.

It was a rare occasion where I didn’t have my son or his stroller with me, so I followed the path. I found myself in a city park that I’d never heard of or seen on a map. I only knew it was a park because of the city’s sign, which is lying on the ground in the undergrowth. Trees have fallen across the trail in places. And I’ve yet to see another person there even though I now visit regularly. It’s just as Hoelting described – an unexpected pocket of wild in the middle of a residential neighborhood. And I’m sure I never would have noticed it from inside a car.

I can’t tell you how much visiting this little patch of wilderness has added to our lives. My son and I call it the “forest”, and when we talk about it, my son says, “deer!”, because we so often watch deer grazing there. We also listen to birdcalls and look for different kinds of bugs and just sit together on a log and soak up the forest, which is something I’d missed, because like Hoelting, my family lives a lot more locally these days than we used to.

It’s hard to believe that just a few months ago, we didn’t know this wonderful place existed. What else might we be missing right outside our door?

Living Local #carfree #sustainable

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The Sun Will Come Out

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It’s been raining for two days. Then this afternoon, the sun came out. I grabbed my camera and raced for the door. But just as I got outside, the wind kicked up, the sky turned black, and rain began pelting down. This exact chain of events happened three times today, which may tell you a little bit about how my week has been. We’ve had long work days, a ferocious bout of illness, and just the normal to-do lists to contend with. It’s been challenging, I must say.

But we’ve had some ups too. My son was amazingly cheerful throughout his first stomach ailment. And there are the spring flowers. I just can’t get enough of the stretch of time between March and June in Oregon. Plus, our very first seeds are sprouting in the garden.

So, yes, it’s been a bit like a rain storm, with just enough sun breaks to keep us going. I was hoping to share some photos of sun-dappled leaves or a rainbow perhaps, but alas, it wasn’t meant to be. Maybe tomorrow….

This post is for Steady Mom’s Thirty Minute Blog Challenge.