 |
| View of the Boston Skyline from the Blue Hills Summer Camp. |
I was standing on top of the
Lemon Squeeze, monitoring my campers as they leapt from rock to rock, finding
new places to explore. The Lemon Squeeze was the name used to describe the
large boulders projecting out of the ground in the Blue Hills Reservation South
of Boston. My fellow Mass Audubon Environmental Educators and I frequently paused
our hikes at this jungle gym of rocks and secret tunnels to allow our campers
to play. During staff training earlier that summer, our camp director led us on
a hike to the Lemon Squeeze for our lunch break. This is where she told us that
free play would be one of the most valuable components of our environmental
education summer camp, and to make sure we allocated time for our campers to
explore and play in one of the most important classrooms: the natural world. I
remember thinking it was odd that we were being told to incorporate free play
into our curriculums. I just assumed that was a given, and was expecting her to
stress the importance of structured activities and lesson plans.
When I received my first set
of campers, I began to understand my director’s warnings, and was shocked with
how confused and almost unnatural these children acted outside. Little Aidan,
who was 6 years old, was one of the clumsiest children I have ever known, and
continuously tripped over himself and the rocks as we hiked through the Blue
Hills. When I asked my campers, who were 4.5-6 years old, to make an animal home,
or a teepee, using the rocks, twigs, and leaves available to us, I received a
lot of blank looks and sometimes tears of confusion. Even during free play, a
lot of the children didn’t know what to do and quickly became overwhelmed with
having the freedom to make their own choices outside. Children this age are
notorious for having extremely creative and curious minds… what was happening?
As the summer progressed, I watched
my campers make remarkable changes physically, psychologically, and
cognitively. Aidan stayed with us most of the summer, and by the end, he was
the camper at the front of the line, leading the other kids down the rocky
paths. I would later learn that the uneven, natural surfaces outside helps
youth develop physical coordination skills, in a way that a level playing field
cannot. It was also fun for me to observe the campers who initially held a
stick as if it were part of the game hot potato, unsure of what to do, have an
abrupt light bulb moment and start inventing elaborate, thoughtful games in the
trees and rocks. Some of our campers also had moderate to severe ADHD/ADD, and I
got to witness the pure joy they would experience from being outside, free from
any judgments or boundaries. There was no doubt in my mind that for whatever reason,
being outside was extremely therapeutic and necessary to help foster a healthy childhood
development. I know I’m happier when I’m outside, and I also know I become more
focused, confident, and less anxious, so why wouldn’t others experience a
similar response?
While volunteering at the
Blue Hills Trailside Museum Gift Shop a few months later, I was browsing
through the items on display, and a book stood out to me. It was called, Last Child in the Woods: saving our children
from nature-deficit disorder. As I started reading what author Richard Louv
had to say about how the nature-deficit is affecting our children, a surge of
energy rushed through me like water breaking through a dam. What he had written
down on paper was what I had subconsciously believed and known to be true: the
growing detachment to the outdoors has direct psychological, physical, and
cognitive consequences. Once you understand how spending more time outside positively
affects you, you realize it is common sense, but we have become so far removed
from our natural world that we don’t always see or understand the ext
ent to
which we depend on it. We need our natural resources, but we also need to be
outside for our own physical, cognitive, psychological, and for many,
spiritual, well-being.
For me, understanding the
extent to which we need to be immersed in our natural world became clear during
my first summer at the Blue Hills Reservation. The memory of the children, and
how happy they were outside, is what continues to motivate me to spread
awareness of the nature-detachment so we can reverse it.
