Now, more than ever, we need nature as a balancing agent.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports that the number of overweight adult Americans increased over 60 percent between 1991 and 2000. According to CDC data, the U.S. population of overweight children between ages two and five increased by almost 36 percent from 1989 to 1999.

We have such a brief opportunity to pass on to our children our love for this Earth, and to tell our stories. These are the moments when the world is made whole. In my children's memories, the adventures we've had together in nature will always exist.

When you're sitting in front of a screen, you're not using all of your senses at the same time. Nowhere than in nature do kids use their senses in such a stimulated way.

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

There is a real world, beyond the glass, for children who look, for those whose parents encourage them to truly see.

When we raise our children, we relive our childhood. Forgotten memories, painful and pleasurable, rise to the surface.... So each of us thinks, almost daily, of how our own childhood compares with our children's, and of what our children's future will hold.