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

How can our kids really understand the moral complexities of being alive if they are not allowed to engage in those complexities outdoors?

All spiritual life begins with a sense of wonder, and nature is a window into that wonder.

Our kids are actually doing what we told them to do when they sit in front of that TV all day or in front of that computer game all day. The society is telling kids unconsciously that nature's in the past. It really doesn't count anymore, that the future is in electronics, and besides, the bogeyman is in the woods.

Stress reduction, greater physical health, a deeper sense of spirit, more creativity, a sense of play, even a safer life-these are the rewards that await a family then it invites more nature into children's lives.

The woods were my Ritalin. Nature calmed me, focused me, and yet excited my senses.

I do not mean to imply that the good old days were perfect. But the institutions and structure--the web--of society needed reform,not demolition. To have cut the institutional and community strands without replacing them with new ones proved to be a form of abuse to one generation and to the next. For so many Americans, the tragedy was not in dreaming that life could be better; the tragedy was that the dreaming ended.