Richard Louv Wants Us to Reconnect with Nature and Animals

The Nygrens intuitively realized that nature was having a positive impact on their children, but reading Richard Louv's book Last Child in the Woods validated their decision to make the permanent move to Chattahoochee Hills.

Richard wants people to connect with nature, and he believes a big part of that is connecting with animals. When he'd written Last Child in the Woods, he was able to find about 60 studies during his research that helped inform his writing. That information plus another ~1,000 studies, exists in a digital library on the C&NN website. When looking at those studies though, there's not much information about wild animals and their impact on our psyche. Our ancestors knew that they helped shape us and that we shaped them. We told stories about them around campfires in which we found meaning.

Our Wild Calling is to look at that and relate the stories he's collected about life-changing encounters and ongoing relationships with companion animals and how it gives life more meaning. This will take an important role in the future of the C&NN movement. Children feel the meaning of wild animal encounters, but it can be rediscovered.

Definitions, People + Organizations Mentioned

Nature-Deficit Disorder: The importance of children's and adults' exposure to nature for their health, and on the need for environmental protection and preservation for greater access to nature and the health of the Earth.

Nature-Rich: For a city to be wealthy in nature and an engine of bio-diversity, and to have children and families connected to nature.

I and Thou: Buber's main proposition is that we may address existence in two ways:

1. That of the "I" toward an "It," toward an object that is separate in itself, which we either use or experience
2. That of the "I" toward "Thou," in which we move into existence in a relationship without bounds. One of the major themes of the book is that human life finds its meaningfulness in relationships.

National League of Cities

Robin Moore

Audubon Society

Stephen Hawking

Martin Buber

Last Child In The Woods

Vitamin N

Nature Principle

Our Wild Calling

America II

Children & Nature Network

Full Episode Synopsis

Children In Nature - 2:30 min.
The Nygrens intuitively realized that nature was having a positive impact on their children, but reading Richard Louv's book Last Child in the Woods validated their decision to make the permanent move to Chattahoochee Hills, and Steve  wrote "Rich" a thank you note to express his gratitude in giving that idea a voice. Since that book Richard has written several more, one of which has a chapter featuring Serenbe. One book many don't know about though is America II, which was published in 1983 and covers Richard's journey through the country talking to people who felt as though they were losing control of their social and economic environment. Richard asked them if they'd found what they were looking for in moving in order to track demographic changes. The book resonates still today because of the many issues he found that still exist. One issue in particular was children having enough nature, which drove his later books as well as a movement in the form of the Children & Nature Network.

How They Met - 6:45 min.
Awhile after Steve originally wrote Richard, someone from the Children & Nature Network invited Steve to a gathering where he was able to sit by Richard and talk. He's now grateful for the friendship that's grown and the impact of the Children & Nature Network. C&NN grew out of the last few chapters of Last Child in the Woods, where Richard had imagined a movement to connect kids and their families with the natural world. Little did he know that people would start asking "what's next?" on his book tour. They knew they needed something that would be a place to continue collecting the research being conducted on the benefits of nature. It would also be a gathering point for people around the world who cared about the issue. The fact that Steve is a developer and community builder is particularly important because we have to change the fabric of where we live.

Steve Nygren was the chair of C&NN for 2 years, and has brought in other thought leaders to take the movement further. The group will be in Atlanta in 2020 for a closed session to plan future goals, then in 2021 their public conference is June 3-5. The last international conference in Vancouver had almost 1,000 people from 23 countries.

Children & Nature Network is working with the National League of Cities to target cities to try to become "nature-rich." Can a city be as immersed in technology as it is in nature? As of 2008 more people live in cities than in the countryside, which is the first time in human history, and it's only going to increase so it can't just be visiting nature, it has to be a part of city design where people live, work, and play. They're working with cities to gradually change over time by training future mayors how to do it.

Our Wild Calling
Richard wants people to connect with nature, and he believes a big part of that is connecting with animals. When he'd written Last Child in the Woods, he was able to find about 60 studies during his research that helped inform his writing. That information plus another ~1,000 studies, exists in a digital library on the C&NN website. When looking at those studies though, there's not much information about wild animals and their impact on our psyche. Our ancestors knew that they helped shape us and that we shaped them. We told stories about them around campfires in which we found meaning. Our Wild Calling is to look at that and relate the stories he's collected about life-changing encounters and ongoing relationships with companion animals and how it gives life more meaning. This will take an important role in the future of the C&NN movement. Children feel the meaning of wild animal encounters, but it can be rediscovered.

Steve was a farm boy that grew up with animals, so it was just a part of life and not something he was consciously aware of until they weren't around anymore. When they were spending weekends in the Hill Country before moving here, he saw the awe in his children's eyes in seeing a deer run through the woods, or the thrill of seeing a snake and teaching his kids the difference in those that are venomous and those that aren't. To walk through the forest and hear the birds. He continues to be amazed at Serenbe residents and visitors from the Audubon Society that hear the birds and know what kind they are. By keeping this area natural, sometimes they're able to see up to 50 species in one walk.

Human Loneliness - 19:12 min.
A study of urban parks suggests that having a higher number of ecological species has the highest impact on psychological health, and Richard feels it's in part because we're desperate not to feel alone in the universe. Serenbe is important because they're not only focused on the beauty of nature, but also in the civility of people and animals living together. A core theme in Our Wild Calling is human loneliness, which is on its way to surpass obesity as a cause of early death. Many diseases are now associated with social isolation, and Richard writes that human loneliness is rooted in an even deeper loneliness: Species Loneliness. It's the source of religion, but it's also connected to our increasing sense of isolation from the world around us. There's now even research that goes into plant and tree communication. It's the whisper that's all around us all the time, and we're listening all the time but we're not hearing.

When people first come to Serenbe they are confused and uncomfortable when people wave at them, but by the time they leave they're waving too because they've found a way back to connection and civility. Visitors also comment on what Steve calls "free-range kids," and you realize how unusual it is to see children playing outside with each other and with dogs or animals, but without parents hovering closely.

People + Dogs - 23:30 min.
In larger cities you walk down the street and people avoid eye contact, but every dog will come right up to you and look at you. It has to do with our co-evolution with dogs. It's now known that dogs do what people do, which is to first look in the left eye when making eye contact. In Our Wild Calling, Richard says that his childhood dog (Banner) saw him the way he wanted to be seen, and the dog expected him to live up to what Banner saw. Richard believes Banner taught him ethics, which he mentioned to a animal behavioral psychologist who dismissed it.

During his book research he ran across a study that explored an idea that we didn't domesticate grey wolves into becoming dogs but rather they domesticated us because we followed them as hunters. We watched how they cooperated with each other in a pack and family, and we may have learned how to hunt and survive from them. The study even mentioned "ethics," which Richard connected to moments during his childhood where Banner protected smaller dogs, an elderly neighbor, and even pulled Richard out of a creek. He found meaning in that, and believes it's true of wild animals as well.

There are now more dogs per capita in America than there ever have been, which Richard also thinks speaks to species loneliness. Millenials in particular are more prone to have dogs, and incidentally are also delaying childbirth later than previous generations. There's research that shows that kids who spend time with animals develop empathy, and that research is connected to correlations with serial killers torturing animals as children. That empathy will also help in saving nature, so if we don't learn to love the animals and plants around us, we won't care for them.

Wild Encounters - 30:37 min.
It's important to pay attention to the moment an encounter happens with a wild animal. There's something happening that requires noticing and understanding. Richard was on a boat once and saw what he thought was two vultures eating a fish. He moved closer and realized they were two giant golden eagles. For what seemed like a long time but was likely much shorter, the eagles would take a bite and then look up at him with direct, riveting eye contact.

In the similar stories he collected for the book, people described experiencing altered states where time seems to disappear or bend and their sense of scale changed dramatically. He told his son what happened later but did not have words to fully describe it because those experiences are pre-verbal and primal. He felt something happen between himself and the eagles, and knows it's meaningful because others described the same feeling.

Martin Buber wrote an essay called "I and Thou" saying that we as individuals don't really exist. What exists is between us, the relationship, which he thought of as a kind of electricity. Some people call that electricity "God." Richard feels that applies to our relationship with animals as well as people, which became a core idea of Our Wild Calling. He even named that place between a person and an animal when they have an encounter - The Habitat of the Heart - and says people don't try hard enough to protect and nurture it. He believes Serenbe is attending to the habitat of the heart.

Richard believes a characteristic of being in that place and are intensely aware of it, there's no way to feel lonely.