A child’s love affair with nature begins
by Diane Selkirk
Quick: who’s the student and who’s the teacher?
My two-and-a-half-year-old daughter Maia gazed through the glass, awed by a gorilla family at play. She asked me to tell her about them. I launched into an honest, no-holds-barred tale of the status of the gorilla: endangered. My tiny daughter asked a few mystified questions then turned back to the gorillas. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I would have taken care of you.”
I instantly realized I had done it wrong. My child didn’t need to be introduced to a wounded planet before her third birthday. She needs to be shown its joy and beauty. Then, if I have taught her well, she may care enough—and know enough—to make a difference.
I had planned to save the world before having children. I failed to follow through, however. In Canada, 23 species have gone extinct, 77 are on the brink, and more than 100 others are at risk. Somehow, as a parent, I’m supposed to navigate my child through this tragedy. Yet instinctively, after my blunder at the zoo, I wanted to back away from even telling my child the truth. I began to avoid anything that could damage Maia’s trust in our planet, from those beautiful picture books and videos that talk about endangered animals to conversations with friends, where a well-meaning comment could end up frightening her.
Even Maia’s much-loved organic Panda Puffs troubled me. I worried about the presence of this politically correct breakfast cereal on our table each morning. Would today be the day Maia asked about the status of the panda? If she did, I would tell her what a beautiful animal it is but not mention that they are endangered. It felt dishonest, but the memory of her small, slumped shoulders was so fresh.
In bypassing the tragedy and focusing on the beauty, I was unknowingly following the lead of environmentalists such as Rachel Carson, author of Silent Spring, and David Sobel. “If we want children to flourish, to really feel empowered, let us allow them to love the earth before we ask them to save it.” Those words, by Sobel in Beyond Ecophobia: Reclaiming the Heart in Nature Education, were the first to support my protective instincts.
I was immersed in nature as a child. I was small when I learned to distinguish between the footprints of deer, cougars, wolves, raccoons, and bears. I remember holding my breath, in anticipation and fear, when tracks led me to the base of a cliff where a cougar was sleeping on a ledge.
With my mother at my side, I marvelled at our formerly sleepy stream, now boiling with red-backed salmon. I questioned nature, stood in awe of nature, and with my entire soul, I learned to love nature. I don’t remember ever being asked to doubt the vitality of an ecosystem.
But I do remember the moment I became an environmentalist. I saw Paul Watson and Bob Hunter on the evening news, standing shoulder-to-shoulder on a Newfoundland ice floe protecting seal pups. At age 10, it was my first exposure to environmental activism. An early childhood of simply loving nature rendered me ready to act.
My daughter needs to find her own catalyst. I cannot teach her to save the world. I can only give her the opportunity to love it. I can hold her hand while she explores the woods. I can help her lift logs and inspect the bugs and grubs underneath. I can take her places where the grandeur of a mountain peak might cause her to catch her breath. I can show her the nest of baby birds we see from our bedroom window.
As a city dweller, I now look for nature classes and opportunities that emphasize exploration, immersion, and fun and de-emphasize doom and gloom. At Vancouver’s Stanley Park Ecology Society, I laughed as Maia pretended to be a bug in the garden, wiggling through imagined moist dirt and leaves. At the aquarium, I watched her weigh and measure toy baby seals. Speaking gently, she picked up each seal and carefully performed a veterinary check-up before lovingly tucking it back into bed.
Mostly, I lead my daughter through the natural world by falling back in love with it myself. With her at my side, I shake off the fatigue that comes from fighting an eco-battle that may never be won. Seeing things through her eyes gives me hope. I realize that Maia’s education about nature needs nothing from me but my presence.
A year after a gorilla taught me about children, my family was on our boat in the Gulf Islands. I finally let go of the lessons about pollution and conservation and simply gave Maia a bucket and net.
Nose near the water, small hand shimmering beneath the surface, Maia moved quickly. The ability to catch bullheads with your bare hands seems to be a skill only small children have. Maia added the bullhead to a container that already contained a chitin, several crab, a purple starfish, and whelks collected from a tidal pool. With the tide rising, we got in the dinghy and rowed back to our boat. On deck, she showed her grandparents her treasures. I stood back as she explained what she’d found, confusing some facts, and getting a few names wrong.
“I need to put them back in the ocean now,” she told us.
I could hear her whisper to each one as she slid them back into the water. “Thank you beautiful creature. Grow big and strong.”
FOOTNOTES presents personal essays set in and around Vancouver. Submissions welcome. Tighten your tale to 900 words and e-mail to [click to e-mail] with “footnotes” in the subject line.
