In the cooler hours of early evening, my sons and I go in the backyard. Kye, the almost 3-year-old heads for the raspberry vines and carefully selects only the red ripe berries. He's barefoot and engrossed in his observation.

I put Jasper, seven months old, on the grass but he crawls to the edges of the lawn where the leaves and sticks and rocks beckon. I put him back in the middle of the lawn and again he crawls to the edges where the wild things are. He finds a flowerpot filled with dirt and grabs handfuls. First he lets them fall through his fingers then he puts it in his mouth. He protests with a cry when I move him again. There are bright toys scattered over the yard but already these children seek the natural things. I am pleased that they, too, are drawn to the dirt, the rocks, the feathers, the raspberries. I feel a connection to them that transcends their youth. It is a connection to the earth, the organic matter that feeds us, breathes us, fills our souls.

Stephen Trimble wrote in The Geography of Childhood, “as parents, we can take our children with us to the land. We can be there with them as they climb on rocks, play in streams and waves, dig in the rich soils of woods and gardens, putter and learn. Here, on the land, we learn from each other. Here, our children's journey begins.”

Some parents who did not grow up with nature as their companion don't know how to be guides for their children. In a 1992 survey of 5th and 6th graders in the United States, only 9% of the children said that they learned environment education from home. Fifty-three percent learned it from the media.

One of our jobs as parents is to literally take our children by the hand and move them out of their familiar comfort zones and escort them into the unknown terrain where lives somewhat different from our own still dwell. It doesn't mean we have to go to Mt. Everest. We can start with the zoo.

On my first zoo trip with Kye, I hoped he would be as fascinated by the elephants and monkeys as I am. But he was much more interested in the mamma and daddy geese walking along with their new babies. He was more impressed by the fact he could get close to the peacocks than by their beautiful plumage.

Nature, left undisturbed by humans, can demonstrate balanced competition, cooperation and use of resources. The ducks don't pollute their ponds. The apes don't log their forests. Children need to see the behavior of a variety of animals in their natural context. It makes it easier for them to understand and discuss human values and ethics in our relationship to each other and to the planet.

In high school, I had the opportunity to participate in an outdoor school. We spent summers camping in the nearby mountains for a week at a time. At the end of the summer, we had a scavenger hunt. Along with finding leaves from specific trees, we had to catch a reptile or amphibian, bring it to the teachers for credit and release in the place we found it. I remember stalking the edges of a marshy pond where I knew garter snakes hid and catching one with my hands. It was the first and only time I have caught a snake. That act, and all the education leading up to it, showed me that not only was I part of the natural world, but to learn from it, I had to respect it. And to learn to respect it, I had to be in it.

My sons pick raspberries and hold leaves in our backyard. It is just the beginning of their journey to learn the geography of their own lives.

Copyright © 2001 Anna Stewart. All rights reserved worldwide.