Nature is not just nature, it’s a place where we can heal our body, mind and spirit. You can’t measure it in calories or steps, it’s more giant and important than that. It heals our souls. Who hasn’t looked up at the sky and marvelled at a circling bird of prey, or yelled out to echo on top of a mountain, or gazed across the horizon of a sea with no buildings behind?
Richard Louv (an American campaigner for children’s access to nature) says that when researching his book Vitamin N, doctors told him that children today have less broken bones (no falling out of trees, obviously not good either) but more repetitive strain injury and depression (from playing computer games). He said that when he was a child, ‘nature was my Ritalin’. He writes that the saddest day of his professional life, was when he asked a boy where his favourite place was. The boy replied ‘inside – because that’s where all the electrical sockets are’.
Passion is lifted from the earth itself by the muddy hands of the young; it travels along grass-stained sleeves to the heart. If we are going to save environmentalism and the environment, we must also save an endangered indicator species: the child in nature. Richard Louv
how humans connect with nature
Get Outside! is a book about how spending nature time is good for us. But why? How did people become so disconnected from the natural world? This book explores the important relationship between people and nature, and asks the big questions like why do all people not have equal access to the outside world?
By discussing global issues like the climate crisis and environmental racism, the book shows that by strengthening our relationship with the natural world, we can learn how to take care of the planet, which in turn can take care of us. Leah Payne is a writer, editor and mother. She holds a bachelor’s degree in communication and is the author of a book on low-waste living. She lives in British Columbia (Canada) where she loves spending time in nature.