by Tamarack Song
In this day with so many kids being conditioned right from birth to suppress and deny their natural selves in the all-encompassing urban-virtual reality, there’s no longer any more nature in the equation – it is just kids. They might hear about kids and nature in the stories of their parents and grandparents when they were children, and “kids are nature” is so removed from them that they would be exposed to it only in a movie or college anthropology course.
It is hard for children, or virtually anyone for that matter, today to understand that at one time there was no choice to be inside or outside – communing or not communing with nature was not an option. To be alive was to be immersed in all of life – everybody and everything was always together – humans, wind, trees, animals. Like clouds being in the sky and fish being in the water – it was just the way things were and there was no question or discussion about any other way to be, any more than one might discuss whether it would be better for fish to live in the trees, or clouds to burrow underground.
If this book is about anything, it is about the nature of children, and when we know their nature, it becomes obvious that children are nature. They are designed for nature; they are drawn to nature; it is only because of us in our culture that they would act or live unnaturally. The process of this book is both a healing and an unraveling, so that we ourselves might come to know the natural child within, and in the process learn how to honor the true nature of our children.
Check out the table of contents here.
