Wilderness Vigilantes

I majored in English, but the college course that has remained the most vivid influence of my life was a biology class. For four hours on Fridays, our Field Biology instructor took us into the wild. We canoed the Snake River, wore waders to fish out microorganisms from a local pond, rode horseback through sand dunes, went bird watching in the mountains, and, in one overnight trip, star gazed in Yellowstone National Park. There was only ever a single test at the end of the semester, where we had to memorize the scientific names of 100 species. I studied the week before, passed the test, and immediately let the information leak out of my head. What remains from that time is the palpable memory of those adventurous Fridays.

Years later, when I had young kids, I read Richard Louv’s transformative book, Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children From Nature Deficit Disorder, about the widening gulf between the lives of today’s children and nature. His ideas reprioritized my approach to wild outdoor play and exploration for my own children and inspired me to reach out to thank my former Field Biology professor. He wrote back that my note had made his day, but that sadly, the program had been discontinued. The college had grown too big and the administration felt it wasn’t fair to offer a general course that not every student could participate in.

With ever-increasing school hours, diminishing recess time, and the popularity of adult-organized after-school activities, time for a child’s unstructured outdoor dreaming is rare. But I try to be a nature vigilante, insisting upon and guarding my children’s outdoor exposure. And not just on the supervised plastic playgrounds or manicured soccer fields.

Think back to your own childhood. What are some of your favorite memories? When were you the happiest? When did you feel the most free? For me, it was tramping through the cornfields behind my house, riding my bike down our street, looking for “diamonds” in the rocks that lined the railroad tracks. I vividly remember every camping trip my family took, the random third cousin at a reunion who taught me how to gut a fish, and splashing through the grass in our backyard whenever the irrigation ditch flooded.

As an adult, I understand that what I loved about that Field Biology class—or the wild unstructured hours of my childhood—was the true autonomy it gave me to learn, to be curious, to be confident.

When my babies would wail uncontrollably, I’d often take them outside onto the porch. Like a magic spell, most times they’d immediately settle. Although most of my screaming as an adult is internal, this phenomenon is true for me, too.

It’s probably true for you.

I like to think that this power of the open air has something to do with our billions of recycled atoms reconnecting with pieces of past lives—remembering the time we were part of a tree. Part of a mountain. Part of a star.