last grown-up in the woods

Posted by Suzy Vitello Soulé on May 11th, 2011 at 07:26 AM | | Tweet

Author Richard Louv made a huge impact with his 2005 breakout book “Last Child in the Woods.” Coining the concept of nature deficit disorder, Louv made a compelling argument for getting kids to go outside as an integral part of their upbringing.

Now, six years later, along comes its companion, “The Nature Principle.” This book is targeted at adults in a culture that’s increasingly sedentary and tech-dependent. Louv is giving a talk in my fair city tonight, in, of all places, the zoo. I won’t be there. I’ll be up the road at one of the many soccer tryouts slated for my 12-year-old this week. In our house, getting my kid to come INside is more of an issue.

Louv, no doubt, will be preaching to the choir up here amongst the firs. His books are favorites in a town that boasts the largest contiguous city park in the country. And yet. There are days that go by when the wet, mucky ground looks as inviting to me as a stagnant cesspool. And I’m so dependent on my iPhone, that the few times I’ve left it at home I get phantom limb syndrome, reaching in my purse or pocket reflexively for the rubber-covered wafer that tethers me to minutia.

At the end of the day, though, I’m totally a member of Louv’s choir. Last year, at this time, we bought a house that sits on the edge of one of Portland’s many green spaces. Our chickens cluck each morning to remind us they need to be let out of their coop to free range. We have bird-feeders, field guides, a hippie bus that we routinely chug off to campgrounds in. We climb mountains, hike along beaches. Last weekend my husband and I slogged through miles of mud to witness whales migrating up to cooler waters. There were eagles in our sights. And my smartphone got no reception (yet, there it sat, in my pocket, impotent and dumb).

We live in a world that embraces contradictions. We’re posting our treks through nature on our Facebook walls often, so that we might savor them in the context of knowing that our friends “like” that we’re out there, in the gloaming. It’s all so silly, isn’t it? And yet.

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