Words of Wisdom

The following quotes are some of my favorite words of wisdom about sharing the outdoors with children:

Climbing trees... a childhood necessity.

“We are all meant to be naturalists, each in his own degree, and it is inexcusable to live in a world so full of the marvels of plant and animal life and to care for none of these things.”    – Charlotte Mason, British educator

“Set the children free. Let them have fair play. Let them run out when it is raining, take off their shoes when they find pools of water, and when the grass of the meadows is damp with dew, let them run about with bare feet and trample on it. Let them rest quietly when the tree invites them to sleep in its shade. Let them shout and laugh when the sun wakes them up in the morning, as it wakes every other living creature.”    - Maria Montessori, The Discovery of the Child

“Along with milk and vegetables, kids need a steady diet of rocks and worms. Rocks need skipping. Holes need digging. Water needs splashing. Bugs and frogs and slimy stuff need finding.”    – Go RVing advertisement

“It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and, in the contemplation of her beauties, to know of wonder and humility.”    - Rachel Carson, writer, scientist and educator

“You are worried about seeing him spend his early years doing nothing? What? Is it nothing to be happy? Nothing to skip, play and run around all day long? Never in his life will he be so busy again!”  – Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, 1762

“Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see.”  - John W. Whitehead, The Stealing of America, 1983

“It is infinitely well worth the mother’s while to take some pains every day to secure, in the first place, that her children spend hours daily amongst rural and natural objects; and, in the second place, to infuse into them, or rather, to cherish in them, the love of investigation.”  – Charlotte Mason, British educator

“Teaching children about the natural world should be treated as one of the most important events in their lives.” - Thomas Berry

“A fundamental acquaintance with flora and fauna should be common knowledge. But when the people we delegate to study, manage and interpret the natural world are unversed in its parts and ways, how is the ordinary citizen supposed to achieve ecological literacy?” - Robert Michael Pyle in “The Rise and Fall of Natural History (Orion magazine, Autumn 2001)

“Now I see the secret of the best persons. It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.”  – Walt Whitman

“And this our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything. I would not change it.”  - William Shakespeare 

“In the end, our society will be defined not only by what we create, but by what we refuse to destroy.”  - John Sawhill

“If the sight of the blue skies fills you with joy, if a blade of grass springing up in the fields has power to move you, if the simple things of nature have a message that you understand, rejoice, for your soul is alive.”  – Eleonora Duse, Italian actress

“You must have a garden. Wherever you are.”  – Patricia MacLachlan in ”Sarah, Plain and Tall”

“My life has been a series of campfires.”  - Sigurd Olson, American explorer and conservationist