Absent Blogger

I have so many thoughts bumping around in my head right now, and so many things I'd like to share (a recipe for an Enchilada Bake, stories about a trip to Denver, my encounter with processed foods). But I've been too busy, so I'll just show you a few pics from this weekend's trip to Girl Scout camp instead.

FYI - This is Camp Agnes Arnold, an absolutely beautiful camp, as you can see below.

Light Green Re-Run: Why Kids Need Camp

I'm at Girl Scout camp this weekend, so I thought I would re-run this favorite piece about why every kid needs camp.

I know a little girl, whom I'll call S.

S. is an insect whisperer.

S. is just finishing second grade. She goes to school near Houston's ship channel, a neighborhood surrounded by warehouses, silos, and parking lots for tractor trailers. The neighborhood is mostly Hispanic, and its population is shrinking, crowded out by industry. School is not really S.'s "thing", and she has to work hard at her studies. Nevertheless, she is fearless, possessing a deep understanding of the natural world - an understanding which extends to a sixth sense about how to approach wild things without scaring them off. Butterflies and "roly-polies" grow immobile and quiet as S. nears. The picture above shows S. as she has a close encounter with nature at Girl Scout camp this past weekend.

S. is one of the reasons all children need camp.

I worked at a summer camp (YMCA) for 8 summers - much longer than is reasonable for an adult person. I had an idea, at that time, that camp was really good and important for kids. After all, it had been for me. However, in the years since then, I've come to believe that camp, or something akin to it, should be an integral part of the educational experience of every child, particularly in an era when sustainability is crucial to our survival.

For S. and most of the kids who go to her school, "nature" consists of the school garden, chickens which roam the street around the school, and occasional field trips. At the school where I taught, nature was represented by the yearly termite swarm which drove my class out of the school, and the dead cockroach I nicknamed "Sketchy" (because it was sketchy that he lay in the school hallway for a week.) Now, let's face it, lack of access to the natural world is not only a problem of the inner city. A man-made lake in suburban Houston doesn't really count as "nature." However, as with many problems, income inequality compounds the issue.

Not only do kids like S. have few chances to encounter the natural world in their daily lives, but their families have few resources to provide such encounters. Camp (Girl Scout, Boy Scout, YMCA, YWCA, school-sponsored, church-sponsored ...) can provide those opportunities for kids - if we make a conscious effort to include kids like S.

So why does it matter?

Here are a few reasons why I think camp is as critical as school in fostering the next generation:

1) Camp, most obviously, gives kids opportunities to interact with the natural world. Now, we all know that kids don't get to go outside and play as often as they should -- and there are a number of reasons for this. Parents are afraid of the unknown, kids are hooked on video games, teachers give too much homework ... the list of targets for blame could go on and on. And while I don't go as far as to say that kids have "nature-deficit disorder", I do think that kids who don't get to experience the wilderness miss out on a vital connection with the world around them. If you've never seen a frog in the wilderness (or gone frog hunting at night, catching frogs and then letting them go), hearing about massive frog extinctions won't mean much to you. And if you've never seen the Milky Way glowing palely in the summer sky, it won't even register when you hear that light pollution has made it impossible for many Americans to see the stars. Kids who are going to be in charge of our sustainable future should have a good idea what they are sustaining.

A picture from the camp I attended and where I worked for 8 summers.

Photo courtesy of Camp Reed.

2) Camp fosters innovation. At the camp where I worked for all those years, "building stuff" was a routine part of any week-long session. Inevitably, someone was going to take a bunch of 9-year-olds (boys or girls; it didn't matter - camp also fosters a relaxing of traditional gender roles, but that's a whole other blog) into the woods, and the group would find logs, branches, ground cover, and build a temporary shelter. Hiking around weeks later, one would find these abandoned palaces here and there, remnants of kids' ingenuity. Throughout the week, campers dressed in costumes, blazed trails, wrote songs, performed random acts of kindness, spoke like pirates, crawled on their bellies through grass pretending to be Scottish warriors, and created crop circles. Yes, their counselors had a lot to do with inspiring these bizarre behaviors. Kids, however, learned that their true selves might be a little different than what they had believed before. The future is going to demand innovative solutions to a host of problems that we have created. I want to live in the world where the engineers of tomorrow have built crazy shelters in the woods.

3) Camp bolsters independence. True story, the first time my parents dropped me off at camp, they had to leave me crying in the middle of the road, I so didn't want to go. But I had won a scholarship, and so I had to go. I wanted to be with my parents, where I knew what to expect. At camp, I had to make decisions. There, kids decide what activities to do, what songs to sing, what to wear in the morning, how long to brush their teeth, and if they're going to shower. They learn that attitude has an impact on the course of the day. And they have to get stuff done - set tables, sweep under bunks, clean up after themselves. Camp is a microcosm of society (albeit a society where you get to sing at the table and eat without silverware) in a way that school just isn't. School, in many ways (and I say this as an educator) is about learning to conform. Camp is about learning to take responsibility. We're going to need responsible, community-minded citizens to take charge and make the sacrifices that are going to be necessary in the coming decades.

4) Camp teaches whimsy. The other day I gave a friend a photo I'd had for many years. In it, he was dressed in a flowered muumuu and a broken sombrero, while beside him a girl frolicked in an orange drill team uniform and pink snow hat. Now. Ahem. Whatever was happening in that photo, which might have been conceptualized by Salvador Dali on crack, does not directly have any bearing on sustainability. However. I think whimsy is going to save us. Silliness is as sustaining as recycling. It builds connections between people and calls on brain cells we don't usually get to access. For this reason alone, every kid should get to go to camp.

So, what do we do?

Well, we can do stuff like giving our yearly charitable contributions to organizations which sponsor camp or wilderness experiences for low-income kids, voluneer with organizations such as Girl Scouts and YMCA, and fight legislation that would end summer break and extend the school year. And we can continue all of the sustainable practices we attempt to keep up day-to-day, in order to preserve the wilderness for the next generation.

Hiking with Mr. Henry

This past weekend, I was a kid again, as I went on a Girl Scout field trip to camp. I volunteer with this Girl Scout troop, and as I've written about before, scouting is an amazing opportunity for girls to get out into nature. It turns out, it's also an amazing opportunity for this big girl to learn all about the flora in Texas.

I've lived in Texas for six years. In my home state of Washington, I felt as though I was able to identify the most common trees and animals by their common names. I was no expert, by any means, but I could find chamomile, honeysuckle, thimbleberries, echinacea, maples and sycamores, blackberries and bobcats. Texas, however, is another story. Immersed in my busy city life, and surrounded by friends who are also transplants from other parts of the country, I have learned a total of three (count them - 3!) Texas plants and animals.

Live oak.

Jasmine.

Grackle.

Luckily, at Girl Scout camp we went on a hike with Mr. Henry, the camp forester, who gave us some insight into the other living things all around us.

First, the mighty yaupon!

I never realized that the street in Houston called "Yaupon" is named after this red-berried beauty. This relative of the holly (which we also saw on our hike) has the scientific name of Ilex vomitoria, so-named because Europeans believed that the Native Americans used it to induce vomiting during purification rituals.

Looking similar, but with fuschia berries, is the American beautyberry, which I have seen often in my walks at the Houston Arboretum. Time and time again, I've thought to myself, what are those beautiful effusions of berries, breaking against the foliage like fireworks? Now, I know.

Somehow, when you know the names of things, the world seems a bit more right.

Mr. Henry also let us in on the secrets of the multitude of oaks growing throughout the woods. To a girl from evergreen country, there's something majestic and mysterious about oaks. And while nothing compares to the grandeur of a live oak, learning the names of water oaks, white oaks, pin oaks, red oaks ... I felt like I was finally "getting" the Texas landscape. Up above, you see the leaf of of the water oak.

We also came across the star-shaped leaves of the sweetgum, a tree whose resin, when mixed with tobacco, was smoked by Mexican emperors.

We learned about the acorn flour that settlers made, the seed pods that could double as balls for playing catch, the holly decorations that most of us have only seen in plastic form. The girls climbed a tree, scrambled through a rock labyrinth, and scrabbled for deer tracks in the iron-rich mud. And as we walked, Mr. Henry's stories hit home.

In Mr. Henry's childhood (in the last century, but not really so long ago) people had a certain level of familiarity with nature. They knew the names of things. And knowing the names of things is important. We are close to the things we understand and use, and those are things that we want to preserve.

But when we walk, every day, under the live oaks, and never know their names, what value do they have to us? Why inconvenience ourselves, to save a tree or a berry bush or a bird?

The girls grew restless with all the old stories and the names, but I think some of it sank in. Even though the hike exhausted them, in the end I could see that, though they couldn't articulate what was different, something had changed.

I Heart Miyazaki, And You Should Too

My nephew Henry is by no means a genius or anything, but he does have pretty cool taste. He likes the White Stripes and Fleet Foxes, sci-fi, and playing outside. He is obsessed with Mountain Dew (don't tell him about the woman who survived 5 days on a raft with only 2 cans of Mountain Dew). And ever since he was little, he has loved, loved, loved director, animator, and all-around awesome guy Hayao Miyazaki.

When Henry was 2 and 3, we were all forced to watch Miyazaki's meditation on Alice in Wonderland, entitled My Neighbor Totoro, over and over and over again. When H. was 3 and 4, we probably watched Kiki's Delivery Service (featuring traditional anime-style voicework by Kirsten Dunst -- which means she YELLED ALL OF HER LINES IN A MONOTONE) 500 times if we watched it once. Today, we all got out of the heat to watch Miyazaki's newest movie to hit American shores, Ponyo. (Click here to see the trailer.)

What does all this have to do with the environment? Well, I'm glad you asked, because I love to preach the Gospel of Miyazaki to anyone who is unfamiliar. Throughout his career, Miyazaki's films have expressed a vision of nature as deep, dark, mysterious, and filled with magic. Humans, in Miyazaki's view, are often throwing nature out of balance through war, pollution, and greed, and it is his deeply ethical heroines and heroes who fight to bring that balance back.

Sounds like it might be preachy, but all of this is embedded within fast-paced, fantastical stories that are, most-of-all, insanely beautiful to look at. Ponyo is no exception, telling the story of a half-goldfish, half-girl who wants to be human, and who chafes at the restrictions of her father, who is busy trying to bring balance back to a sea polluted by human waste. Little Ponyo gets into trouble (like many real-life sea creatures) when she gets stuck inside a jar that pollutes the ocean and is freed by a human boy.

Sound familiar? Ponyo definitely parallells Andersen's The Little Mermaid, but unlike Disney's version, this little mergirl is no shrinking waterlily. Loud, a little obnoxious, and filled with her own magic, Ponyo fights for her desires. The environmental message is definitely there, but kept mostly on the d-l, as it's voiced by Ponyo's nutter of a dad, driven a little bit crazy by the way humans abuse the sea.

It is the beautiful images of the sea and all of its lifeforms that will probably make the biggest impact on the worldviews little environmentalists, providing a counterpoint to the mostly pointless and ugly cartoons that fill most kids' days (including my nephew's). I can only hope that parents will get tired of the 3-D assault we've been getting at the box office this summer, and turn to this truly lovely vision of the world. Maybe more American kids will get hooked on Miyazaki -- because if any films deserve to be watched 1000s of times, they're his.

Seeing Ponyo just compounded the thoughts I've been having about our connection to the ocean. Just as I believe getting kids out into nature will help turn them on to environmentalism, so I believe that stories as deep and beautiful as Miyazaki's can help to unlock kids' ethical natures, their intellects, and their power. Wouldn't it be wonderful if schools took this into account - using such stories as part of a curriculum that helps children explore the ethics of their actions and impact on the world, and then using natural field experiences to help children find out whether they thrill to the oceans, the mountains, or some other eco-system entirely? What a world it would be ... right now, however, it's up to mamas, papas, aunties, uncles and others to begin this education. Too bad we have to wait until summer to teach these lessons, and probably will until standardized tests have a multiple-choice questions about saving the planet.

Just like Ponyo, we all started out in the ocean ...

Want more Miyazaki? Little eco-nauts will enjoy My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki's Delivery Service. Older kids (and adults) will want to see Spirited Away (about a little girl who must save her parents in a strange spirit world), Howl's Moving Castle (the love and bravery of a young woman helps to end a war that is destroying her people, plus there is a walking castle with chicken feet, plus the Wizard Howl is a dashing cad with the voice of Christian Bale, plus there's a scarecrow companion that is way better than the one in Wizard of Oz, plus, like many of Miyazaki's movies, Howl includes beautiful vistas of cities by the sea -- can you tell this movie is awesome?) and finally, the classic Princess Mononoke, which is probably Miyazaki's scariest and most adult, but has some of his most amazing animation.

Oceans or Mountains?

Quick.

Don't think about it. Just answer.

Oceans? Or Mountains?

Did an answer pop into your head, sure as fish on Friday? Or are you thinking ... oceans or mountains what?

See, I have this theory that people are either oceans or mountains. It's not a personality theory, but a theory of which of these is sort of your "home." No mushy-gushy mythological mumbo-jumbo about primal natures or anything (unless I've had a couple of martinis). Not any big statement about male/female dichotomies. It's just that of these two - oceans or mountains -one will resonate with a person more than the other.

I've asked this question many times, and only one person has ever refused to answer, trying too hard to analyze just what I was asking. Everyone else has always come firmly down on one side or the other.

I'm mountains.

I should be oceans. I'm a Pisces for God's sake. Nevertheless, the thought of mountains just fills me with warm fuzzies. Nothing against oceans. I absolutely love water. I love fish. Seaweed. Amphibians. It's just that a burbling brook, tumbling waterfall, or crystalline lake floats my personal boat more than the seven seas ever can.

Nevertheless, I'm starting to "get" the ocean people a bit more. This week, I spent time at my dad's near the Washington Coast, and our days were filled with the things ocean people love - going barefoot in the sand, whipping each other with seaweed, finding shells and crab exoskeletons.

Of course, the great thing about the Pacific Northwest -- you don't have to choose. We've got both, meeting and melding. Hike up on the cliffs above Dead Man's Cove at Cape Disappointment to take in the breathtaking view of an ecosystem in its full glory:

I was excited to spend my trip with two little tykes, my nephew Henry, and my "nephew" Desmond. Because if we want our kids to grow up to be able to answer the question -- "Oceans or Mountains?" -- to really know which one thrills in their deepest hearts of hearts, we have to leave them oceans and mountains to experience. We have to get them out to roll in the waves and hike up the cliffs. If they don't have the chance to do these things, then why will they care if they vanish?

So.

Which one are you? Oceans or mountains?

Modern Kid

I'm here in Spokane visiting family, and while on a walk with my 7-year-old nephew, Henry, we passed a truck for Ladybug Organic Soil Care.

"That's cool," I said. "See, organic means they don't use chemicals that harm the soil."

Henry looked at me and rolled his eyes.

"I know, Auntie."

Yep, it's 2009. Welcome to Generation Green.

Close Encounters, or Why Every Kid Needs Camp

I know a little girl, whom I'll call S.

S. is an insect whisperer.

S. is just finishing second grade. She goes to school near Houston's ship channel, a neighborhood surrounded by warehouses, silos, and parking lots for tractor trailers. The neighborhood is mostly Hispanic, and its population is shrinking, crowded out by industry. School is not really S.'s "thing", and she has to work hard at her studies. Nevertheless, she is fearless, possessing a deep understanding of the natural world - an understanding which extends to a sixth sense about how to approach wild things without scaring them off. Butterflies and "roly-polies" grow immobile and quiet as S. nears. The picture above shows S. as she has a close encounter with nature at Girl Scout camp this past weekend.

S. is one of the reasons all children need camp.

I worked at a summer camp (YMCA) for 8 summers - much longer than is reasonable for an adult person. I had an idea, at that time, that camp was really good and important for kids. After all, it had been for me. However, in the years since then, I've come to believe that camp, or something akin to it, should be an integral part of the educational experience of every child, particularly in an era when sustainability is crucial to our survival.

For S. and most of the kids who go to her school, "nature" consists of the school garden, chickens which roam the street around the school, and occasional field trips. At the school where I taught, nature was represented by the yearly termite swarm which drove my class out of the school, and the dead cockroach I nicknamed "Sketchy" (because it was sketchy that he lay in the school hallway for a week.) Now, let's face it, lack of access to the natural world is not only a problem of the inner city. A man-made lake in suburban Houston doesn't really count as "nature." However, as with many problems, income inequality compounds the issue.

Not only do kids like S. have few chances to encounter the natural world in their daily lives, but their families have few resources to provide such encounters. Camp (Girl Scout, Boy Scout, YMCA, YWCA, school-sponsored, church-sponsored ...) can provide those opportunities for kids - if we make a conscious effort to include kids like S.

So why does it matter?

Here are a few reasons why I think camp is as critical as school in fostering the next generation:

1) Camp, most obviously, gives kids opportunities to interact with the natural world. Now, we all know that kids don't get to go outside and play as often as they should -- and there are a number of reasons for this. Parents are afraid of the unknown, kids are hooked on video games, teachers give too much homework ... the list of targets for blame could go on and on. And while I don't go as far as to say that kids have "nature-deficit disorder", I do think that kids who don't get to experience the wilderness miss out on a vital connection with the world around them. If you've never seen a frog in the wilderness (or gone frog hunting at night, catching frogs and then letting them go), hearing about massive frog extinctions won't mean much to you. And if you've never seen the Milky Way glowing palely in the summer sky, it won't even register when you hear that light pollution has made it impossible for many Americans to see the stars. Kids who are going to be in charge of our sustainable future should have a good idea what they are sustaining.

2) Camp fosters innovation. At the camp where I worked for all those years, "building stuff" was a routine part of any week-long session. Inevitably, someone was going to take a bunch of 9-year-olds (boys or girls; it didn't matter - camp also fosters a relaxing of traditional gender roles, but that's a whole other blog) into the woods, and the group would find logs, branches, ground cover, and build a temporary shelter. Hiking around weeks later, one would find these abandoned palaces here and there, remnants of kids' ingenuity. Throughout the week, campers dressed in costumes, blazed trails, wrote songs, performed random acts of kindness, spoke like pirates, crawled on their bellies through grass pretending to be Scottish warriors, and created crop circles. Yes, their counselors had a lot to do with inspiring these bizarre behaviors. Kids, however, learned that their true selves might be a little different than what they had believed before. The future is going to demand innovative solutions to a host of problems that we have created. I want to live in the world where the engineers of tomorrow have built crazy shelters in the woods.

3) Camp bolsters independence. True story, the first time my parents dropped me off at camp, they had to leave me crying in the middle of the road, I so didn't want to go. But I had won a scholarship, and so I had to go. I wanted to be with my parents, where I knew what to expect. At camp, I had to make decisions. There, kids decide what activities to do, what songs to sing, what to wear in the morning, how long to brush their teeth, and if they're going to shower. They learn that attitude has an impact on the course of the day. And they have to get stuff done - set tables, sweep under bunks, clean up after themselves. Camp is a microcosm of society (albeit a society where you get to sing at the table and eat without silverware) in a way that school just isn't. School, in many ways (and I say this as an educator) is about learning to conform. Camp is about learning to take responsibility. We're going to need responsible, community-minded citizens to take charge and make the sacrifices that are going to be necessary in the coming decades.

4) Camp teaches whimsy. The other day I gave a friend a photo I'd had for many years. In it, he was dressed in a flowered muumuu and a broken sombrero, while beside him a girl frolicked in an orange drill team uniform and pink snow hat. Now. Ahem. Whatever was happening in that photo, which might have been conceptualized by Salvador Dali on crack, does not directly have any bearing on sustainability. However. I think whimsy is going to save us. Silliness is as sustaining as recycling. It builds connections between people and calls on brain cells we don't usually get to access. For this reason alone, every kid should get to go to camp.

So, what do we do?

Well, we can do stuff like giving our yearly charitable contributions to organizations which sponsor camp or wilderness experiences for low-income kids, voluneer with organizations such as Girl Scouts and YMCA, and fight legislation that would end summer break and extend the school year. And we can continue all of the sustainable practices we attempt to keep up day-to-day, in order to preserve the wilderness for the next generation.