Quote above from Herbert Rappaport, Purple Saxifrage Saxifraga oppositifolia in Arctic Svalbard, July 2010 – by me.

Surrounded as I am, here in a little corner of Europe in April in the northern hemisphere, by the energetic riot that is Spring, my soul is wandering . . . damit!  Nearby, forest tree trunks stand shimmering in a hazy sea of bluebells just a half-mile from my house: a pretty, fine distraction from the laptop, facebook and emails.  Yet, and yet, it is to something raw and untamed that I’m drawn, where only the pumelling of icy winds rock the silence of the stones.  I’m dreaming of Summer coming to the realm where Polar bears stalk seals, and tiny flowers cling precarious to rainless Arctic desert shores, gnawing perhaps on some nutrient-rich fragment of whale bone the both of them. Maybe my bluebells, the warming sun, and the saxifrage are all speaking to each other. And me.

“When we try to pick out anything by itself we find that it is bound fast by a thousand invisible cords that cannot be broken, to everything in the universe”
John Muir

There are powerful places to connect with nature wherever you live.  This morning, in an unremarkable corner of an unremarkable field by a busy highway in the very centre of England, I met with the gently determined folk of the Anglian Wolf Society and spent a very enjoyable spring morning chatting, learning and sharing anecdotes . . . all the while distracted / hypnotised by the close presence of four of these compelling animals.  And that ‘stare’. That stare that exerts such a powerful grasp on our imaginations.  People sudddenly want to explain the feelings that come over them when confronted by that stare: awe, respect, hostility, fear, excitement, spirituality, hatred, love, curiosity . . . the list goes on.  It seems to me that, whenever we return that stare, we ourselves create our own Wolves.

With my dearest friend Mags Sorrell, who is showcasing her Breathing Space retreats, I shall be at Vitality Live Earls Court from Thurs 24th – Sun 27th March taking my ‘Wild Soul’ out to the audience at Vitality Show Earls Court – a joint stand W733 in One Life section. Lord Robert Winston, Janey Lee Grace, Dame Kelly Holmes, James Martin, me . . . and thousands of girls!

That’s stand W773, One Life for 4 days at Vitality Live . . . see you there!

But I believe the opposite is true – being disconnected from sunlight, greenery, the sky, can be almost painful. And yet adults and more importantly, kids, are increasingly disconnected from nature.

A few statistics from the Children & Nature Network bear this out:

1. Children today spend less time playing outdoors than any previous generation;
2. Children spend more of their diminishing free time in structured activities: children’s discretionary time (i.e., time not spent in school, child care, etc.) declined 12% (7.4 hours a week) from 1981 to 1997 and an additional 4% (2 hours) from 1997 to 2002/3;
3. Families have less leisure time and are spending more of it indoors. Since 1988, per capita visits to U.S. national parks have declined by about 20%;
4. Americans spend 170 minutes a day watching TV and movies, 9 times as much as they do on physical activities Children between the ages of 8 and 18 spend an average of 6.5 hours a day with electronic media;
5. A British study found that children can identify 25 percent more Pokemon characters than wildlife species at eight years old.

Research from the Red Rock Institute finds that kids spend on average only a half hour per week playing outdoors, compared to 45 hours per week with electronic media.

Why is this happening? Well, there are many reasons, according to Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods. We work more hours than we used to, children have more homework and more structured activities, such as organized sports, than in the past. We live in a more auto-oriented landscape, where the spontaneous interaction with the outdoors from a walk to work or school or the store is much less common. And parents are more afraid of letting their children explore.

We need to give our kids the contact with nature that we grown-ups were allowed – and then give ourselves the same freedom again too!