Voices in Parenting: Raising Nature Explorers
By Michael D. Barton
A
few weeks ago, the rebooted television series Cosmos
finished up its 13 episodes, having taken viewers on a whirlwind tour of the universe. Host Neil deGrasse Tyson shared
with us – yes, my family and I felt like he was doing it just for
us – awesome topics of science and nature, from the origin
of the universe and a tour of our planetary neighbors to the
evolution of life on Earth, with some history lessons sprinkled
throughout.
Feeling insignificant in our universe might seem a depressing notion, and could perhaps influence how we think about
being out in nature. For me, however, our varied connections
to the universe and how we fit in make exploring outside all
the more personal.
What
Does It
Mean
To Be Connected
to Nature?
Connected to nature. That’s a phrase I come across a lot as
I read books, articles, blogs and social media sites about the
ever-growing movement to connect children to nature. I hear
it in conversations with co-workers and visitors to the nature
park where I work. But what does it mean to be connected to
nature? As a science-minded person, I think of having a connection to nature in several ways, and I try to share these views with my children when
we’re out exploring.
We are all connected to everything in the natural world because we
share atoms that were forged inside stars in the early evolution of our
universe. The astronomer
Carl Sagan popularized the
notion that we are made of
star stuff. In the first episode
of the original Cosmos series,
which aired in 1980, Sagan
said, “Some part of our being
knows this is where we came
from. We long to return, and
we can, because the cosmos
is also within us. We’re made
of star stuff. We are a way for
the cosmos to know itself.”
I am not a religious or
spiritual person, but this line
of thinking comes close to
such a thing for me. I talk about this connection when my kids and I are
looking at a tree, a bug or a cloud. We share the same elemental matter
with nature, and thus we have a cosmic connection.
PHOTO COURTESY OF MICHAEL BARTON
Like Carl Sagan in the original Cosmos series, which aired
when I was as old as my almost 2-year-old daughter is now,
Tyson exuded excitement and wonder about everything
around us. But the series also left me with a sense of how truly
insignificant we humans are in the big picture. W