“What would our lives be like if our days and nights were as immersed in nature as they are in technology?”
“Every child needs nature. Not just the ones with parents who appreciate nature.
Not only those of a certain economic class or culture or set of abilities.
Every child.”
“How can our kids really understand the moral complexities of being alive if they are not allowed to engage in those complexities outdoors?”
“We tend to block off many of our senses when we’re staring at a screen. Nature time can literally bring us to our senses.”
“An environment-based education movement–at all levels of education–will help students realize that school isn’t
supposed to be a polite form of incarceration, but a portal to the wider world.”
“Nature is imperfectly perfect, filled with loose parts and possibilities, with mud and dust, nettles and sky, transcendent hands-on moments and skinned knees.”
“Natural play strengthens children’s self-confidence and arouses their senses – their awareness of the world and all that moves in it, seen and unseen.”
“There is a real world, beyond the glass, for the children who look, for those whose parents encourage them to truly see.”
“Children need nature for the development of their senses, and therefore, for learning and creativity.
There is another possibility: […] the rebirth of wonder and even joy.”
“Nature presents the young with something so much greater than they are; it offers an environment where they can easily contemplate infinity and eternity.”
“By bringing nature into our lives, we invite humility.”
“Quite simply, when we deny our children nature, we deny them beauty.”
*** All quotations by Richard Louve, Last Child in the Woods