For most of my professional life, I have worked for environmental organizations where staff often ponder questions like what does it mean to connect children (especially urban youth) to nature (especially in the big city)? I find myself reflecting on my childhood in a small Virginia city where people kept a chicken or two in their backyards. One neighbor even illegally kept a goat. I write often about being able to see the Blue Ridge Mountains from my back porch. In a yard the size of postage stamp, my younger brother and I discovered bright blue bird’s eggs in a nest near our house, a monarch chrysalis under our backporch, and garter snakes burrowed in the ground near the dog’s water dish. I never visited a national park in my youth but I certainly felt connected to nature. I now live in a metropolis of three million plus people. There is no place I can go without hearing the rumble of cars in the distance, trains rolling by or planes flying overhead. I believe in the magnificence of cities and in human ingenuity but there is something to be said for a quiet patch of green.
Leave a Reply