​Have You Ever Seen a Corn Flake Tree? by Dr. terry wilson

Fifty years ago, I became a parent for the first time, and my world changed in an
instant. The unconditional love of a parent for a child that I felt was immediate,
and with that love came a commitment to not only be a good parent and a good
teacher, but also to learn in the process. When my daughter was a preschooler,
we used to spend time walking in the woods and just looking at things in nature.
It was always fun to see the excitement and sense of wonder in her eyes when
she would come across some new animal, plant, or even just a rock that reminded
her of something else.

One Sunday afternoon my daughter and I were walking in a small, wooded lot
near where we lived, and we started looking at different trees. It did not take long
for her to recognize that the different trees in that forest had different kinds of
leaves. Leaves are often where most of us look when we begin identifying trees.
However, on that fall afternoon, lots of the trees had shed their leaves and the
shapes and colors of those remaining had changed a lot as autumn progressed. At
one point, I remember asking her if there were other differences between some
of the trees we were standing near, and she immediately started looking at the
trees’ bark. So, I asked her to touch one of the trees with her eyes closed. She
reached out to a tree near her, and with little hesitation she said, “corn flakes!” I
knew that the tree was a wild black cherry, a tree that does have a rough, scraggly
bark and that, yes, it does sort of feel like a bunch of corn flakes. I was about to
tell her the “real” name of the tree, but before I could share that with her, she
looked up at me and said, “let’s call this the Corn Flakes tree, Daddy!” At that
moment I realized that, at her age, the name corn flakes tree was indeed a great
name, since it came from her own experiences at that age. She knew what corn
flakes felt like, and she had used words that she was familiar with to describe
them.

From then on, she could pick out a corn flakes tree whenever she saw one. Years
later I did share with her that the tree had “another” name. It was a wild black
cherry, or even a Prunus Serotina, the scientific name. But on that Sunday
afternoon, I realized that what was important was that she had “experienced”
something in nature directly and then used her own vocabulary to give a pretty
good description of it. That day proved to be one I often remembered in my
teaching career when I was trying to help my students make a personal
connection with the natural world through direct experiences, not just by relying
upon what they had heard or read in a book.

Indirectly my daughter had also taught me another lesson, and that was that our
children (and all of us) need to have places to experience nature. Half a century
later this need is more crucial than ever, as we continually see natural spaces
converted through development, often with little in the way of celebrating what
is natural. In his book, Last Child in the Woods, author Richard Louv provides a
synthesis of current research that shows, among other things, that the average
child in the U.S. today spends very little time per week in natural places. At the
same time that same child is spending about 70 hours per week in front of some
sort of device or screen. Louv has coined the phrase “nature-deficit disorder,” and
although he openly states that it is not a disorder based upon medicine, it is
connected to the health of our children. He provides research showing
connections between more and more time spent indoors, immersed in our
devices, with the well documented recent increases in cases of childhood
depression, obesity, and ADHD. At the same time, Louv offers hope, as he talks
about how increasing the time children spend exploring nature can negate many
of the negative aspects of these conditions.
​
So, what does that mean to me? First, we all need to spend more time outside in
this wonderful world, experiencing the beauty and serenity that can come from
nature. Books like Sharing Nature With Children, by Joseph Cornell, can provide
us with a myriad of simple ways that families can experience the world around us.
Second, it says to me that we need to work hard to ensure that natural spaces are
available to us, no matter where we live. Whether it’s exploring wonderful
outdoor classrooms in places like Raven’s Run, Bernheim Forest, or Land Between
the Lakes, or just the simple things we can learn from a single tree in our
backyard. We must make sure that we get out and learn, with, for, and from our
children. Hopefully you will discover your own “corn flakes tree” out there
somewhere.