Nature literacy. I’ve read about environmental literacy and ecoliteracy, but I hadn’t heard the term nature literacy until I saw it used by the Orion Society in a book by David Sobel. I’d like to adopt that term for this blog. “ The ability to learn from and respond to direct experience of nature”. Our society doesn’t have that ability anymore. With so many of us wrapped up in our day to day lives and living so far removed from the woods and water, mountains and deserts, we no longer “see” nature, even when it is still right in front of our eyes. And it’s so important! Not only because without an understanding of ecology and the environment , we are at risk of fundamentally and irreversibly changing our world, but because we have lost something essential to our spirits. We humans are a part of nature, not apart from nature. Not such an original thought, but so true! Our community is then an inclusive one, not just those people who live in our towns and neighborhoods, but all those organisms that live under and over and beside us. We need to get to know them as we would a new neighbor who moves in next door.
By the way,that book by David Sobel is a good one, especially if you work with children. It is part of the Nature Literacy Series and includes the following titles. Great books.
David Sobel. Beyond Ecophobia. 1996.
Clare Leslie, John Talmadge & Thomas Wessels. Into the Field. 1996.
Orion Society. Stories in the Land. An Anthology. 1998.
David Sobel. Place-based Education. 2003, 2005.
Finding My Place 