Nature has been taken over by thugs who care absolutely nothing about it. We need to take nature back.

We do not raise our children alone.... Our children are also raised by every peer, institution, and family with which they come in contact. Yet parents today expect to be blamed for whatever results occur with their children, and they expect to do their parenting alone.

From 1997 to 2003, there was a decline of 50 percent in the proportion of children nine to twelve who spent time in such outside activities as hiking, walking, fishing, beach play, and gardening, according to a study by Sandra Hofferth at the University of Maryland.

In nature, a child finds freedom, fantasy, and privacy: a place distant from the adult world, a separate peace.

Prize the natural spaces and shorelines most of all, because once they're gone, with rare exceptions they're gone forever. In our bones we need the natural curves of hills, the scent of chapparal, the whisper of pines, the possibility of wildness. We require these patches of nature for our mental health and our spiritual resilience.

What would our lives be like if our days and nights were as immersed in nature as they are in technology?

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).