The pleasure of being alive is brought into sharper focus when you need to pay attention to staying alive.

Progress does not have to be patented to be worthwhile. Progress can also be measured by our interactions with nature and its preservation. Can we teach children to look at a flower and see all the things it represents: beauty, the health of an ecosystem, and the potential for healing?

Studies of children in playgrounds with both green areas and manufactured play areas found that children engaged in more creative forms of play in the green areas.

This seems clear enough: When truly present in nature, we do use all our senses at the same time, which is the optimum state of learning.

A widening circle of researchers believes that the loss of natural habitat, or the disconnection from nature even when it is available, has enormous implications for human health and child development. They say the quality of exposure to nature affects our health at an almost cellular level.

The real cultural war is between the culture of narcissism and what might be called the culture of renewal.

If getting our kids out into nature is a search for perfection, or is one more chore, then the belief in perfection and the chore defeats the joy. It's a good thing to learn more about nature in order to share this knowledge with children; it's even better if the adult and child learn about nature together. And it's a lot more fun.