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

As the nature deficit grows, another emerging body of scientific evidence indicates that direct exposure to nature is essential for physical and emotional health. For example, new studies suggest that exposure to nature may reduce the symptoms of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and that it can improve all children's cognitive abilities and resistance to negative stresses and depression.

American family life has never been particularly idyllic. In the nineteenth century, nearly a quarter of all children experienced the death of one of their parents.... Not until the sixties did the chief cause of separation of parents shift from death to divorce.

There is another possibility: not the end of nature, but the rebirth of wonder and even joy.

As the young spend less of their lives in natural surroundings, their senses narrow, physiologically and psychologically and this reduces the richness of human experience we need contact with nature.

Passion is lifted from the earth itself by the muddy hands of the young; it travels along grass-stained sleeves to the heart. If we are going to save environmentalism and the environment, we must also save an endangered indicator species: the child in nature.

The future will belong to the nature-smart...Th e more high-tech we become, the more nature we need.