It feels good to see wild things in their natural habitat.  It helps us connect to the wild part of each and every one of us.  It is important that every so often we get out of the sameness, the tameness, of our daily lives, and connect back to the wild and free part of ourselves.  The best way to do this is to create what has been called a "wild zone." 

A wild zone is a place that adults, children and teenagers can go to enjoy unstructured, free play in nature.  In a nature preserve or wildlife refuge, you can only observe nature and pass through the land, leaving it untouched, and it is important that places like that exist.  But other natural places can be created which give us the opportunity to alter the environment and respectfully experience nature.  In places like this, people build forts, treehouses, and other structures.  They play around with water and mud, make sculptures out of natural materials, make up new games, and much more.   They are able to spend unstructured time being together, experiencing the natural world, being creative, interacting across age groups, letting their hair down, letting go of the stress of modern life, being spontaneous, observing and appreciating animals, and each other.

It has been my experience that the more time people spend in a natural environment in which they are free to interact with it in any way needed, the more clarity it brings to their lives, the more emotional issues resolve themselves,  Tempers even out; stress releases itself; a narrow view of life broadens; the things we think are important become less so.  We see just how much of the problems in our lives are of our own making, and depend entirely upon our perceptions. We long to experience something more meaningful.  Interacting with a natural space helps us do that.

Whereas children used to spend their free time escaping to the nearest natural area they could find (parks, waterways, ponds, forests, farms, meadows, etc) and spent time building and playing in homemade forts and treehouses, skimming rocks across ponds, making mudpies, birdwatching, following animal tracks, collecting rocks, and making use of their imaginations for make-bleieve play, few children have access to natural areas fo rplay, and thoe who do are often confined to areas closer to home for safety reasons.  Adults live and work in concrete jungles.  Many families do not even have a yard where people can run and play on the grass.  This takes it's toll on the human spirit, and indeed, geomagnetic frequencies are different in natural areas than they are in urbanized areas.  This means people are under more stress just due to the area they live in.

Adults have the mistaken belief that having their children attend this sport or that lesson will make them more successful.  Consequently, they schedule and overschedule both their children's lives and their own.  Individuals do not even have five minutes to sit on the grass, feel the sun on their face, sift the sand between their fingers, and look up at the clouds.  How much different we would be with regular exposure the the earth which we were intended to fully experience every day.  We have become estranged from the environment that was meant to support us, and our lives have moved indoors.  Could we live our lives totally indoors?  Without the soil, we could not grow food or feed animals.  Without the sun, no food will grow, and we would die from Vitamin D deficiency because the sun never touches our skin.  Fear of skin cancer has kept us from allowing ourelves to absorb the amount of sunshine necessary to activate our immune systems.   We don't realize that we are literally killing ourselves by remaining inside our concrete jungles.

Today, at the very least, go outside on your lunch hour.  Sit in the sun while you eat.  Feel the wind on you face.  Take your shoes off and rub them on the grass while you read a book.  Take your children to the park.  Fly a kite, play in the sandbox, play make believe with your children.  Go camping.  Go pick up smooth stones out of the river.  Go fishing.  Build something.  And above all, try and find a wild place to let yourself go and interact with nature.  Did you ever hear of an animal that only lived in the shade?  No, almost all of them live and hunt for their food in the sun.  Let's follow the animals' lead.