Paradise lost: Today's children need to get out more

Take A Child Outside Week starts Wednesday.

Why not send a child outside?

Why not let schoolchildren go outside for recesses of substantial duration?

Why should any special week start on a Wednesday?

Why does nostalgia for simpler times strike this aging ex-kid when he has to admit that we now need a Take A Child Outside Week?

The good folks at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences came up with that idea and put it into action last year, and are again advancing it with partner organizations throughout the United States and Canada. Around here, those groups are the Sewee Visitor and Environmental Education Center and Lowcountry Earth Force, which both offer practical suggestions about how to take kids' awareness of outdoor wonders to new heights.

But while adults should take kids (and themselves) outside more, we should remember that kids have more fun outside (and inside) with other kids than with grown-ups.

We should remember, too, the enlightenment we once reaped via outdoor wanderings.

Back in this ex-kid's distant youth, our outdoor adventures — and misadventures — weren't just fun. They were instructive. While getting plenty of exercise, we also learned plenty of lessons — sometimes the hard way — about not just outdoor nature, but human nature.

Yet many of us, as parents, have made our own kids' lives so structured, confined and safe — so dull — that we've stunted their development. Such restrictions obstruct the converging flows of imagination and discovery that can uplift kids who go not just outside their homes and schools, but outside the overwrought precautions modern America imposes on them.

Sure, times change. So do common-sense limits on how far kids should roam.

Heck, these days we don't even let dogs roam freely — though cats retain their license to kill birds across a wide range.

Little boys with BB guns once enjoyed that same thrill of the hunt in these parts. Prudent local parents could let little kids stray beyond their yards, even their blocks. Not-so-little kids eventually could extend their boundaries well past their neighborhoods.

Back then, woods still stood between South Windermere and its namesake shopping center, and south of the railroad track (now the West Ashley Greenway) through Byrnes Down. Such dense foliage provided good hideout cover.

Our hardy gang climbed trees, blazed trails, slogged through marshes, swam in tidal creeks and braved the elements. We impressed turtles, frogs, fiddler crabs and other stinky critters into our nefarious missions.

We rode our bikes long distances.

Across Folly Road into the Crescent, a lake beckoned for verboten after-dark dips.

Across the Wappoo Cut lay the exhilaration of operating behind enemy lines. To us St. Andrews boys, James Island was not only remote and rustic, but hostile and hazardous.

We were Rocks. They were Rams. We were urbane sophisticates. They were backwoods primitives.

We felt the same haughty disdain for those who dwelled in what were then the wilds of Johns Island, Summerville and even Mount Pleasant. That relative city-country rivalry mindset flipped when we crossed the old Ashley River bridge onto the Charleston peninsula, where preening slickers abounded.

More joys for growing boys:

By age 12 or so, we were hitchhiking to Folly Beach and downtown. Such vast latitude for lads so young sounds scary now, but we came out all right.

Most of us. Sort of.

Then again, we Baby Boomers still whine a lot. Our crybaby angst now stems from the long-overdue realization that investing entails the risk of financial loss.

OK, this Dow downer hurts.

Yet the net-worth pain we feel today pales in comparison to the literal hunger some of our grandparents and parents felt during the not-so-Great Depression.

Our generation is working to take kids outside. A few generations back, kids went outside to work in the fields.

We worry about what's happening to our 401Ks. They worried about where they could get three square meals a day.

Despite this spell of 21st century hard times, Americans of all ages remain amazingly prosperous on the historic scale.

But even rich kids get shortchanged when we need a special week to Take A Child Outside.

Frank Wooten is associate editor of The Post and Courier. His e-mail is wooten@postandcourier.com.