Rewilding the American Child

Recently, I came across this article in Outside Magazine called Rewilding the American Child. While I love this article I would like to see more articles and discussions on the role of a mentor in the life of a child as that person connects to nature. Unstructured free-time is just a small part of a bigger whole. Imagine your kids growing up with connections to multiple adults of various ages who are like super fun, adventurous, and loving aunts and uncles for your kids. These adults are watching your kids closely for signs of curiosity, passion, excitement, and fear. When these signs show up the aunts/uncles are there to observe or maybe to help the child reflect and be guided towards a deeper part of themselves. The aunts and uncles not only have the ability to observe and listen deeply (as they have practiced form thousands of hours of sitting alone in the wilderness) but they also possess a deep skill-set of wilderness skills that children are hungry to learn. The wilderness skills (along with the mentor) teach the child that failure is part of learning, that nature is a teacher, that pushing our edges of comfort can be incredibly rewarding, and how creativity can flow from heart to head to hands and then manifest as a gift to others. The mentor plays a vital role in this journey.

I look forward to the day we start seeing articles on the incredible gift of having a wilderness mentor in the life of a child. I won't wait for it though and have plans to do some writing and podcasting on the subject. Let me know if that interests you, or if you would like to be interviewed, or you would like to support this in some other way.

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