Last Girl Scout in the Woods

Right before my seventh birthday, my family moved from Tampa, Florida to Athens, Georgia. I remember my parents telling me about our new house in a subdivision called Cedar Creek and how much bigger the new house would be compared to our current one, but it didn’t make much sense to me. I remember pulling up to the house in the van for the first time after the very long drive from Florida, stepping out in amazement, and then promptly puking in the yard due to car sickness.

My life quickly transitioned from a fast pace of school activities and play dates to a slow summer of boredom because I didn’t have any friends in my new neighborhood. My older brother is eight years older than I am, so I grew up pretty much as a single child. Even though I was an introvert from birth and accustomed to playing by myself, I could still feel the loneliness settling in. However, I found refuge behind my house. A few streams wound their way through the neighborhood, and one straddled my backyard. A large area of woods dotted the center of Cedar Creek with an old logging road cutting through the middle of it. Our house backed up to those woods. They were thick enough so that you couldn’t see the back of houses when you were in the midst of them, and you felt like you were miles deep in the forest while you walked along the dusty logging road.

My dad grew up on a farm and while he’s not an expert, he knows his nature from his upbringing. I would spend time with my dad outside “helping” him with yard projects, and he’d point out birds and their songs. We talked about the weather. He also revealed the wonders that you could find in nature, including peeling down the front petal of a violet to find a woman sitting with her skirt up. If the wild violets were in bloom right now, I’d show you with a picture.

I spent an inordinate amount of time playing in the stream behind our house using mud and sand to build new channels while observing the freshwater crawdads and minnows scurry about to avoid being trapped in a newly created pool. Time passed quickly but stood still at the same time while I was enveloped in this natural world.

After that first summer, I eventually made friends in the neighborhood. My best friend Barbara lived about a mile from me if I rode my bike on the paved road, but only a quarter of a mile if I followed the stream to her backyard. When I would walk through the woods to her house, I felt like an explorer discovering new lands while figuring out the best way to hop across certain areas blocked by downed trees.

I always felt a peace when I played in the woods and in the stream. If I had a bad day at school, I could leave it behind when I walked into the line of trees with its soft bed of pine straw and leaves and dipped my hands into the flowing water. Hurtful phrases hurled by classmates earlier in the day were forgotten as the chorus of bird songs took their place.

When I was in high school, the old logging road was paved, and we heard that developers would be building houses along it eventually. As I started college, my parents moved to the next county over, leaving my childhood home behind. Even though I went to college in the same town, Cedar Creek was on the opposite side of the city from campus, and I had no reason to visit. About 20 years ago, I drove through my old neighborhood to show my husband where I grew up. The woods were all gone. Flat lawns and houses took their place.

A couple of months ago, I came across the 2005 book Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv. I’ve never claimed to be an avid reader or up on current trends, so I was unaware that this book was a bestseller almost 20 years ago. Regardless, I recently read it for the first time and found that many of my thoughts and observations as a Girl Scout leader were reflected in Louv’s writing even though almost two decades have passed since he originally published the work.

If you’re not familiar with the book, Louv writes about “nature-deficit disorder” and points out that today’s generation of children don’t have the opportunities to play and explore in nature like past generations. I noted that Louv states that Baby Boomers were the last generation to play freely and roam in nature, but he, like many others, forgot about Gen X. Everybody always forgets about us. Whatever. But he does correctly describe how today’s children are herded into safe but sterile indoor environments that are controlled by adults driven by the fear of litigation. Louv also writes that technology takes children away from nature, and he pointed this out in the mid-2000s – before the proliferation of smart phones – so the children of the 2010s and 2020s are even more impacted.

While reading this book, I thought about how this generational difference affects me as a Girl Scout leader who is avid about nature and attempting to bring more of the outdoors to our council. Louv highlights a Girl Scout council in San Diego and points out that even in 2005, Girl Scouts began to pull away from its original roots in the outdoors due to costly litigation and very high parental expectations of safety. I guess the bestselling book didn’t make much of an impact on GSUSA at the time, because it pretty much ditched the outdoors in its rollout of the Core Business Strategy during that time period, and councils subsequently went on camp-selling sprees. In 2014, a grassroots effort at that year’s National Council Session campaigned to bring the outdoors back, and GSUSA listened in its own way. An Outdoor Journey and outdoor related badges sponsored by The North Face were released in 2017. In 2014 and 2019, the Girl Scout Research Institute (GSRI) published a number of studies documenting the benefit of the outdoors. Also in 2019, GSUSA relaunched its Trailblazers and Mariners programs to varying degrees of success in councils. Today, GSUSA promotes the outdoors with the Tree Promise, Girl Scouts Love State Parks, and Girl Scouts Love the Outdoors patch programs. All of this is great, and I applaud GSUSA for bringing the outdoors back from nothing, but there’s more we can do. A lot more.

Our outdoor related badges are heavy on subjects relating to gear (hence The North Face connection) such as camping, skiing, and rock climbing. In an effort to accommodate multi-level troops, many of them are very repetitive from level to level. With the exception of the Brownie Bugs badge, the Junior Flowers badge, and the Cadette Trees badge, there are no true natural history badges for girls to learn more about nature. What about ornithology or geology, for starters? Natural history promotes conservation of our natural resources and environmental awareness while stimulating a child’s curiosity. What sort of stewards of the environment are we building in Girl Scouts? Just relying on throwaway Leave No Trace references won’t do it. Children need to be fascinated and engaged in the natural world again.

Since local woods and natural areas aren’t really an option for a lot of today’s children, where can they explore and be immersed in nature? Girl Scout councils, by way of camps, own ideal places, and we should take advantage of this. I’ve made the case for camps before, but envisioning them as not just traditional “summer camp” locations but also as protected natural habitats offer the potential of partnering with conservancy groups for funding and grants. At one time in its history, GSUSA incentivized natural stewardship through the Lou Henry Hoover Memorial Forests and Wildlife Sanctuaries program, but this was discontinued in 2004 which, to no surprise, coincided with the development of the Core Business Strategy.

When implementing outdoor training, councils should realize that today’s new volunteers are the first generation to come along who, by and large, didn’t roam freely growing up. The children that Louv wrote about in 2005 are now parents and volunteers. They don’t necessarily have that familiarity with the outdoors as those of us who thought nothing of rambling in the woods to a friend’s house. These adult volunteers need to be introduced to the benefits of nature so that they can feel comfortable about delivering the outdoor program and taking their troops to camps.

GSUSA recently completed a study with parents whose girls aren’t Girl Scouts. I was saddened and very disappointed to hear that most parents don’t associate Girl Scouts with the outdoors anymore. If this really is the case, we have REALLY missed out on a huge opportunity to serve our girls and communities. I think a lot of us have an innate connection to nature but it’s suppressed due to modern society. In the 2023 Voices Count survey, 94% of girls wanted to do outdoor activities. That speaks volumes.

There’s talk out there about reimagining ourselves again. We have a lot to offer through the outdoors, but we have to first fully embrace it and realize its potential. We owe it to our girls and our world.