Author Talks About the Human/Nature Connection

Tue 1/26 @ 7PM

Want to explore issues around nature and the environment with activists who have written books about their passions? Cuyahoga Valley National Park has launched a “Distinguished Author” series called Crooked River Reads, with five programs spread out from now until October.

The first one takes place on Tuesday January 26, and will feature journalist/author Richard Louv who, in his 2005 book Last Child in the Woods, talked about “Nature-Deficit Disorder,” which he says “is not a medical diagnosis, but a useful term — a metaphor — to describe what many of us believe are the human costs of alienation from nature, as suggested by recent research.”

Some of the costs he identified: obesity, vitamin D deficiency, attention deficits, increased physical and emotional illnesses, decreased use of the senses, a rising rate of myopia and more. He says that today, more than 1,000 studies support his assertion.

“Recognizing this, some physicians now write prescriptions for nature time,” he says. “Animal-assisted therapy is among the fastest-growing trends in health care. We see a rapid increase in the number of nature-based preschools. Increasingly, biophilic architects are weaving natural elements into workplaces, homes, neighborhoods and cities. Biophilic design links nature connection to higher human productivity and creativity. We know this now: The more high-tech our lives become, the more nature we need.

Louv co-founded the nonprofit Children & Nature Network, to support this “new new nature movement.” And of the ten books he’s written, several of which deal with aspects of the human/nature connection.

He’ll be talking about four of them — Last Child in the Woods, Vitamin N, Nature Principle and Our Wild Calling — in his Crooked River Reads talk titledPLANET HOPE: Species Loneliness, Nature-Deficit Disorder and the Future of Life on Earth.” It’s $10 per person, $8.50 for members. You can register for the event here. Learn more about future Crooked River Reads programs here.

 

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