There’s no denying the benefits of the Internet. But electronic immersion, without a force to balance it, creates the hole in the boat — draining our ability to pay attention, to think clearly, to be productive and creative.

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

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.

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

In our bones we need the natural curves of hills, the scent of chaparral, the whisper of pines, the possibility of wildness.

Rather than accepting the drifting separation of the generations, we might begin to define a more complex and interesting set of life stages and parenting passages, each emphasizing the connections to the generations ahead and behind. As I grow older, for example, I might first see my role as a parent in need of older, mentoring parents, and then become a mentoring parent myself. When I become a grandparent, I might expect to seek out older mentoring grandparents, and then later become a mentoring grandparent.

It takes time--loose, unstructured dreamtime-- to experience nature in a meaningful way. Unless parents are vigilant, such time becomes a scarce resource, not because we intend it to shrink, but because time is consumed by multiple, invisible forces; because our culture currently places so little value on natural play.