Can you imagine a great neighborhood without trees and green spaces? It’s a simple truth that great neighborhoods have character, rooted in the trees, parks and green spaces that help make the places we live feel like home. But there’s more. America’s urban populations are growing. The 2010 U.S. Census shows that 93 percent of [...]
Each year at the end of August, the Oregon Symphony holds a free concert at the south end of Portland’s downtown Tom McCall Waterfront Park on the Willamette River. Families come with picnic supper, blankets and lawn chairs. I’ve noticed that the kids who are old enough for a little independence make a beeline for [...]
Getting outside makes coming home from war easier for our military service members, veterans, and their families. Even if returning service members do not have a physical or mental health injury, most, families or veterans, will still struggle with coming back into their families or society to a routine which is very different from war. [...]
It’s late afternoon in the late spring, school’s been out for an hour or so. I can’t really say for sure ‘cause I’ve totally lost track of time. I’m knee deep in the muddy creek, eyes scanning for crayfish. There it is! Caught one, put in the bucket. We’re also “building a dam,” as we liked [...]
“There’s the beach, Daddy.” The words may be simple, but the memory they prompted and the actual emotion that filled my body when Amelie said them will stay with me forever. A few weeks ago, on a typically cold and wet winter Saturday in the Pacific Northwest, our family went on an adventure to Ebey’s [...]
Call him Ishmael. A student at the Rochester Institute of Technology, Ishmael Akahoho, is studying ways for people to live in greater harmony with nature. He grew up loving the outdoors, and attended a special science-focused high school that cultivated his environmental interests. He spends his summers with The Nature Conservancy’s LEAF Program, where he [...]
For every profession there is a training component that includes providing experiences necessary to be able to know the craft. Surgeons work in the operatory as assistants and are mentored. Plumbers and carpenters spend time as apprentices even after an extensive time learning their crafts in technical schools. Likewise musicians study music theory and history; [...]
It is August. It is first day of school and the sun is shining. The new pupils are curious and excited; their parents likewise. The school and the classrooms are decorated. The head teacher wears a suit and a tie, and the new pupils have new clothes, new school bag, combed hair, stars in their [...]
Miranda Andersen has contributed often to these pages. Now she’s back with a new film. Accomplished professionals have produced wonderful documentaries about reconnecting children and nature. Among them, Mother Nature’s Child, Play Again, Where Do the Children Play, Wetlands and Wonder, and BOLD. In addition, there are dozens of adult- and student-made YouTube videos. But it’s [...]
“It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and strength.” — Maya Angelou In 2009 the Natural Leaders Network gathered 50 young diverse leaders from all over the country to build the network from the ground up. It is no surprise that “diversity in nature” came to [...]
Stress can be a good thing. But increasingly, negative stress cuts deep and hard through our society. As much as we love our children, there is stress in parenting. Then there is the stress of overtime—or unemployment, underemployment, the job we don’t like, too much of the job we like, meeting the mortgage, failing to [...]
My name is Nkrumah Frazier. I’m a 33-year-old husband and father. My love of the outdoors began when I was a young boy growing up on a small farm in rural south Mississippi, which spanned only about 100 acres. My family owned cows and many dogs and we cultivated several gardens. My father taught my [...]
Life was very good last Friday morning at my small college in the Shenandoah Valley — the end of classes, grades submitted, and paperwork readied for sending a new crop of classroom teachers out into public schools. Then, someone caught news of the unthinkable and within minutes, each of us in the office had one [...]
“If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later [...]
NATURE: A GRANDPARENT’S BEST FRIEND
I’m new to grandparenting. But I’m learning that nature can be a grandparent’s best friend. Three years ago, when my sister and I were each blessed with our first grandchild, we quickly realized that one of the best ways we could support the sleep-deprived parents and bond with our then-infant grandchildren was to take them outside. Nothing [...]