It’s a Tuesday morning a handful of days before the autumn equinox. Fourth grader Luisa is exploring a rocky wonderland along East Camino Cielo, an area of climbable outcroppings and pine trees threaded with trails. She asks me, “Do you hear that?” I hear a wren-tit calling from the chaparral. “It’s a cricket,” she asserts. About to correct her, I listen deeper. I hear the cricket.
As we pause, the soundscape expands to include the breeze in the trees and the clamorous joy of the rest of Luisa’s class exploring nearby. Luisa tells me she’s a naturalist. In particular, she says she’s interested in moss, pointing to a sandstone boulder. We crouch down, peering closely at the lichens colonizing the rock. She asks, “Do you think the other kids want to be friends to nature?”
This is the second year Wilderness Youth Project (WYP) has offered this Bridge to Nature program to about 300 Santa Barbara 4th graders. Most of them don’t show up curious about moss. But as we rotate through classes during the program, we realized it’s a time of firsts — the first time the kids get to climb on rocks, to see squirrels eating seeds from a pinecone, to investigate the muddy shallows of the Santa Ynez River, to marvel at moss. As Ralph Waldo Emerson’s poetic reflection reminds us, “The first in time and the first in importance on the influences upon the mind is that of nature.”