Some kids don't want to be organized all the time. They want to let their imaginations run; they want to see where a stream of water takes them.

To take nature and natural play away from children may be tantamount to withholding oxygen.

Time in nature is not leisure time; it's an essential investment in our chidlren's health (and also, by the way, in our own).

Environment-based education produces student gains in social studies, science, language arts, and math; improves standardized test scores and grade-point averages; and develops skills in problem-solving, critical thinking, and decision-making.

Today's children are living a childhood of firsts. They are the first daycare generation; the first truly multicultural generation; the first generation to grow up in the electronic bubble, the environment defined by computers and new forms of television; the first post-sexual revolution generation; the first generation for which nature is more abstraction than reality; the first generation to grow up in new kinds of dispersed, deconcentrated cities, not quite urban, rural, or suburban.

Children who played outside every day, regrdless of weather, had better motor coordination and more ability to concentrate.

Most people are either awakened to or are strengthened in their spiritual journey by experiences in the natural world.