A look of horror passed over the teacher’s face when I told the kids to leave the path and walk into the forest.
What about the plants?
What about the habitat?
Our big human feet will destroy the untouched pristine forest!
We have to stay on the path!
I get it. Our rule-oriented adult brains love paths. But when your child is playing in the forest, please, please, get off the path!
Here’s why.
The biodiversity crisis is not caused by playing kids
The sixth mass extinction is happening around us, a destruction event on the scale of the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. Entire ecosystems are at risk. That is true.
And one more thing is true:
Absolutely none of the 50,000 threatened species on our planet is endangered because too many children are playing in the woods.
In fact, species are endangered because too few children are playing in the forest – but I’ll get to that in a second.
Yes, there are absolutely some places with very fragile and rare ecosystems where human feet should not go. If an area is labeled to that effect, please follow those rules.
But when we’re talking about your standard local forest or park, your child playing off path is not going to cause an extinction event.
Biodiversity loss is caused by large issues in our society, like our agriculture systems, our waste management, and frankly, unbridled capitalism and corporate greed.
It is not caused by the yellow rainboots of preschoolers looking at bugs.
Suggesting that the solution to environmental collapse is to make kids stay on the path is as ridiculous as saying that the solution to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is for you to stop buying any plastic packaging.
These global scale catastrophes are the responsibility of corporations and governments. Children are not responsible. And restricting them won’t solve it. (In fact, it will make it worse.)
Kids aren’t responsible… But they will be
So what will solve these problems?
Obviously, our society needs major change at a high level, and we need it yesterday.
But that does not mean that we or our children do not have any power.
Working together, we as individuals can make a difference for the planet through our votes, our purchases, our donations, our work, and more. This work will be long term, so we need our children to continue to carry this torch forward when it’s their turn.
We need our children to care about nature.
The whole planet needs our children to care about nature – because if not enough people care, then we actually are doomed.
And here’s the thing : humans don’t love strangers.
We only love things we know.
Love requires knowing. Deeply, truly knowing – it’s practically the definition of loving, to know and understand someone or something.
So for our children to grow up into the nature lovers that our planet needs, they need to know nature.
They need to have a real, personal, up close relationship with it. They’re kids. They learn through touch and play and physical experiences.
Children can only love nature if you let them get off the path and spend time with it. Up close and personal.
So let’s recap…
Keeping children on the path:
- Does nothing to resolve the real problems causing biodiversity collapse
- Prevents children from developing a deep love of nature that will lead them to protect ecosystems as an adult
While if we let them off the path:
- Damage is minimal
- They have the chance to grow into real planet protectors
So we should just let our kids trample everywhere???
No, definitely not!
There are some fragile and rare ecosystems that are definitely a no go, as I said above.
But even when we’re talking about a “basic” local forest, there can be species that need special protection. And any area will suffer erosion and destruction with repeated overuse.
Forest school practitioners study these considerations as part of our training. When in the forest, we guide children away from fragile areas and rare species, and we ensure that the group moves around so one area isn’t overused.
This is part of the invisible work of a forest school lead that you may not see.
Critically, we also teach these skills to the kids.
When staying on the path, kids learn nothing about coexisting with other species.
It’s essentially abstinence for nature play!
And just like abstinence doesn’t work for sex ed, “don’t touch anything ever” doesn’t work for nature ed. (Unless you keep the kids in human built areas all the time, and please let’s stop doing that.)
We need to teach kids how to peacefully coexist in nature!
Forest school activities are the perfect place to do that. In a child-led and play-based way, we teach children guidelines and model values that allow them to play with minimal damage to our plant, animals, and Land friends.
This is how we can raise kids who love nature and reap all the amazing benefits of free play in nature, without causing undue damage to species and ecosystems that need protection.
We’re protecting a fantasy
At the heart of the teacher’s horror of leaving the path was a common fantasy our culture believes – and yep, now I’m going to start talking about colonialism.
We have a fantasy in Western culture of a “pristine, untouched wilderness”. We have an idea that human and nature cannot coexist, that we are opposites, and that our presence in an area – even a local forest park – is inherently damaging.
This is a belief. Not a truth.
Other cultures see humanity very differently, as a part of nature that belongs alongside other species.
Indigenous cultures certainly worked to protect other species and ecosystems from damage, but they didn’t do it by treating nature as a pristine and untouchable Other, or as seeing humanity as an evil whose very footsteps destroy all.
It was a colonial idea to declare the forests of this continent “wilderness” (they were in fact lived in and often managed by Indigenous peoples), and later, when greed and short-sightedness caused enormous destruction to those environments, it was a colonized, western idea to “return” certain “special” areas to their “natural” human-less state.
These areas were never human-less.
Children have played in these forests for 12,000 thousand years.
They haven’t been “untouched” since the mammoths.
And the forests can handle it. Forests have had human occupants for all that time. They also used to have a lot more large animals than they do now.
Footsteps are part of the forest ecosystem. Animals, including humans, should be moving among the trees.
A childless forest hasn’t returned to its natural state. It’s lost its natural state.
A forest is in its right, natural, and historic state when children are laughing among the trees.
This is their habitat too
Don’t get me wrong, I am all for protecting species and habitats. Let’s ban development on wetlands. Let’s make corporations pay for the plastic waste their products create. Let’s plant native trees and fill lawns with flowers.
We need to protect habitats.
I agree with that teacher there.
But I would like to gently remind her…
One of the animals we’re protecting these habitats for is our kids.
The forest is their habitat, too.
Children belong in the forest as much as the bears and the birds.
And like any animal, without access to their proper habitat, kids suffer.
We see the rise of mental and physical illnesses. We see the stress, the depression, the loneliness.
There are complicated contributing factors to that, but one big one that we can fix right now is this:
Put those kids back into their proper habitat.
Go spend some time in a forest.
And please, get off the path.