“All good things are wild and free.” Henry David Thoreau

Let’s be honest; we live in a fast-paced, increasingly technological society. Perhaps we can even eliminate the word “increasingly” and just say we ARE technological. Children are born, and they immediately have a public identity. Facebook makes this possible. Children today are likely to have their entire lives documented from birth until death, with all of the accomplishments and disappointments in between.  They will know how to wield their computer skills in grade 1, a time when most of us were learning to use paper and pens. There is nothing more terrifying than sitting next to a 7 year old who can handle an iPhone with an adequacy you could only hope to have.

However, with technology comes a certain amount of detachment. No longer are we required to interact with people in a face-to-face capacity. We have email and text messaging for that. Reading no longer requires making a pilgrimage to the library to get a book; a 10 second download to an e-reader eliminates the need for paper pages. Everyday meaningful interactions are more often than not being replaced with something impersonal and technological.

But one place where technology consistently fails, is when it comes to Mother Nature.

There is no replacement for the experiences a child will have in the great outdoors. No Wikipedia article or app can accurately describe the feeling of awe that comes with sitting on a log in the middle of a forest.  A computer can’t generate the wooly feeling of a newborn lamb, or the excitement of finding hidden spores on a fern. Discovering tide pools and the sea-life that live in them is a joy that no jpeg can quite capture.

We first brought the news of a nature kindergarten to our members in our winter newsletter, and shared an article from the Globe and Mail in it. Registration for this nature kindergarten took place on Monday morning, and as the Times Colonist’s article (Tuesday, February 6) proved, getting children outside matters to parents, perhaps more now than ever. They even camped out overnight in order to ensure their children had a space in the program!

It’s understandable. We live in a beautiful place where nature is close, majestic, and beautiful. Children are resilient little souls who explore, get mucky and learn through play. What greater way to encourage this than giving children the time (not just recess or lunch hour) to truly be able to understand the world that surrounds them?

To read the article from the Times Colonist please go to http://www.timescolonist.com/travel/Parents+camp+overnight+steps+register+kids+nature+kindergarten/6111146/story.html