Articles by Rich Louv
- Ten Ways Camps Can Reduce Nature-Deficit Disorder and Build Support for Their Programs - February 22, 2012
Adapted from keynote address, American Camp Association National Conference, Feb. 22, 2012 When I was a teenager, I resented camp. Because I never went to camp. Every summer, my buddy Pete would disappear for weeks. He’d leave Kansas and head t...
- SKY BLINDNESS & STARLIGHT - February 13, 2012
A few years ago, Madhu Narayan, a Girl Scout leader in San Diego told me this story: "In my first counseling job, with another organization, I took children with AIDS to the mountains who had never been out of their urban neighborhoods. "One night,...
- EVERY CHILD NEEDS NATURE: 12 Questions About Equity & Capacity - January 26, 2012
Every child needs nature. Not just the ones with parents who appreciate nature. Not only those of a certain economic class or culture or set of abilities. Every child. If a child never sees the stars, never has meaningful encounters with other speci...
- The Age of Emptiness or the Coming Creativity? - January 24, 2012
One day, while driving down a freeway, I looked up to see an empty sky where there had been mountaintops. Dust was rising as massive earth graders rumbled across a now-blank plain. Seemingly overnight, they had sliced away the horizon. Later...
- And Now a Few Words About the Children & Nature Network - January 14, 2012
After “Last Child in the Woods” was published in 2005, a handful of like-minded individuals came together to form the Children & Nature Network. Our mission: to help build a movement to reconnect children, their families and their communitie...
- The Forgotten Human Right - December 28, 2011
"Nothing so important as an ethic is ever 'written'... it evolves in the minds of a thinking community." — Aldo Leopold. Do children – do all of us – have a right to meaningful connection to the natural world? Annelies Henstra, a Dutch human r...
- HOLIDAY LOVE LETTERS: A Gift That Can Include Nature & More, for the New Year, Too - December 19, 2011
It's the season — that time of year when, whatever our religious beliefs, we often think most directly about family ties. We've made the case at C&NN that nature experiences can tighten family bonds, most recently in our guide for families, "Toge...
- A MOVEMENT MOVES: 15 Signs of Progress for C&NN & the Movement - November 24, 2011
"A movement moves." — Rev. Gerald L. Durley All of us involved with the Children & Nature Network recognize the challenges ahead, the miles to go, the promises and deadlines to keep. But for the children and nature movement, 2011 has been a ba...
- TRUE GREEN: 21 WAYS TO PLANT A CITY - November 11, 2011
During the first week of November, members of the American Society of Landscape Architects and their colleagues from around the country – over 5,000 strong – met at the San Diego Convention Center. Saving the world was somewhere on the agenda. C...
- THE RESTORATIVE CITY: A NEW WAY TO ENVISION THE FUTURE - November 5, 2011
"Nature is not a place to visit, it is home." —Gary Snyder. A few months ago, at the Minnesota Arboretum, several hundred people from a variety of sectors – tourism, housing development, health care, education, and others – came together for a...
