Ours are complicated times, to say the least. The dialogue about how to solve the serious challenges facing our nation — homelessness, income inequality, poverty, hunger, obesity and still others — is often charged with cutting, divisive rhetoric. Meanwhile, technological advances have allowed people across the globe, who may otherwise never have interacted, to connect and collaborate in meaningful ways. Scientists and researchers are building great collections of data that will help humanity adjust to climate change, emerging diseases and potential food or water shortages.
Amid such ups and downs, voices of nature and science advocates like Scott Sampson are a welcome check against the tendency to despair. The paleontologist, educator and children’s television star, while acknowledging that many aspects of American society have changed since the 1960s and 1970s, is careful to point out that it’s never too late to reevaluate how adults, families and children can forge deeper connections to nature and reap the resulting mental and physical health benefits. He reminds us that children are innately curious and are hardwired to respond, emotionally and physically, to the natural world, and the development of such reactions is an essential component of healthy development.
In his role as “Dr. Scott” on the Emmy-nominated and Jim Henson Company-produced PBS KIDS series “Dinosaur Train,” and through his work as chief curator at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, Sampson has seen the faces of countless children light up when presented with cool facts about nature. Having recently taken the helm as president and CEO of Vancouver, British Colombia-based Science World, Sampson is excited to continue his work connecting children and families to the natural world and championing the science and technology that can help people better understand their wilder surroundings.
This October, Sampson will bring his exciting message of discovery and curiosity to the 2016 NRPA Annual Conference in St. Louis, Missouri. Leading up to the event, we asked Sampson to share some of his insights and experiences working with nature, as well as his thoughts on contemporary trends that both encourage and discourage interaction with the outdoors. Following is a portion of our conversation.
Parks & Recreation magazine: Your professional biography is well-known — can you give us some personal insights about how/where you grew up and what impact the natural world had on you as a young man?
Scott Sampson: I was fortunate to grow up in Vancouver, British Columbia, cocooned amidst snow-capped mountains and the Pacific Ocean. So, wild nature was the backdrop for my life. My parents also took us camping multiple times a year, exploring the lushness and beauty of the Pacific Northwest, including its many provincial and national parks.
But, it was the nature close to home that was perhaps most important in helping me forge a lasting bond with the natural world. Like other children of the 1960s and 1970s, evenings and weekends and long summer days were spent playing and exploring in the neighborhood, the local city park and further afield. My home was less than two blocks from a large, protected forest. Then it was called the “Endowment Lands.” Today it’s known as “Pacific Spirit Regional Park.” For me and my friends, it was “the woods.” During my teens and early twenties, we spent countless hours in the woods at all times of year, bushwhacking our way to exhausted bliss, often accompanied by dogs. That place left a deep imprint on me about the nature of wildness.
P&R: Again, thinking back to your own childhood, who were some mentors/role models that encouraged your fascination with the natural world?
Sampson: Without doubt, my mother was the strongest nature mentor for me. She valued nature herself and displayed this bias all the time. She took me to libraries to learn about nature (including dinosaurs!) through books. She made sure I had plenty of unstructured play time outdoors (though this was the norm at that time). And she made the effort to take me to inspiring natural places, both nearby and more distant. Thanks to my mother, I was a member of a mountaineering club at the age of nine!
I also had the fortune of enjoying a couple of elementary school teachers with a bent toward nature and place-based learning. These educators helped me to understand the “power of place” and fueled my desire to understand more about how that place came to be and how it might change in the future.
P&R: Can you recall a specific moment or experience in your life that really solidified your love of nature and the outdoors?
Sampson: For me, this moment happened at the tender age of about four years old, when my mother took me to the local “frog pond” in the woods, a few blocks from our home on the west side of Vancouver. We went there on this spring day because she’d heard that there were tadpoles in the pond. Wearing my big black rubber boots, I ventured to the edge of the pond and then stepped into it. It took a minute for me to be able to see the bounty of “pollywogs.” As soon as I did, I began picking up handfuls of them, stepping out further into the water. First one boot flooded and then the other, but my mother just smiled so I kept going. Eventually the water was coming close to my chest while I watched the tadpoles swimming all around me. I still recall that moment, feeling as if there was no separation between me and the pond, or the rest of the world. I was blown away!
P&R: What is your reaction when you see parents/caregivers being punished for allowing their “unsupervised” children to walk to school or the park and/or play in a nearby park alone? Are we criminalizing a natural component of childhood, that is, the need for autonomy and exploration?
Sampson: In a single generation, we’ve gone from a culture that embraces unsupervised outdoor play for kids to one that has criminalized it. As a result, our children spend the great bulk of their lives living indoors, under a form of “house arrest.” The reasons for this indoor migration are many, but fear of strangers likely tops the list. This fear exists in spite of the fact that the chances of a child being abducted by a stranger are no greater than they were in 1950 or 1960. We’ve reached a moment in time where we almost have to think in terms of “taking back the streets” — that is, making a point of getting our children outside and talking about why it’s important. Kids have a right to play outdoors, and, particularly during middle childhood, they need autonomy from grown-ups, at least some of the time.
P&R: Some of your work in paleontology has taken place in parks, such as the Grand Staircase — Escalante National Monument in Utah. Talk about the impact preservation of open space has had on your field of study and why it’s important to continue to protect our open spaces.
Sampson: Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument is a perfect example of the need to protect wild places. President Clinton established the monument, countering efforts to exploit coal and other resources in this vast chunk of southern Utah. In the wake of that decision, a huge amount of scientific research has been undertaken, spanning disciplines from archaeology to zoology.
In 2000, while working at the University of Utah, I launched a collaborative research project focused on the fossils from the Late Cretaceous, then end of the Age of Dinosaurs. In the intervening years, joint teams from University of Utah, the monument, the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, and other institutions have discovered a previously unknown ancient world, including more than a dozen new species of dinosaurs alongside insects, fishes, lizards, turtles, crocodiles, pterosaurs (flying reptiles), mammals and a diverse variety of plants. This window into ancient Utah — one of the most detailed from anyplace and any time in the Mesozoic Era — is helping us investigate and understand how ecology and evolution work in a greenhouse world, the kind of world we are heading toward right now.
The Grand Staircase paleontology project is one of many that have taken place, and are currently under way, in protected parks and open spaces. If we excluded discoveries made in parks, our understanding of Earth’s evolving ecosystems over deep time would be a tiny fraction of what it is today!
P&R: Many children live in areas where access to nature is not readily available — what can we (parks and recreation, nature play advocates, etc.) do for children in urban areas, or those without access to transportation to nearby natural spaces, to offer them greater opportunities to connect to nature?
Sampson: We know that a deep connection to the natural world comes first and foremost from abundant exposure to nearby nature. And yet, many kids do not have much nature close to home. We can help by fostering nature in backyards, schoolyards, courtyards and churchyards. That nature can range from vegetable gardens to patches of native ecosystem. Every major city, and most small ones, have multiple organizations doing this kind of work. The big challenge now is scaling. How do we boost the impacts so that the majority of children receive the benefits of nature rather than a small minority? With this grand aim in mind, I am particularly inspired by large collaborative efforts — for example, the Urban Ecology Center in Milwaukee [Wisconsin] — that are working to connect kids in underserved communities with nature.
P&R:What’s your favorite activity to do in your local park?
Sampson: Hike. I love to hike, mostly on my own so that I can think and breathe and take in the surroundings. Hiking in parks is what recharges me and lets me root myself in the things that are most important. Having said that, I plan to take on a new outdoor hobby now that I’m back in Vancouver — sea kayaking. Should be an adventure!
Samantha Bartram is the Executive Editor of Parks & Recreation magazine.