Biophilia or videophilia?

Others huddle in their down coats, cursing the weather, but I love winter. I love snow; I love the bracing cold; I love the stars hanging like ornaments on the cold, bare trees. Elinor Wylie said it best in her “Puritan Sonnet:” “I love the look, austere, immaculate,/Of landscapes drawn in pearly monotones./There’s something in my very blood that owns/Bare hills, cold silver on a sky of slate... ”

I am aware that most people do not share my enthusiasm, but I hope they don their parkas and come out to EagleFest on Saturday, January 17 from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. in downtown Narrowsburg, NY, the Eagle Capital of the World. And I hope they bring their kids, or neighborhood kids, or nieces and nephews to the celebration of the natural beauty and bounty we are graced with here in the Upper Delaware River valley.

EagleFest is not only an opportunity to see the Delaware Valley Raptor Center’s live birds of prey or watch ice sculptors and wood carvers at work, or view the town’s resident eagles from the unique Main Street observation deck—it is also a time to reconnect with the beauty of the season and to excite yourself and your children.

Why not take your kids out into the invigorating winter air?

Human beings have an instinctive bond with the natural world that E. O. Wilson called biophilia, yet we sentence our children during their developing years to the confines of a classroom desk for seven hours each day when their minds and bodies want to be actively engaged in the world. And increasingly, children are suffering from what a 2006 study called “videophilia,” defined as “the new human tendency to focus on sedentary activities involving electronic media,” and indicating a “fundamental shift away from people’s appreciation of nature.”

When I was teaching, one of my colleagues said that some of his students thought the spring pansies planted at the entrance to the condo development where he lived morphed into geraniums in the summer and then somehow changed into chrysanthemums in the fall. More shockingly, a young teacher of elementary students was less than enthusiastic about a field trip to a local apple farm. She said she preferred apples that she bought at the supermarket because they were “fresh.” We are obviously failing to teach our young people anything of substance about nature.

Numerous reports indicate that attendance in National Parks is declining, along with sales of camping, hiking and fishing equipment. Families spend little time in their own backyards, except to do chores. In a survey taken in 2006, 67 percent of parents said their children spent less time outdoors than they did the previous summer, and 91 percent blamed TV, computers and video games for their children’s lack of interest in the outdoors.

Taking your kids outside is important for the future of our species because children who have positive experiences outdoors will grow to be wise consumers, voters and advocates for the environment.

Randy White, an expert in child education and play, summarizes extensive research in this area, stating that “the loss of children’s outdoor play and contact with the natural world… sets the stage for a continuing loss of the natural environment… Research is clearly substantiating that an affinity to and love of nature, along with a positive environmental ethic, grow out of children’s regular contact with and play in the natural world.” Time spent in nature has other benefits including physical and psychological health, improved behavior and improved performance in school. (Visit www.childrensnatureinstitute.org for more information on the benefits of environmental education.)

So gather up the sweaters and mittens, take a child by the hand, and come to Narrowsburg for EagleFest.

- Marcia Nehemiah