| West Virginia State Parks, Where Children & Nature Meet
By Hoy Murphy
 The air was chilly and the ground was covered with light snow on a January morning at North Bend State Park, where 10-year-old Andrew McGuffey had joined dozens of other cold weather enthusiasts for the annual Winter Wonder Weekend.
"The best time to play outside is in the winter because of the snow. It’s really fun," he explained. "There are icicles on cars and houses and I try to knock them down. I like to hike in winter because you can go on the trail and you can see icicles hanging off the rocks. Some of them are thick and really tall, taller than me."
Andrew was with other members of his Williamstown family for this event, which is sponsored each year by WVDNR. Its purpose for more than three decades has been to encourage everyone, but especially children, to leave the comfort of their living rooms, television sets, and computers for a few hours to explore the winter wonders of the outdoors. It worked for Andrew, who soon headed off down a trail in search of his favorite animal, the squirrel, hoping to chase one up a tree. "They’re really cool," he said.
W ith his 2006 book Last Child in the Woods (Algonquin Books), journalist Richard Louv helped start a nationwide movement to reconnect children and nature, and to battle what he termed "nature deficit disorder."
"Children spend 44 hours a week plugged into some type of electronic medium," Louv said in a speech in 2006. "They spend more time in highly structured activities, longer hours in school, and they bring home more homework. At the end of the day, there is not a lot of time left for them to go outside to play. This trend has had a profound effect on our children’s mental, physical and spiritual health.
"Schools and the news media do too good a job teaching children about the Amazon Rain Forest," Louv continued. "Most kids can tell you all about the rain forest, but they can’t tell you about the last time they went outside and found a snake or watched the leaves fall or listened to the wind blow. They know more about the rain forests than they do about their own woods."
The problem is compounded as more children are born to parents who are too busy to share the outdoors with them, or who themselves lost that connection with nature when they were growing up. Sometimes, Louv contends, we frighten our children about nature. "We tell them that ‘the bogeyman lives in the woods,’" he said. "Television tells us about child abduction. Parents are scared and that is the number one reason why kids don’t go outside."
 However, that attitude may be changing. Louv notes that many experts now believe that exposure to nature enhances child development and increases children’s sense of wonder about their world, and that more parents are looking for ways to make that connection.
Parents seeking a natural wonderland to share with their children have many places to choose from in the Mountain State. Indeed, West Virginia is the second most forested state in the nation per land mass, behind only Maine. There are thousands of acres of public land and 50 state parks, forests, and wildlife management areas available for all types of outdoor activities.
The West Virginia State Parks system takes advantage of these abundant resources to provide many programs that enable children and nature to meet. "We’re proud of the staff and volunteers who work together all year long to encourage youth to come outside and explore the great outdoors," says Patrice "Sissie" Summers, program coordinator for WVDNR’s State Parks and Recreation Section. "Our activities calendar includes all kinds of things to keep children exploring and playing outdoors. We sometimes refer to it as ‘Nature Unplugged’ or ‘The Playstation Died, Now What Do I Do?’"
Young People for Parks, a program directed to children ages 6 through 16, is held at 17 state parks each summer. Naturalists create outdoor adventures such as stream searches, flower hikes, bird identification walks, and other outdoor activities. Each child who completes three activities receives a small reward.
"If you make the activity fun and interesting, the kids won’t even know they’ve learned something," says Pipestem Resort State Park naturalist Jim Phillips. "When they see a naturalist scoop up a black snake or a tadpole and hear about the important roles they play in the environment, it’s memorable, no doubt. They learn something they’ll never forget and they learn it outside."
 Phillips leads many nature activities for children. He brings live animals, such as snakes and bats, to schools and special events like Wildlife Day at the Capitol. He also organizes smaller outdoor sessions such as pond walks.
"We take a dip net and scoop stuff out of the pond and see what kinds of critters we can find," he explains. "We commonly get dragonfly nymphs, caddis fly larvae, tadpoles, and crawdads. During one identification exercise, the kids identified every animal as ‘bait’ or ‘not bait.’"
Phillips also works with special needs kids. He recently took a group from Beckley to the mouth of the Bluestone River to look for eagles. "It was a tremendous success," he says. "We had eagles in view for the entire 90 minutes we were there. The kids were also excited about the ring-billed gulls we saw. It was a great experience for me, and I think for them and their teachers as well."
Another summer program provided through West Virginia State Parks called Geology Rocks! encourages children to play as well as learn. Ken Ashton of the West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey works with state parks to present this program, teaching kids not only about rocks but about history, topography, and how the land affected human settlement. "Like we say in our flyer, if you don’t know gravel from granite, this is an opportunity to learn while you explore and play," Ashton says.
Children (and adults) also find large birds fascinating, especially when they can observe them up close. That’s the opportunity provided by the Three Rivers Avian Center, which brings its raptors program, featuring live hawks, eagles, and other predatory birds, to many state parks each summer. "Some call it ‘close encounters of the raptor kind,’" says Ron Perrone, who codirects the Avian Center with his wife, Wendy. "We present each bird and explain its role in the food chain, its importance to the environment, and its habitat. Kids and their parents love it, and as they get to know more about the birds, they begin to understand the links between nature and the world’s ecosystem."
Organized hikes in state parks and forests also provide great opportunities for children to meet with nature. One example is the Walk in the Winter Woods sponsored each January at Kanawha State Forest. Volunteer leaders take both adults and children along trails, sharing their knowledge of birds, trees, and animal tracking, as well as the history of the area.
"Kids really enjoy being in the woods," says naturalist Doug Wood, who leads hikes in all seasons and is a member of the Kanawha State Forest Foundation. "They get to handle the plants. They get to see some critters in the water. Sometimes we get them scouring around for items to look at, like a scavenger hunt, and they really enjoy that."
 Kevin Dials, Kanawha State Forest assistant superintendent, agrees. "Last year we included a summer naturalist program geared toward our camping and day-use crowds," he says. "We sometimes get kids who have never been in the woods and away from electronics—children from Charleston, a mere seven miles away, who say, ‘Wow, I never knew we had something like this in Charleston!’ We’ve been able to keep them interested and it’s really a wonderful thing."
Other state parks and forests programs aimed toward making children comfortable in the outdoors include fishing rodeos, "river stomps" (catching and identifying water creatures), and bug walks. "These walks could be called ‘organized chaos,’" says Phillips. "We stress not grabbing things that look like they will bite or sting, and then we turn the kids loose with nets and big boxes."
In addition, state parks staff members work with the Wildlife Resources and Law Enforcement sections of WVDNR and other state agencies to present kid-friendly nature programs such as Hooked on Fishing, Not on Drugs. The agencies also team up to offer conservation camps, Earth Day activities, National Hunting and Fishing Days programs at Stonewall Resort State Park, and many events held at the local school level.
"I work with a small group of students at Warm Springs Middle School in Berkeley Springs who call themselves the Explorers," says Kelly Smith, naturalist for Cacapon Resort State Park. "I truly believe that children learn what they live. I try to provide a variety of hands-on experiences for them." So far the Explorers have learned wildlife tracking, orienteering, outdoor survival skills, and plant and animal identification.
These outdoor activities are great for getting kids and nature together, but they are successful only if parents, guardians, teachers, youth leaders, and other adults take an active part, Summers says.
"Kids need to see adults taking an interest, being concerned, and acting responsibly in regard to conservation, the environment, and land-use issues," Summers adds. "Kids need to learn why we shouldn’t litter and why we don’t leave used fishing line at the edge of a river or pond. But unless adults encourage children to enjoy and appreciate nature and to be responsible, we will fail the next generation."
"I was invited as a guest by my friend Jessica and her mom and dad," says 11-year-old Isabelle Eagle of Nutter Fort, West Virginia, who attended her first Winter Wonder Weekend at North Bend State Park last January. "I’ve been to the park before, but this is the first time in the winter."
Holding a pine cone and examining it, she explained why she likes to be outside. "I like climbing and hiking. I do it as often as I can," she says. "I like to camp. I would tell other kids my age that there is a lot of fun outside. It’s nice and there are a lot of friendly people."
To learn more about activities for children (and adults!) in West Virginia state parks and forests, call 1.800.CALL.WVA or visit www.wvstateparks.com.
A lifelong resident of West Virginia, Hoy Murphy works for the West Virginia Department of Commerce. He enjoys camping with his family, especially at Audra and North Bend state parks. Contact him at hoy.r.murphy@wv.gov.
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