A walk on the wildside

I guess that is what my teenage daughter, Femke, will call our hike today. As New Zealand celebrates a public holiday, I took my six year old daughter, Esmee, for a treasure hunt along the Korokoro stream. To my astonishment, Femke, bored from having to much screentime on her hands, volunteered to join us. So of we went. Richard Louv writes in his book "Last Child in the Woods, saving our children from nature deficit disorder" the following:

"Even as children and teenagers become more aware of global threats to the environment, their physical contact, their intimacy with nature is fading"

Is my teenage daughter really out of touch with nature? My skepticism soon turned to optimism. She left her Ipod and cellphone in the car, and she was first out on the track. She was the only one to climb a tree, and the first to spot the wild duckling down the riverstream.

She found a spider on her sweatshirt and she managed to skim some stones across the water. When we found a fern with some spores, she gave Esmee a biology lecture about "asexual reproduction" as she called it. I must admit, I was impressed.

We hang over and looked under bridges to see if we could find tadpoles. We run and jumped, stopped to listen to the lark in the sky and the crickets in the blackberry bushes. We spotted a fantail and several butterflies.

Femke helped Esmee look for treasures. Esmee, with her child's eye sees beauty in many little things. She found a bone with teeth, a beautiful gem stone, a plant complete with roots and leaves, some moss, "seaglass" as she calls it and "sharp rocks that people used as tools in the old days, when there were apes".

A play on the water edge to float some sticks topped of the fun.


A six year old and a sixteen year old, both with a magic eye for wonder that only a child will have.