Destroying the Village In Order to Save It
Many of us remember it well. At the beginning of
the first Royal Gorge presentation in March, Todd Foster held up a book and
declared it provided the philosophical justification for his development. The
book made it clear, he said, that the children of the nation are being deprived
of nature, and he and his partner Kirk Syme had a solution. So central was this
book to their world view, it was asserted, that everyone on their staff was
required to read it.
The book is "Last Child in the
Woods"
by Richard Louv. And before I address the absurdity of Mr. Foster's contention,
I need to stress that at least a portion of his remarks were accurate: this is,
indeed, an important book. Marshaling an impressive array of evidence, Louv
demonstrates that sustained exposure to nature is beneficial to both the mental
and physical health of children. But children today are characterized by an
estrangement from nature unlike any other time in history. This is due to many
reasons, some of which stem from the easily-observable effects of our
technological culture, including video games and an increasingly sophisticated
media.
Other reasons, however, arise from our culture
of fear. In the past, working and playing outdoors was an integral part of
life. Many of the older residents of the lakes (myself included) remember a
childhood in which we could roam freely in the wild margins of our
neighborhoods. Our parents thought nothing of shoving us out the door in the
morning because beyond the still primitive television there was little to do
inside the house. We discovered the hidden wonders of vacant lots and local
woodlands, and engaged in creative, free-form play. Many parents today, Louv
contends, are reluctant to let their children roam. Whether because of the
parental desire to reduce risk in the face of relentless media attention to
child abductions, or merely from a desire to control every aspect of a child's
life, children today must cope with increasing demands and restrictions that
rob them of play time, especially in nature.
When Richard Louv speaks of "nature",
he means not just the wild nature that is usually associated with wilderness.
For Louv, nature also includes anyplace where natural forces are untended,
places he labels "unofficial countryside." These would not only
encompass urban greenbelts and parks, but also vacant lots and even a drainage
ditch. The important thing is to allow children to play in them. He points out
that many highly-urbanized cities in Europe have more open space for play than
most American suburbs. Scandinavia, especially, is noted for creating natural
play space within cities. In this context, if Foster/Syme were truly concerned
about the juxtaposition of high-density development and open space, they could
have just as easily accomplished this in an urban setting. In a personal
communication, Louv wrote: "I realize exurban development is going to
continue, whether I like it or not, and I would rather it be the kind that
exposes kids to nature, rather than more of the same. Still, I would urge all
of us to find ways to redirect as much of this into the existing urban regions
that will need redevelopment." Nature can, indeed, be preserved or
restored anywhere, even in the inner cities, where it would certainly be of
more value to the very children who need it most.
But of course, land in cities is very expensive,
and the greatest return on investment can now be realized in buying relatively
inexpensive rural land (especially if it is highly scenic) and covering it with
expensive second homes, a phenomenon that is occuring all over the American
West. And an even greater return is realized from condos and timeshares, as Hal
Clifford in "Downhill Slide" so amply demonstrates.
Nowhere in "Last Child" does Richard
Louv advocate the conversion of wild land into resort communities as a means of
attaining the goal of getting children back to nature. One could even conclude
that Louv implicitly denies this use by its omission. Instead, Louv emphasizes
the conversion of former working landscapes -- the abandoned farms of the Great
Plains and the Northeast are his two primary examples -- into new "green
towns" with ample untended spaces. He dwells at length on the vision of
Wes Jackson of the Land Institute in Kansas, who advocates the redistribution
of people to ecologically sustainable working landscapes. However utopian this
may sound, it certainly does not include the building of a Disneyfied
"camp" with nature centers and bottled experiences.
It must be kept in mind that Royal Gorge is
planning a development of second homes, not primary residences, and this
necessarily makes the exposure of children to nature very limited indeed. To
this end, Louv admits that putting children into a "natural" setting,
especially for short periods of time, is no guarantee that they will respond to
it. By extension, and by its very complexion, a ski resort has a tendency to
separate recreation and nature; it can be little more than a snowy sand box. A
child on a ski slope could be considered to be getting fundamentally the same
experience of nature as a child in an urban concrete skate park.
Following Louv, who stresses the importance of
local natural history education, Foster/Syme claim they will build a
"nature center" on the Summit in fulfillment of Louv's mandate. In so
doing, they would have us believe that this addition makes everything else more
palatable, while glossing over the very real destruction of a thousand acres of
wildland in order to realize their "vision." The entire enterprise,
it would seem, is predicated on the assumption that we were born yesterday, and
as such comes across as nothing less than insulting. I am reminded of the
phrase that came out of the Vietnam war, one that represented the absurdity of
a certain world view: we must destroy the village in order to save it.
There
is much more, of course, in "Last Child". My advice is get the book
and read it. Our children will benefit. Ultimately, it is not merely the
proximity to nature that will encourage them to preserve what precious little
is left; what we teach them is just as important, and this does not require a
ski resort or a condo in the woods. As Richard Louv says, "The most
effective way to connect our children to nature is to connect ourselves to
nature."