An Indoor (or Backseat) Childhood Does Reduce

These Days, Unplugged Places Are Getting Hard To Find.

There Is A Real World, Beyond The Glass, For Children Who Look, For Those Whose Parents Encourage Them To Truly See.

Prize The Natural Spaces And Shorelines Most Of All, Because Once They're Gone, With Rare Exceptions They're Gone Forever. In Our Bones We Need The Natural Curves Of Hills, The Scent Of Chapparal, The Whisper Of Pines, The Possibility Of Wildness. We Require These Patches Of Nature For Our Mental Health And Our Spiritual Resilience.

Nature Is Imperfectly Perfect, Filled With Loose Parts And Possibilities, With Mud And Dust, Nettles And Sky, Transcendent Hands-on Moments And Skinned Knees.

In Medieval Times, If Someone Displayed The Symptoms We Now Identify As Boredom, That Person Was Thought To Be Committing Something Called Acedia, A 'dangerous Form Of Spiritual Alienation' -- A Devaluing Of The World And Its Creator.