Young Couch Potatoes Take to the Woods

By Dawn Schuett, Post-Bulletin, Rochester, Minn.

Mar. 29–PLAINVIEW — During a hike Monday at Whitewater State Park, a group of Plainview students stopped and huddled around something white and fuzzy on the soggy ground.

Their adult leader, Sara Grover, picked up a clump of it and asked them what it was.

“It’s hair,” 11-year-old Arturo Chavez said confidently. “Deer hair.”

Correct, Grover said. It came from a whitetail deer, an animal that sheds in the spring.

It’s another lesson of nature learned for Arturo and other youngsters in an after-school program known as Project Get Outdoors.

Grover started the program in September, a few months after reading the book, “Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature Deficit-Disorder,” Richard Louv. The author contends that children’s physical and mental health suffers if they don’t spend enough time playing and exploring in the outdoors.

“The book really inspired me,” said Grover, who works for Minnesota state parks and has led other youth programs in Plainview.

Collaborating with 4-H and the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, Grover began Project Get Outdoors to expose youngsters in fifth through eighth grades to nature and outdoor recreational opportunities.

“The big thing is getting them outside and getting them comfortable” with being outdoors, Grover said. It’s a pilot program and Grover is working to expand it statewide.

In recent months, Arturo and other kids in Project Get Outdoors have gone eagle watching, ice fishing and star gazing. Grover, an assistant and three Winona State University students accompany the students on excursions to parks, farms and other sites.

“I get to see different things that I’ve never seen and I get to learn different things that I never knew about nature,” Arturo said.

Jasmyne Johnson, 11, who is Grover’s niece, said she wasn’t “outdoorsy” at all before she joined Project Get Outdoors.

“I hate bugs,” Jasmyne said.

That hasn’t changed, she admitted, but the more time she spends outside, the more she enjoys it and the more she learns about animals, trees, geology and insects.

“It’s regular things I had no idea about,” Jasmyne said.

Without the program, she said, “I’d probably be sitting on the couch, watching television, or in front of the computer.”

—–

Copyright (c) 2006, Post-Bulletin, Rochester, Minn.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.