Spring 2001

by Steve Barg

Journal Entry April 23: Loons calling on the lake. Like spirits they emerge from out of the fog on an early spring morning. Who knows that loons still wail their ancient tremolo along the shores of Lake Michigan?

Often when we think of "wilderness" our thoughts drift to the pristine lake country of the North Woods or the mountain peaks of the Colorado Rockies. When asked to describe wild places, I suspect few of us would blurt out "the Chicago River corridor," or the undeveloped lot down the street, or even our favorite county forest preserve site — that is, unless you asked a child. A child’s wilderness is close at hand, all wrapped up in the place where she once saw a snake or caught a bullfrog or has a favorite hiding spot. Her wilderness might be just down the street, or on the other side of the golf course, along the creek, or behind the school. A place full of adventure, discovery, and wild things, graced with surprising beauty, always changing with the seasons. It’s a place we are rediscovering; some now call it the Chicago Wilderness.

I grew up next door to such a piece of wildness in the western suburb of Wheaton. As a child it was huge (probably 15 acres) and supremely wild. There I learned to encounter the unexpected, to wander off trail, to find beauty in a flower up close and discover that trees grew where no one planted them. It was a place where we caught butterflies and salamanders, built forts and hid in trees. On summer days we gorged ourselves on wild blackberries. In the fall we hunted squirrels and doves, and tracked rabbits and deer in winter snow. The kids in the neighborhood called this place "the field." And it was in this field where I saw my first scarlet tanager, right after a spring rain, sunlit, against the greenest tree imaginable. It beamed a color red I had never seen before and I have been a watcher of birds ever since.

Journal Entry May 9: With shoes and socks left behind, Hannah and I walk hand and hand in the darkness through the muddy cornfield toward the cattails. We search for the source of the intense and incessant peeping. We return an hour later, empty-handed and laughing with mud up to our knees. Hannah has met the chorus frog, though she has yet to see one.

It is my firm belief that childhood should be full of such experiences. Unfortunately, since the days of my childhood, many of the wild places just down the street have disappeared. And the culture of child-rearing has changed too. Parents are more reluctant to let their children wander and explore, unchaperoned, the outer reaches of the neighborhood. These factors and others have led to the troubling reality that more children today, than at any other time of human history, grow up without exposure to wild nature. And so, perhaps it is more incumbent upon us as parents, aunts and uncles and grandparents to seek out these experiences for our children.

In their book The Geography of Childhood: Why Children Need Wild Places (1995), Gary Paul Nabhan and Steve Trimble draw insights from evolutionary biology, child psychology, education, and ethnography to assert that healthy human development remains grounded, as it always has, both in childhood and in wild landscapes. Nabhan even suggests that traditional wilderness-oriented rites of passage may help cure adolescent alienation. They urge us as adults to rethink our children’s contact with nature and provide place-based experiences for our children that ensure a connection to the land.

Journal Entry June 6: Deer browsing on the river bank, beaver swimming next to the canoe, a great blue heron spreads its wings and takes flight above us. Hannah enjoys her first sunrise paddle down the Des Plaines River while rush hour traffic hurries in the distance.

Working as a naturalist and educator for the past 15 years, much of my career has been dedicated to reacquainting parents and their children with the wonders that lie outside their back door. One of my favorite quotes that I often share with parents is from Rachel Carson’s The Sense of Wonder (reprinted 1998).

"Parents often have the sense of inadequacy when confronted on the one hand with the eager, sensitive mind of a child and on the other with a world of complex physical nature, inhabited by life so various and unfamiliar that it seems hopeless to reduce it to order and knowledge. In a mood of self-defeat, they exclaim, "How can I possibly teach my child about nature — why I don’t even know one bird from another!"

I remind parents that young children are usually seeking experience rather than information and that children — unlike many adults — take delight in the ordinary and the inconspicuous. Don’t you remember as a child that feeling of finding a penny on the sidewalk, the excitement of discovering the unexpected? Children are looking for "pennies" and the natural world is full of them. Heed again the advice of the great naturalist, Rachel Carson.

"I sincerely believe that for the child, and for the parent seeking to guide him, it is not half so important to know as to feel … The years of early childhood are the time to prepare the soil. Once the emotions have been aroused — a sense of the beautiful, the excitement of the new and unknown, a feeling of sympathy, pity, admiration or love — then we wish for knowledge about the object of our emotional response … It is more important to pave the way for the child to want to know than to put him on a diet of facts he is not ready to assimilate."

So exploring the nearby wild places with your children need not be burdened with field guides or botany texts; instead just bring your childlike curiosity, an active imagination, and fully engaged senses. Experience, excitement, and adventure can replace identification and destination. I’ve learned the hard way that my daughter is not interested in my didactic "naturalist" lessons. She wants an adventure that we share together. She wants me to get excited about finding "pennies" with her.

Adventures with Hannah almost always involve walking on fallen trees and logs. We like to see who can walk the farthest without falling off. Inevitably this leads to moss. Hannah loves moss. She loves to feel its softness. Sometimes she imagines she is a small animal asleep on a bed of it. Next comes rolling over logs. We usually knock once or twice to let the worms and pill bugs know we’re visiting. A gentle roll of the log is often followed by several oohs and aahs as various creatures of the underworld slither and scamper away from the light. Occasionally we find a toad or a salamander but I think worms are her favorite. When leaving, Hannah always reminds me to return the critters to their home and slowly roll the log back into place.

My friend Jeremy likes to create adventures for her nieces and nephews by drawing up a cryptic, somewhat weathered-looking map of a wild places close by. She usually includes, along with the trails and habitats, a few descriptions sure to elicit a curious response like an X marking "Unexplored Area" and a place called "The Ruins." She’ll often add conspicuous animal homes or game trails, a really old, large tree or stump, fencerows, and good hiding spots. For authenticity she sometimes scribbles journal notes along the map’s border. Pulling the map out of her pocket she’ll say, "Look what I found you guys!" and they are off and running, usually directly to the place marked "The Ruins."

So I encourage you to take your children out to a nearby wild place and explore and play around, get muddy, hide, chase a sound, climb a tree! Give your children a gift that will protect them against the disenchantment and boredom of later years; a gift that will forever connect them to the sources of our strength. Give them the gift of place — where they can renew themselves again and again.

Steve Barg is director of education for Lake Forest Open Lands Association. He has worked as a naturalist and educator in the Chicago area for the past 15 years.

For more information about children’s programs and places to explore, call (847)482-1928 or see www.lfola.org.