Tonight on my way home from work I felt like it had been too long since I had run on a dirt trail or walked in a forest (I've been skiing and cycling more than trail running lately). Instead of resigning to my usual commute, I turned and headed to the Bobolink trail. After a short walk I sat down on a bench next to Boulder creek and simply listened. I saw and heard frogs, cows with their new spring calves, the creek, and the recognizable birds such as woodpeckers, geese, ducks and seasonal songbirds. I sat in silence and recognized how special this bit of open space was. I noticed that even though it has been unseasonably warm of late, only the very first of the trees have begun to bud along the trail. (Mostly cottonwoods in that area, which are all still bare.) The grass is starting to green up nicely, but no flowers have come up yet. Then I noticed what I was noticing... that might sound odd, but I wondered how many other people notice the things I was noticing.
I think one of the most valuable things my father gave me was a view to a person who knew the natural world around him. He knew the various kinds of birds and trees in the yard. At night after work he would sit (very much like his mother, although in a different house and on a different porch) and watch the deer and squirrels and birds and rabbits. I grew up in several homes, and all that I can remember backed up to or contained woods. Having grown up pretty much in the 'burbs, that isn't exactly a common thing to say, but it was true in my case. Before I came into the equation, he hunted, and probably knew the woods even better.
We never went on grand backpacking trips or banged out 10 mile hikes through the Smokies on a Saturday per se, and yet I still feel like I grew up with a fairly close relationship with the natural world around me. I never was far from a squirrel's nest, a bird feeder, a deer salt lick, a corn field, or a marshy woods... always juxtaposed with a million-person city less than an hour's drive down the road. I think that simple connection helped shape my view of nature today. There's a big tree outside my balcony with several kinds of songbirds in it through the summer. (The finches just returned this week and have nested a few feet from my bed.) I am recharged when I see a deer or a bear on a trail run. I try to recognize which types of trees are changing colors first in the fall or which types of flowers are in bloom while on my bike or running through Boulder, be it on a cement path, on an arid desert trail, or in a wooded open space park.
I was lucky to have that implanted in me; so many kids got a steady diet of cartoons instead, with only a small dosage of dandelions in the outfield. To be fair, I got my fare share of Saved by the Bell and You Can't Do That on Television, but I also had a pile of leaves in the fall, cardinals and blue jays on a nearby branch, sycamore bark to peel and acorns or walnuts falling from above. I strongly believe that without a resurgence of kids feeling a connection to the natural world around them, we face a growing panoply of problems. After all, as Dr. M. Sanjayan's recent series, Earth | A new Wild conveys, man is not separate from nature but a part of it, and we must all realize this or tempt fate.
Teach your children well.
