WHY are we doing this?

The number one question about this website so far is WHY? Why do we have this website and what do we hope to accomplish? Well here is the answer :

I managed Pilcher Park and the Pilcher Park Nature Center for the Joliet Park District for almost 19 years. Pilcher Park Nature Center is a big log cabin in the woods that hosts 15,000 children a year for Nature Field Trips.  There are 700 acres in Pilcher Park which gives you lots of room to roam around and explore. In the state of Illinois there are only 58 acres of prime upland forest and there are 52 of them in Pilcher.  There is a glorious array of wildflowers in Pilcher Park in the spring!

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Now that I have given you my plug for Pilcher Park and the Nature Center in general I will give you a little background on why I am so excited about placestoplayinnature.com   My interest in Play in nature began with  a speech I heard in 2002 by two men who are now very good friends of mine, Ken Finch and Gordon Maupin.  The speech was given at an Association of Nature Center Administrators Conference in Wilmot, Ohio. The topic of the speech was that even though we were seeing large numbers of children for school field trips as environmental education facilities, we were still failing to get the concepts of true environmentalism, conservation, and the love of nature across to the kids.  They come out to our parks for an hour or a day for a field trip, we impart all of our enthusiasm for nature to them that we can in a short period of time , and they go home and spend the rest of their lives either in front of the TV or on the computer……….never entering a forest again in their lives. 

One of the reasons for that is that children today are having an EXTINCTION OF EXPERIENCE.  The term Extinction of Experience comes from a book called The Thunder Tree by Robert Michael Pyle and was quoted from by Gordon and Ken in that first speech I heard.  That book resonated with me so much I used to buy the book by the dozens at half.com and give them out to anyone who would show a tiny bit of interest. My husband said giving the book away is my HOBBY. 

Robert Michael Pyle is my idol. He is one of the first people to contend that children were missing their childhoods as we used to know it.  So Ken, Gordon and I kept discussing the topic of what at that point we were calling Play in Nature in classes, talks and speeches.  We would meet at ANCA and talk about it amongst ourselves.  The next year after that first big speech our ANCA conference was in Washington State at Islandwood Nature Center and Bob Pyle was our Keynote speaker! That was so exciting and inspiring! He had us go around a room and tell about our first experiences with nature.  What was our sacred space or earliest memory.  One girl said she used to inject worms with bactine.  Lots of us caught and imprisoned some animal or another.  Mine was a box turtle named Antiquey food eater who was forced to live in the window well of our house in Martinsville, Indiana.  I have so many other memories of playing outside.  We always went to an island ( Gilligan’s Island) in Lexington, Kentucky. We would play there all day.  Sadly – the last time I went there that creek had been captured and put into a culvert.  Perhaps…………if the people in the area…….had actually LOVED nature the way I did as a kid they would not have put a concrete casing around my favorite creek. We used to build forts and tree houses, I still have a scar from defending my tree house and having to get 7 stitches.   We explored everything in our sights.  We made up games and caught lightening bugs at night and squashed them and made jewelry out of them! 

In 2005 Richard Louv published his best selling book:  Last Child in the Woods Saving our children from Nature Deficit Disorder!  I have to say ……………..  when I first saw the book and started to read it I thought he had stolen our idea!  At least Bob Pyle’s idea.   I didn’t like him very much for the first 10 minutes he was around!  As it turned out he had been thinking about this for quite a while.  He wrote an article in 1991 called Children’s Future.  

Richard Louv had his first grassroots gathering in Virginia at the National Conservation Training Center.  It was invitation only and Ken and I were invited. 

I have done quite a bit of research trying to find actual studies instead of just anecdotal evidence that document the benefits of play in nature to prove that this is as important as I feel it is.   All of us in the Nature Business have the FEELING that nature is good for us but where is the proof?   One name that kept coming up was Louise Chawla.  Louise is a researcher who used to work at University of Kentucky but now is at University of Colorado.  She has written many articles on children and their play spaces.  She believes that children have to have sustained contact with nature to learn to love it and she has done research since 1988 to prove that point. 

Video games are another phenomenon we could never have predicted 30 years ago.    Now I am not here to knock technology.  I am one of the most Facebook addicted people you will ever find.  I have nearly 10,000 followers on twitter. I LOVE technology. 

 Anyway,  as I started to say…………  play has changed.  How many of you would go out and play in the morning and not come home until the street lights came on?  How many of you played outside as a kid and made up your own games?  That just doesn’t happen anymore.  Or at least it rarely happens.  Parents are afraid to let their children outside alone.  CNN and other 24 hour news networks make it seem as if it is a VERY DANGEROUS world out there. Perception supersedes facts.  But when you spend your time with informed people who watch the news and talk about the news etc. it SEEMS like it is much more dangerous than it really is.  Another change to our landscape is that now most families have two parents who work.  The children are left alone at home in the afternoon and told to stay inside and lock the doors.  They are told to call Mom or Dad when they get home and not to go outside until the parents get home.  So Mom and Dad buy them X Boxes and movies and other video games to entertain them while they are home alone.  When parents come home they feel guilty and then they take children from one organized sporting event after another.  These children are either alone or super-programmed.  Oddly enough in the last 10 years there has been the largest number of children ever signed up for organized sports and the largest increase in childhood obesity.  Another interesting fact is that Kids free time  dropped by 38% between 1979 and 1999.

A lot of things have happened in the last 30 to 40 years to change the look of childhood.  One is the phenomenon of Helicopter parents.  You know the ones.  They hover over their children never letting them make a decision for themselves.  Never letting the children out of their sight.  Constantly connected to them.  10 year olds with cell phones.  WE are all connected.  All the time.  You would think that would make us feel safer but no.  The more contact it seems the more fear.  My Mother said she walked to and from school without a cell phone and never worried – and she didn’t live in a good neighborhood like the one we lived in while I was growing up. Actually she says she walked to get beer at the bar down the street for her Dad and sat under the street lamps at night talking to her friends.  There is a very good blog about this called FREE Range Kids.  A little to the left for me occasionally and a bit subversive at times but really thought provoking.  And that is my goal here to ask the question???? Is this a good thing? 

So that is why we started this website. We want you to find places to play in nature that are fun, safe and inspire a sense of wonder in children that will hopefully last a lifetime. A sense of responsibility in those children to the Earth and all that it is and all that it provides for us. From the Gorillas in the Mist to the Manatees in Florida – we are all connected. Completely Connected! So when these connected children grow up they will fight for the Earth, Vote for the Earth and pass that sense of wonder to their children and grandchildren. That is why we are here!

Some of the benefits of Play in Nature for Children are: 

• Children with ADHD are better able to concentrate after contact with nature
• Children with views of and contact with nature score higher on tests of concentration and self discipline.  The greener the scenery the better the scores
• Children who play regularly in natural environments show more advanced motor fitness including coordination, balance and agility, and they are sick less often
• When children play in natural environments, their play is more diverse with imaginative and creative play that fosters language and collaborative skills
• Exposure to natural environments improves children’s cognitive development by improving their awareness reasoning and observational skills
• Nature buffers the impact of life’s stresses on children and helps them deal with adversity.  The greater the amount of nature exposure, the greater the benefits.
• Play in a diverse natural environment reduces or eliminates bulling
• Nature helps children develop powers of observation and creativity and instills a sense of peace and being at one with the world. 
• Early experiences with the natural world have been positively linked with the development of imagination and the sense of wonder
• Children who play in nature have more positive feelings about each other
• Natural environments stimulate social interaction between children.

Ok………that is all I have to tell you about my views on Play in Nature!  I love my job at Pilcher Park and am grateful every day to get to talk to people who love nature.