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The New Nature Movement Blog

FEATURED WRITING BY RICHARD LOUV

YOUTH DEVELOPMENT IN NATURE: An Interview with Karen Pittman

Karen J. Pittman is president and CEO of the Forum for Youth Investment, a national nonprofit, nonpartisan “action tank” that combines thought leadership on youth development, youth policy, cross-system/cross-sector partnerships and developmental youth practice with...
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TIME FOR A CAMP REVIVAL: The Return of Nature Camps and the Support for Those That Never Went Away

Dear friends, I hope you will join me at the 2019 Children & Nature Network International Conference in Oakland, California, May 16-18, 2019. The conference is anticipated to be the largest gathering of leaders, advocates and activists from the children and nature...
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A DOZEN WAYS FAMILIES CAN #OPTOUTSIDE EVERY DAY OF THE YEAR

In 2015, the leaders of the retail outdoor equipment Co-op REI made a big decision. They closed their doors on Black Friday, the biggest day in the global retail calendar. Instead, they encouraged their 12,000 employees to Opt Outside (#OptOutside), to reconnect with...
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GOD AND MOTHER NATURE: Mister Rogers and the Gift of the Honest Self

It’s 1993. Fred Rogers enters a noisy hotel lobby, taking pictures of the people who have come to meet him. You realize that you have lowered the volume of your voice. I look down at my son, Matthew, who had turned 6 on the day before Halloween. Normally ebullient and...
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A TREASURE CHEST: What Mothers Leave Behind

My mother, perhaps like yours, gave the gift of nature. I remember her here. The old chest of drawers proved to be a treasure chest. It was a small piece of furniture, perhaps an old washstand, with three drawers. It sat in a storage unit for over a year, and when we...
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DEAR VIRGINIA: On Writing

Dear Virginia, Time has slipped by, and I’ve been meaning to write to you. I met you about a year and a half ago at a conference of environmental educators in Asheville, North Carolina. You were 11 years old then. Your mother had brought you to one of my sermonettes....
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SINGING FOR BEARS: Reclaiming Our Senses, Including Our Sense of Humility

My son Matthew and I were wading up a stream of Alaska’s Kodiak Island. For a second year, Joe, our guide, was teaching us how to sense the presence of Kodiak brown bears, the largest grizzlies — the ones that can run 35 miles per hour, the ones you cannot...
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ALL CHILDREN NEED NATURE: 12 Questions About Equity & Capacity

The children and nature movement may be more diverse than many others, but it needs even more diversity of ethnicity, culture, abilities and economics. I invite you to join us by becoming a Member of the Children & Nature Network. Your support will help children...
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GOING ON A TECHNO-FAST: Taking a Break from the Virtual World

  On the way out of town, I got the shakes. Well, not the shakes exactly, but I wasn’t a happy pre-camper. My wife, Kathy, and I had committed to four days away from beeping gadgets, ringing phones, sawing neighbors, the on-demand life. It had been too long since...
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THIS HOLIDAY SEASON, GIVE THE GIFT OF THE UNIVERSE: Share it with your family, and with a child who has never seen the stars

Two-thirds of the U.S. population and more than one-half of the European population may have already lost the ability to see the Milky Way with the naked eye. When air pollution and urban domes of artificial light obscure our view of the night sky, our mental and physical health pay a price. Stars or no stars, natural darkness has value; our biological clocks count on it. In this blog post, Richard Louv shares the importance of seeing stars and why it is a great gift to give to ourselves and to our loved ones.

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Richard Louv is our co-founder and best-selling author of the quintessential “Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder” and two follow-up books on nature connection, “The Nature Principle: Reconnecting with Life in a Virtual Age,” and “Vitamin N: The Essential Guide to a Nature-Rich Life.”

Columns by Richard Louv

GUEST  BLOGGERS

RENEWING A LOVE FOR THE OUTDOORS THIS SPRING: Screen-Free Week 2019

by | March 28, 2019 | The New Nature Movement - Columns by Guest Writers | 0 Comments

When children have free time to themselves, how do we want them to spend it? We hope they’ll spend it looking down –not at screens– but digging in the dirt, gardening, collecting shells or stones, admiring flowers, watering plants. Maybe they’ll spend it looking up...
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Fostering and Nurturing Sustainable Values from Early Childhood

by | March 21, 2019 | The New Nature Movement - Columns by Guest Writers | 0 Comments

She walks barefoot. A pair of white felt wings perched gently upon her back. She is a blossoming soul, without malevolence or a harsh word against nature. In fact, she is intently curious as she holds a walnut to her ear, then a blade of fresh green grass, listening...
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TRUSTING IN NATURE: Learnings from a Landscape Architecture Design Studio

by | March 7, 2019 | The New Nature Movement - Columns by Guest Writers | 1 Comment

Working, learning and teaching in the field of landscape architecture is a wonderful way to be connected to natural systems and the creative process. Being involved with the design of the built environment from a perspective of the landscape for almost 35 years has...
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THE RISE OF VIRTUAL NEIGHBORHOODS: Making Real Connections in an Online World

by | February 14, 2019 | The New Nature Movement - Columns by Guest Writers | 0 Comments

Let’s play a game. A virtual game. Picture yourself standing on a satellite orbiting the Earth, looking down on our world as a first-time observer. As you zoom in more closely, you notice that people on this planet tend to live among each other, in groups. They live...
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HOW TO RAISE AN OUTDOORS KID: Tips to Jump-Start a Childhood Outdoors

by | January 31, 2019 | The New Nature Movement - Columns by Guest Writers | 1 Comment

I grew up on a farm in rural Mississippi. As a child, I hunted, fished and tended a garden. As is true for most kids, I loved exploring and playing in my own yard and beyond. I learned how the natural world works because the majority of my childhood was spent outside....
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LEARNING FROM THE PAST: Envisioning a Nature Connected-future For All Children

by | January 17, 2019 | The New Nature Movement - Columns by Guest Writers | 3 Comments

Is there a special place in nature that you remember and can be transported back to in a split second? Somewhere filled with vivid memories of unsupervised time in the natural world, alone or with a band of children, connecting with animals, and the master of your own...
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CHILDREN AT SERIOUS PLAY: Connecting to the Natural World in an Interactive Nature Space

by | December 13, 2018 | The New Nature Movement - Columns by Guest Writers | 1 Comment

For kids, play is serious business. It’s not “just about having fun, but taking risks, experimenting, and testing boundaries,” states the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) in a recent clinical report called The Power of Play. According to the AAP, play yields all...
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NATURE SENSE: Tuning into Nature’s Operating Manual

by | November 27, 2018 | The New Nature Movement - Columns by Guest Writers | 3 Comments

Twenty-one years ago I sat at the base of a sugar maple tree. Both of us were bursting. The tree heavy with her seeds and me with a growing womb.  I felt respect for the maple and her innate sense of how and when to shed her perfectly designed helicopter seeds. They...
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BEYOND EARTH DAY: Bringing Indigenous Perspectives into Learning From the Land

by | November 8, 2018 | The New Nature Movement - Columns by Guest Writers | 1 Comment

This past April, the students and educators of the Laboratory School at the Dr. Eric Jackman Institute of Child Study decided to opt out of Earth Day. For many years, the children at the JICS Lab School celebrated Earth Day with activities such as planting pansies...
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CROSSING CULTURES: Making an “Impossible” Dream Possible

by | October 17, 2018 | The New Nature Movement - Columns by Guest Writers | 0 Comments

In “Last Child in the Woods,” Richard Louv wrote that we need to reconnect children and nature. We need to move toward biophilic societies, where nature is universal, accessible, on a daily basis for everyone. But to take on this task may at times bring to mind the...
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Blog posts from guest writers worldwide sharing their work and ideas to connect children to nature.

Blog posts by Guest Writers

A DOZEN WAYS FAMILIES CAN #OPTOUTSIDE EVERY DAY OF THE YEAR

A DOZEN WAYS FAMILIES CAN #OPTOUTSIDE EVERY DAY OF THE YEAR

In 2015, the leaders of the retail outdoor equipment Co-op REI made a big decision. They closed their doors on Black Friday, the biggest day in the global retail calendar. Instead, they encouraged their 12,000 employees to Opt Outside (#OptOutside), to reconnect with...

By | Nov 19, 2018

NATURE AS TEACHER: A Transformative Experience

NATURE AS TEACHER: A Transformative Experience

Outside the urban glare of Los Angeles, we found a night sky packed with stars and a still silence interrupted only by the wind’s whisper and the chatter of crickets and frogs. It was different, yet familiar. My father packed little more than a kerosene lamp, a small...

By | Sep 20, 2018

WRITING FROM A TREE: On the Inspiration of Nature

WRITING FROM A TREE: On the Inspiration of Nature

I first met young Virginia Bee Ward a few years ago when she asked me for tips on launching her writing career. The young naturalist and writer left such an impression on me that I later wrote a blog post about her. My advice to Virginia was: Start writing now,...

By | Jul 18, 2018

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