Cooper: You were aware of threats to nature, though, when you were a boy?

Louv: Yes, I had a deep sense of ownership of those woods behind my house. They were my woods. My sense of ownership was so strong that as an eight-year-old I pulled up hundreds of survey stakes, because I knew they had something to do with the bulldozers that were taking out other woods nearby. I had a big stack of the stakes behind the hedge. I’ve learned since that my sabotage would’ve been more effective if I’d simply moved the stakes around.

When I tell that story in speeches around the country, I ask the audience members how many of them have pulled out survey stakes, and about a third of them will raise their hand, mostly those thirty-five and older. Then I induct them into the Secret Society of Stake Pullers. They become “stakeholders” in that organization. [Laughter.]

I was in Albuquerque, New Mexico, a few months ago, speaking to the Quivira Coalition, a group that unites ranchers and environmentalists in support of common causes. Around half of the five hundred people in attendance were wearing cowboy hats. I told the story about the stakes, and afterward, during the Q and A, a rancher stood up. He was the real deal — big white handlebar mustache, sunburned face, in his sixties — and he said that when he was a boy, he’d pulled out survey stakes. And then he began to cry in front of all these people. He was embarrassed, but he continued to talk about his deep sense of grief that his generation might be the last to have an intimate connection to the land.

Cooper: In your book you write about a kid who visited Utah’s Rainbow Bridge rock formation and was disappointed because it wasn’t as “perfect” as it looked in the brochure.

Louv: The experience of nature through media is primarily visual. Young people today tend to lack the deeper personal experience of nature that involves all of the senses. So when they see a natural wonder like the Rainbow Bridge or the Grand Canyon, they react to it almost entirely visually at first, comparing the image to other images they’ve seen, which are often enhanced or dramatized. But if they stick around long enough, their other senses kick in, and the place becomes more than just an image to them.

Cooper: Why don’t more young people have a firsthand experience of nature? Aren’t there still large swaths of undeveloped land?

Louv: Yes, but more people have moved to cities and suburbs. In the Great Plains states, for example, there has been a huge population drop. With the growth of new communication technologies, however, people can be connected wherever they live, and I imagine a resulting revival of the old small towns that have disappeared on the Plains. Sooner or later the population will bounce back, and people will return to rural areas — which is good news for children, because they’ll have access to nature. New towns could be designed using ecologically friendly architecture and sustainable urban design.

Cooper: Do you really think people will move back to Kansas?

Louv: There are already signs of migration out of the cities. San Diego, where I live, is losing population for the first time. It’s a slight decline, but significant when you consider the number of immigrants coming in. Rising housing prices are causing people to look more toward Middle America and away from the coasts. So this shift will happen because of economics, but also because of a desire for a better quality of life.

The availability of nature isn’t enough, though. When we were in Kansas City, my son was astounded by how much open farmland and forest there was just outside the city. Yet during the entire four days, we did not see one single kid playing outside. It may have been because of the heat. But then, when I was a kid, I played outside even in very hot weather.

I spoke recently in Ukiah, California, the town that was at the center of the controversial efforts to protect the endangered spotted owl. I learned that kids aren’t going outside there either, despite the rural setting. It’s not just the spotted owl that’s endangered in nature; it’s the human child. And if children aren’t going outside today, who is going to care about the spotted owl fifteen years from now?

Childhood obesity in rural areas is growing at twice the rate that it is in urban areas. The assumption is that these kids are watching more TV, playing more video games, and going on longer rides in the car. They’re also not working in the fields the way previous generations did.

Ironically, some of the older cities offer people more access to nature. For example, in Philadelphia there are parks everywhere. And of course there’s Central Park in New York City. Just imagine a city deciding to build a park that size today. You can see a bit of green in suburban areas, but it’s manicured to the point that it might as well be cement, and there are rules that criminalize natural play. That’s another reason kids aren’t going outside.

It’s not just suburban development that’s at fault. In many school districts, teachers can no longer have reptiles and amphibians in the classroom because of concerns about salmonella. (Teaching students to wash their hands might be a better idea.) And People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals just came out with an anti-fishing comic book for kids, done in the style of Tales from the Crypt. On the cover a father with a huge knife is ripping the guts out of a fish in front of his horrified children. Fishing isn’t the only way for kids to be engaged with nature, but it’s one traditional way. I think it’s destructive in the long run to frighten kids away from fishing.

My wife carries spiders out of the house, and sometimes I help her. But the morality of our interaction with nature is often quite murky. It’s important for kids to be engaged in nature so they can confront these gray areas and make decisions, with our help, about what is moral and what is not.

Cooper: Aren’t safety concerns another reason kids aren’t going outside?

Louv: In every part of the country, the fear of child abduction has reached epidemic proportions. It’s changing the way we live. I won’t pretend I was immune to it as a father; my kids did not have the kind of free-range childhood that I did. But there was a big canyon behind our property, and I spent a lot of time hiking in it with them. Parents need to be more active about getting kids outdoors. I’m not saying I don’t have fears too, even though, as a journalist, I know the statistics: Child abductions have not increased in the past two decades, and may actually have decreased. Studies suggest that kids are safer outdoors than we believe, and that the more TV we watch, the more dangerous we think our neighborhoods are. That’s not to say that there aren’t bad people out there, but we can’t allow fear to drive us indoors. We are raising a generation of children under virtual house arrest.

Our culture needs to begin talking about comparative risk. Yes, there are dangers in nature. Yes, there’s Lyme disease. Yes, there are snakes. I used to catch copperheads when I was a kid. A friend from high school told me recently that he remembers me running up a hill waving a small copperhead, my elbows and knees all bloody; he also remembers that I looked tremendously happy. [Laughter.] Kids, don’t try this at home — seriously. But we take bigger risks when we raise kids indoors: psychological risks; risks to their sense of independence and mastery in the world; risks to their sense of place; risks to their physical health. Childhood obesity greatly increases the risk of diabetes. There is concern in the medical community that kids today may be the first generation since World War II to die younger than their parents, primarily because of this increased risk.

But nature is almost never mentioned in the national debate about childhood obesity. Instead it’s suggested that you get your kids into organized sports. Think about it: the rise in childhood obesity has occurred despite two decades of growing participation in organized sports. Something’s missing. Organized sports certainly give kids exercise, but there is something special about being in nature that we don’t fully understand.

Pediatricians will tell you that they don’t see many broken bones these days. When I was a kid, a broken bone was a rite of passage. What they do see is an increase in repetitive-stress injuries from video games and computer keyboards. The typical broken bone heals fairly quickly. Repetitive-stress injuries can last decades, even a lifetime.

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