I have nature deficit disorder.

I can’t concentrate. My brain is foggy (so I apologize if this blog is jarbled). I want to go jump, leap, climb, twirl until my heart leaps out of my chest. I want to zone out in the way only nature lets you. I want to breathe in trees. 

Nature deficiency disorder is not a classified disorder like those found in the DSM. Rather, it is a phrase coined by journalist Richard Louv in his 2005 book, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder. Louv interviewed over 3,000 parents and children across the United States about their relationship to nature. What did he find? Sensationalist media coverage, regulations, and technology have driven children away from nature.

Twenty-four hour cable coverage of missing children have made parents (perhaps rightly) paranoid about letting their children wander too far. Housing developments with strict rules on how and where to garden and play limit exploration. Cellphones and Playstation’s consume children’s thoughts. (In this article, a 15 year-old child professes to not know anyone that has ever built a tree fort). The consequences of the breakup aren’t pretty and include increased anxiety, trouble concentrating, lower grades, and reduced physical health. Separating kids from the outdoors also decreases a child’s inclination to conserve it when they grow-up. But NDD is affecting another 75 percent of the population: adults are deprived of nature, too. Yet, there is no outrage. There is no adult Outdoor Bill of Rights illustrating that this deprivation is unacceptable or that we should be attempting to change it.

When I was in grad school in my mid-twenties, my friend Erica once joked that if aliens were watching our planet, they would think computers were our gods. From the moment when we woke up, before we even brushed our teeth, my classmates and I would check our email or refresh the front page of the New York Times. Today, Generations X and Y can be seen pounding our keyboards, tamping out a tune like the organist in old scary movies. Computers appear to feed us (or at least cause me to feed on unneeded spoonfuls of Nutella). But they don’t nurture us, as my anxiety, restlessness, and current slow blog writing attest.

I started trying to hammer out this essay yesterday. There I was, sitting in a windowless space, ironically writing about my disconnect from nature. I didn't even know where to start. So then I decided I would go outside, and sit in a park, and remember how good nature was for me; I mean, this was a blog about nature, for pete’s sake. I closed up my Word doc, pushed my medicine ball back from desk…and found myself one hour later still in my office, “getting things done.” Needless to say, my brain is still fuzzy.

Somehow, a child's disconnect from nature -- an action considered so unjust that there is a movement against it -- is the norm for adults. And it's unexpectedly become my norm. But it doesn't have to be. Please join me in the newest uprising, No Adults Left Inside. Just like the kiddos, the 18 and over generations also need to put down the handheld devices, set aside the homework, and plunge into the wilderness. Maybe even build a tree fort. It’s probably the most important work we’ll do all day.

[Photo: At the crossroads -- it's time to plunge into the great beyond. Credit: j o s h, http://www.flickr.com/photos/geeosh/]