Why children must forage

To my mother, it was a sin to be in the house on a nice day. "Outside!" she would say, and with a word, she would chase us out into the world.

We would go into the woods to have acorn fights or find the horses in one of the hidden fields. Or we'd go down to the cistern to catch salamanders. My friend Danny and I would run up the steep hill behind our house, only to crash exhausted under the shade of the oak tree.

Warm August nights, we'd camp outside in a tent and listen to the electrifying dive-bomber music of the night hawks swooping down upon their prey. Dad and I would go for walks in the evening, only to return home with pockets full of artifacts.

On rainy days, I launched a fleet of boats down the stream next to our home. Built of scrap lumber or twigs, they found their match in tiny waterfalls and pools only ankle deep.

"Outside" has always been a place of wild magic.

I'm still a forager to this day. I'm just over 30 years old now, and I still catch myself bringing maple seeds inside every fall. Nature's design is so elegant that I remain obsessed with maple seeds, as much now as when I was just a child, standing in a whirling shower of them on an October day.

On my desk at work, I have a stellar jay feather, a smooth stone from up river - and in the corner stands a seven-foot pole of polished drift wood.

All of this counts as foraging according to a Canadian researcher. It is a behavior that is as important to the development of a child as it is to the future of the environment. According to Ray Chipeniuk, today children are not allowed to wander and stray, and we are discouraging them from interacting with the natural world.

These trends may produce a disconnection between children and their local natural environment "with harmful consequences for conservation."

So many environmental writers, scientists, and activists claim their childhood experiences outdoors drew them to their love and care for ecology.

Often it's the wild areas just beyond the backyard that introduce us to nature's complex beauty. Green pockets in urban and suburban areas can inspire, as do rural meadows and primeval forests. Think of naturalist Bob Pyle's suburban ditch in his book "The Thunder Tree," or the magic of dandelions in a vacant urban lot.

So much of the environmental damage that has occurred on this planet has been the result of our divorcing ourselves from the natural world. Human communities are simply ecosystems. Our species needs range, diversity, and complexity of landscape to maintain the health and vitality of any given community.

While we have worried about the dwindling habitat of wild things for years, so, too, it seems we should be concerned for the dwindling range of our children.

"The objects collected, such as wild berries, leaves, pussywillows, earthworms, frogs, and fish, reflect the native fauna and flora of the region in which the child grows up," according to Mr. Chipeniuk. "As a result, the experience of childhood foraging creates local cultures reflective of local nature."

Yet in the past 20 years, the "average home range" for American suburban children less than 12 years old has been reduced from one mile to as little as 550 yards.

Chipeniuk cites increased traffic, fear of strangers, and the fact that children are now more likely to be driven to school, as some of the factors. TV, computers, and the Internet have kept kids inside, and "concern about the human impact on nature has promoted a feeling that individual harvesting of wild plants and animals, even by children, is immoral," according to his report.

Yet, the future of conservation lies in people learning to understand and love the place in which they live. The more they know about their community, the more likely they are to value its protection.

"Recreational foraging may impart a sense of ownership in local natural environments," Chipeniuk argues. "On the other hand, denial of access to forests may result in political indifference to their fate and damage by persons who use them but do not care about them."

The only way we can recognize what is being lost is by first discovering the what we have around us. Chipenquik adds that the importance of foraging goes beyond conservation - it helps produce a sense of shared cultural identity, even in our melting-pot society.

In fact, the very reasons for the reduction in childhood foraging can be tied to community issues - lack of trust of neighbors and strangers leads parents to insist on driving their kids to school - which increases traffic. Parents worry about crime and predators and do not allow their kids to stray from sight.

So for adults, demanding a community in which it is safe for children to forage not only improves the livability of the community, but ensures the cohesiveness and conservation sensibilities of the generation to come.

When a child loses the ability to roam free, much is lost indeed.

Ed Hunt is the editor of Tidepool.org , where this article first appeared.