Last Child in the Woods – is a book that laments the ‘indoorsiness’ of today’s society and promotes folks heading out into the bugs and dirt and rocks and getting back to that Earthy connection. I find it a little ironic that whenever I talk about this book out loud it usually comes out as, “Lost Child in the Woods” which isn’t likely to make anyone inclined to send their kid out into the wilderness.
I was raised to be rather outdoorsy. After school we were permitted to watch half an hour of TV, usually Rescue Rangers, and in the summer we watched one movie, usually a recent Disney hit, and then were shooed out to the backyard to play. My dad took us hiking and biking and swimming and mom was an avid gardener. I was instilled with a sense of the holiness in nature and that it was good for my well-being to be ‘not in a building’.
Since becoming an adult I’ve discovered that some weren’t raised like this and though they aren’t haters of nature or anything like that, they simply do not much care to be outside in it. Some of them were allowed to watch whatever they wanted on TV and their parents didn’t force them into the backyard for nature time. They don’t love being outside in nature and I don’t think that’s a crime.
Personally, I loved the ideas about sending kids out into nature to explore, but the universal ideas that really resonated with me in this book were related to finding deeper meaning and connection in the world. Richard Louv talks of boredom, “Today, kids pack the malls, pour into the video arcades, and line up for the scariest, goriest summer movies they can find. Yet they still complain, “I’m borrrred. . . . We need to draw an important distinction between a constructively bored mind and a negatively numbed mind. Constructively bored kids eventually turn to a book, or build a fort, or pull out the paints, (or the computer art program) and create, or come home sweaty from a game of neighborhood basketball.”
My 5th grade team takes our students on two outdoor field trips, one to Timpanogos Cave and the other to a camp called Clear Creek. Some kids are into being outside, others really just want to stay in the cabin and read all day. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the readers. I do think there’s something wrong with people expecting to be passively entertained all the time. It’s very telling when kids get free time at school. Some pick activities that are fairly challenging, others come to me for entertainment, unable to come up wit something themselves. They tell me they’re bored and want me to do something to alleviate their suffering. My suggestions are often all rejected. They want me to have something easy for them to do that’s fun. Maybe an art project where they just put something together and don’t have to figure out for themselves what works and what doesn’t. A movie, but one in which they don’t have to think or figure anything out, just full of cheap thrills and jokes and beautiful images created by someone actually doing something.
It’s hard to create when you aren’t very good at it, but that’s where everyone starts, with a stick and a rock and your own mind. I believe there are many solutions to this problem, but this book does a great job of indicating that exploration of our natural world is one of those solutions.