Iowa’s Taproot Program a Source of Inspiration

Daily Iowan – April 22, 2008
By Kelsey Beltramea

The shin-deep flood waters pooling above the riverbank at Lower City Park served as the perfect playground for 10-year-old Theo Van Meter and his fellow Taproot adventurers. With their eyes fixed on the water's quivering surface, Theo and the other children didn't seem to notice the rain ricocheting onto their faces and seeping through their long-drenched jackets and sweats.

Instead, they watched the water, waiting for creatures to stir below.

"There's one over there," Theo shouted, leading the group toward a johnboat-sized wake streaming farther into the field. But his 31-year-old leader Zac Wedemeyer got there first, scooping up the 25-pound bigmouth buffalo barehanded.

As the children giggly passed the flopping fish nearly twice their sizes, Wedemeyer described what the fish ate. He explained how largemouth bass breathed and how it was different from the carp swimming afoot. He then returned the fish to the river, and Theo began another adventure belly deep in the cool water, army crawling his way toward an unsuspecting mallard.

Just another lesson. Just another afternoon in the Taproot Nature Experience.

'A strong anchor in nature'

Last September, Wedemeyer and wife Elesa Wedemeyer began the Taproot Nature Experience nonprofit organization, seeking to help strengthen children's and adults' inherent bond with nature.

"Our overarching goal is to improve the situation of the Earth, but the way we plan to do that is by helping people reconnect or strengthen their connections to the natural world by giving them more contact with the natural world," Zac Wedemeyer said.

Taproot offers an after-school enrichment program that begins a few afternoons each week, when he picks up around six children from different elementary schools in his biodeisel-powered Dodge Sprinter.

The Sprinter, whose license plate bears the name "Lorax" after Dr. Seuss' tree-minded, mustached, man-like being, takes children to the day's special destination. Wilson's Apple Orchard, the South Sycamore Wetlands, and Hickory Hill park have all been "Loraxed."

In snow, sleet, and rain the children bundle, piling into the van, envisioning an unscripted afternoon in the outdoors. For Wedemeyer's group, there is no such thing as curriculum.

"It always works out that nature comes up with something," he said, detailing a hike-turned-deer carcass examination. "Nature and the kids, I've seen over and over, have just a very easy partnership. Something will come up. They'll find something to do, to explore."

The former Willowwind elementary teacher traded the confines of the classroom for the expanse of the environment in the spring of 2007. Always an outdoorsman, he said there were times during his teaching career when, like the children, he, too, looked out the window and longed for the fresh air.

Moving around a lot as a kid maybe made him that way, he said. Journeying from Iowa to Pennsylvania to Missouri to Kansas to West Virginia allowed the UI graduate to learn where to plant his roots the deepest: in the soil.

It is that lesson, combined with the example of an oak tree, that inspired the name of his newly founded organization, he said.

"One of the first things oak trees start doing right out of the acorn is send a strong root, before making leaves or anything," Wedemeyer said. "It's one of the things that allow the tree to be completely burned off but to grow back or to survive a drought by digging deep into water …

"I think sinking your own metaphorical root into the Earth and into nature when you're young, if you have this strong anchor, it will give you the strength and sustenance to carry you through your whole life. My hope is that I'm helping these kids to grow a strong anchor in nature."

'How much screen time is too much?'

The nationwide push to re-evaluate children's experiences with the outdoors was largely catalyzed by the publishing of Richard Louv's 2005 novel, Last Child in the Woods.

The San Diego Union-Tribune columnist detailed the detriments of the current generation of media-consuming children who experience a "nature-deficit disorder."

Since Louv's book hit the shelves, back-to-nature campaigns around the country have spawned to reconnect children with the outdoors.

The U.S. Forest Service has launched More Kids in the Woods to fund local efforts to get children outdoors. The National Wildlife Federation initiated a "Green Hour" campaign, encouraging parents to have their children spend one hour each day in nature. And a "Leave no Child Inside Act" for federal funding in environmental education under a new Office of Environmental Education in the U.S. Department of Education was proposed, but not passed, in both the House and Senate.

Wedemeyer said the growing attention paid to children's mobility show steps in the right direction.

But researchers say it still may not be enough.

A new study soon-to-be-published in the Journal of Pediatrics found that fewer than 20 percent of Iowa and Minnesota children from public elementary schools met daily guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics for limiting screen time and taking a minimum number of steps.

In attempts to help parents promote childhood health and fitness, the academy has recommended boys take at least 11,000 steps per day, girls 13,000 steps per day, and their total screen time should not exceed two hours each day.

But the 709 children studied by Iowa State University and the National Institute on Media and the Family are failing horribly: The girls had a mean screen time of 31?2 hours, the boys had 41?2.

"I hope this puts things into perspective a little bit about how much is too much," said Kelly Laurson, an Iowa State kinesiology doctoral candidate who led the study. "Parents often hear their child should be physically active, but how much physical activity is enough? They hear their child shouldn't watch too much TV, but how much screen time is too much? Maybe now they'll pay more attention."

'Keep the environment in mind'

Barb Canin is. Her daughters, 8-year-old Ayla and 11-year-old Amiela, have participated in several Taproot programs.

"Even though [Wedemeyer]'s an adult responsible for them, he's not really controlling them," Canin said, taking a bite of her natural syrup-soaked pancake on Taproot Family Day a few weeks ago. "He's going with them, seeing what they explore, what they discover."

Canin's daughters huddled with a crowd of children around a smoldering fire pit where Wedemeyer cooked pancakes and boiled fresh maple sap from a nearby tree.

Ayla, a Taproot regular, later discussed catching and eating blue gills and mushroom hunting, saying: "I don't think I've ever had a day when it's not fun."

Wedemeyer agreed.

He has big plans for Taproot and his new sustainable home sprouting up on 80 acres of land near North English.

The 3,500-square-foot renovated barn - with straw-baled walls, flooring from the demolished St. Patrick's Catholic Church, masonry heating, and solar-electric generation - will one day be a regional center for environmental education for adults and children, he said.

Wedemeyer dreams of holding sustainability conferences and environmental seminars along with the existing children's programs and family camping workshops that teach metropolitan-minded parents the ways of the wild - such as the one next August.

But he's starting with the kids.

"I'm trying to think locally and act locally and do what my strengths are," he said. "I think having a bond with nature will help them be peaceful and help them keep the environment in mind when they're making decisions for the rest of their lives."