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Nature is just out the door, down the road
Editorial / Lincoln Journal Star
Americans — kids in particular — need to get up off their duffs, away from video screens and experience the great outdoors.
The trend for Americans to spend less and less time outside was confirmed recently by a study published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Participation in outdoor activities has dropped about 18 percent to 25 percent in the past 20 years.
Nebraskans have a great opportunity to do something about it — for themselves and for others — by expanding tourism aimed at providing more outdoor opportunities for visitors from big cities.
The state has a wealth of outdoor opportunities. A few of them have gained national renown.
For example, one of the premier wildlife spectacles in the country will begin soon when thousands of sandhill cranes stop along the Platte River on their annual migration to summer nesting grounds in Canada.
Another popular spot is the Niobrara River, ranked as one of the top canoeing rivers in the country, according to Backpacker magazine and the National Geographic.
Other possibilities include stays on working farms and ranches like the Flying Bee Beefmaster Ranch at the foot of Wildcat Hills in the Nebraska Panhandle. (A list can be obtained from the state Department of Travel and Tourism.)
There is so much else in the Nebraska outdoors for residents and out-of-state tourists to experience.
Nebraska has something increasingly rare and valuable in today's crowded world — open spaces where a person can look across miles and miles of land without buildings, roads, power lines or fences.
The Nature Conservancy operates the nearly 60,000-acre Niobrara Valley Preserve, where it has developed a model for grasslands management that includes a herd of 500 bison that graze on the open prairie, while cattle are tended in other parts of the preserve. The conservancy and the Grassland Foundation based in Lincoln are trying to expand and preserve grasslands, based in part on the belief that they will be a draw for ecological tourism.
Closer to home, Lincoln residents can register at city libraries to participate in the Lincoln Safari. Organizers boast the Safari "will get families and other groups of people off the couch and into unstructured corners and hidden places within Lincoln "where they have a chance to experience the natural environment."
The researchers who documented the drop in outdoor activities coined the term "videophilia" to describe the trend toward spending time in front of a screen, which, unsurprisingly, is concurrent with the rise in obesity.
There's no replacement for experiencing the outdoors with all senses engaged, surrounded by a 360-degree vista full of nature's surprises, perhaps with a breeze that ruffles hair and brings snatches of bird song and the scent of wild plum blossoms. The opportunities are rich and at hand, just outside the door and down the road.
This Editorial appeared in the Lincoln Journal Star March 11, 2008.