time when the environment hangs in the
balance and it’s tempting to give in to
despair, these sturdy, hopeful writings
from an ecological philosopher and peace
activist are more necessary than ever.
— Barbara Sjoholm
A Natural Sense
of Wonder
Connecting Kids with Nature
through the Seasons
by rick van noy
The University of Georgia Press, 2008.
$16.95, 152 pages.
RULE NUMBER SEVEN in our shaggy
tiny house crammed with three lanky children: one hour of screen time per day, you
choose the screens. Rule Number Eleven:
yes, you can vanish all weekend on your
bike whipping through the woods with
your buddies, and yes, you can putter
around in the creeklet all you want, and
yes, you can wander along the riverbank
looking for minks and money, just be
home by dark.
And yes, there is daily wailing and
gnashing of teeth about the television/
video/computer rule, but the queen of
the house agrees wholeheartedly with
Rick Van Noy, who says
that any natural setting is
better than the “?ickering
waves of TV and the electrifying boing of video
games.” So out into the
unkempt yard go the children, and to the creek,
and to the river, and to the
vacant lot by Mrs. Walsh’s
house, which isn’t vacant
at all, of course.
The greatest virtue
of Van Noy’s lean and thoughtful book
isn’t his thesis, now proved by oceans of
evidence about increased obesity and
decreased attention spans, or even his
graceful and penetrating prose; it’s the
witty ways he draws his two children and
their friends outside, away from the electric drug— taking the long way to school,
poking headlong into every vacant lot,
building a treehouse, wandering o= on
birding adventures, hiking with other
families, so that the day isn’t a Boring
Family Outing but motley play, skating,
wading in creeks, salamandering, poking in tide pools, running around in the
dark chasing lightning bugs, and, well,
just puttering around with open eyes
and ears.
“Imagine if [kids] knew
plants and animals the
way they knew brand
names and logos, if they
knew mountains the way
they know malls,” writes
Van Noy. “They would feel
like full participants in
the landscapes they inhabit, happily roaming
the ridges and creeks in a
world that needs their
attentiveness. . . . I share
with Rachel Carson the hope that children be given ‘a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout
life.’” And that’s the lesson I’ll carry
away from this book, and the memorably
sinewy phrase, too: an indestructible sense
of wonder. I suspect nothing could be as
useful, as generative of joy and mercy, as
energizing and refreshing, as nakedly
holy, as a faucet of wonder that never
shuts o=; and if we really do love and
savor children as much as we say we do,
if we really think them the heart of what
we might be at our best, the secrets that
might heal the bruised and broken
world, we can give them nothing more
crucial and nutritious than that.
— Brian Doyle
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