Keeping a Sense of Wonder

I am currently reading A Natural Sense of Wonder [Connecting Kids with Nature through the Seasons] by Rick Van Noy. He is a professor of literature who also desires that his children experience nature. The book is like finding community because he too must make an effort to actually get his kids off the typical track of car rides, green lawns, too safe of playgrounds and away from screen time. One way his family does this is by taking "outings." Sometimes these are afternoon explorations at a local pond, day trips to a nearby hiking trail, and weekend camps.

Currently I am reading a chapter where he is with his family at the Mount Rogers Naturalist Rally looking for salamanders. He not only describes his families' finds but the care with which they must take to protect the salamanders. He describes their important role in the ecosystem-- by eating insects they keep down insects. If the insects are left to eat all the bacteria and nutrients the trees don't thrive and the forest begins to die. It is the connections that his family makes that will allow his children to thrive: in school and in the world. He relates how a respected herpetologist Dr. James Organ relates to him, that "The best scientists are the ones who never quite grew up. They retain a sense of wonder about them."

Wonder is the thread that keeps Van Noy's book going. In his prologue he cites, Rachel Carson as he shares her hope that children be given "a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength." Wonder.

And so now I wonder: What is Wonder? I think of how long it can take two little boys to walk a few simple blocks. It is what I see in their discoveries: picking up a handful of maple seeds, finding a stick and then a collection of sticks, smelling a plant then getting dazed by watching a bee. Wonder. It cannot be rushed. It does not follow a straight line. It involves getting dirty. It deserves to be protected.