this summer, i have many lovely distractions working in nature houses and helping with special events, all focusing on natural history and wildlife. for one such event, a nature day camp for kindergarten aged children, the children will be making blackberry jam...a delicious introduction to invasive, alien species. i managed to pick a good bucketful of shiny black berries to supplement their own collection on monday...

here is my concern. i didn't need the latest research on "nature deficiency" to tell me what i have already seen: more and more, children are not developing sincere experiences with nature. i went to Google "blackberry" to find a pretty image for the jam labels...expecting to find drawings and photos of ripe fruit i found instead pages and pages of palm pilots, electronic personal organisers...not a berry in the bunch!

the childhood i enjoyed, rich with unfettered, largely unsupervised, child-directed explorations of dirt and ditches, is no longer the norm.

i truly believe that children need to be dirty.

they need to build diminutive dams in the ditch and watch tadpoles.

they need to watch the seasons change and know that nature has its own rhythms.

they need to dig a hole as deep as their muscles and stamina will allow to discover that they indeed, can not dig to China.

i have thin, dark scratches on my legs from the striving pursuit of the top-branched berry...i hope i can guide a few children to earn the same badge of honor and the sweet reward that follows.

i wore a fancy white linen dress, and my nephew said "who are you, aunty? you're a princess..." and so the dress- up began.

it was fairy-this and fairy-that for the remainder of the morning...we drank mint tea, ate nuts and berries, and each had a diminutive slice of blackberry sponge cake...who says boys don't play teaparty?

during our polite conversation, about fairies and honey, he informed me that REAL fairies pee in the bush. i'd never thought of that before, but who can argue with his logic?