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HELP YOUR CHILD TO WONDER
 
SENSE OF WONDERRachel Carson
One stormy autumn night when my nephew Roger was about twenty months old Iwrapped him in a blanket and carried him to the beach in the rainy darkness. Out there, just at the edge of where-we-couldn’t-see, big waves were thundering in, dimly seenwhite shapes that boomed and shouted and threw great handfuls of froth at us. Togetherwe laughed for pure joy – he a baby meeting for the first time the wild tumult of Oceanus, I with the salt of half a lifetime of sea love in me. As Roger passed his otherbirthdays, we continued that sharing of adventures in the world of nature that we began inhis babyhood – a sharing based on having fun together rather than on teaching. I made noconscious effort to name plants or animals or to explain to him, but just expressed myown pleasure in what we saw. I think the results have been good.We let Roger share our enjoyment of things people frequently deny childrenbecause they are inconvenient or because they interfere with bedtime. We searched theshore at night for ghost crabs, those sand-colored, fleet-legged beings rarely glimpsed indaytime, our flashlight piercing the darkness with a yellow cone. We sat in the dark living room before the picture window to watch the full moon riding lower and lowertoward the far shore of the bay, setting all the water ablaze with silver flames. Thememory of such scenes, photographed by his child’s mind, will mean more to him inmanhood than the sleep he lost.A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. Formost of us that clear-eyed vision is dimmed or lost before we reach adulthood. If I hadinfluence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of allchildren, I would ask that her gift to each child be a sense of wonder so indestructible thatit would last throughout life, an unfailing antidote against the boredom anddisenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, thealienation from the source of our strength.If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder he needs the companionshipof an adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in. Parents often have a sense of inadequacy when confronted with theeager, sensitive mind of a child. “How can I teach my child about nature – why, I don’teven know one bird from another!” they exclaim. I believe that for the child, and for theparents seeking to guide him, it is not half so important to
know
as to
 feel
. Once theemotions have been aroused – a sense of the beautiful, the excitement of the unknown, afeeling of sympathy or admiration – then the wish for knowledge will follow.Wherever you are and whatever your resources, you can still look up at the sky –at its dawn and twilight beauties, its moving clouds, its stars by night. You can listen tothe wind, whether it blows with majestic voice throughout a forest or sings a many-voiced chorus around the eaves of your house or the corners of your apartment building.
 
You can feel the rain on your face and think of its long journey, its many transmutations,from sea to air to earth. Even if you are city dweller, you can find a park or a golf coursewhere you can watch the mysterious migrations of the birds and the changing seasons, orponder the mystery of a growing seed planted in a pot of earth in the kitchen window.Exploring nature with your child is largely a matter of becoming receptive to whatlies around you. One way to open your eyes is to ask yourself, “What if I had never seenthis before? What if I new I would never see it again?” I remember a summer night whenI went out on a flat headland all but surrounded by the waters of the bay. That night wasso still that I could here the buoy on the ledges out beyond the mouth of the bay. Once ortwice a word spoken by someone on the far shore was carried across on the clear air; afew lights burned in cottages. Otherwise, there was no reminder of other human life. Iwas alone with the stars: the misty river of the Milky Way flowing across the sky, thepatterns of the constellations standing out bright and clear. Once or twice a meteorburned its way into the earth’s atmosphere. It occurred to me that if this were a sight thatcould be seen only once in a generation, this little headland would be thronged withspectators. But it can be seen many scores of nights in a year, and so the lights burned inthe cottages. An experience like that can be shared with a child, even if you don’t knowthe name of single star. You can drink in the beauty, and wonder at the meaning of it all.And then there is the world of little things, seen all too seldom. An investment of a few dollars in a good hand lens will bring a new world into being. Some of nature’smost exquisite handiwork is on a miniature scale, as anyone know who applied amagnifying glass to a snowflake. A sprinkling of sand grains may appear as gleaming jewels of rose or crystal hue, or as glittering jet beads, or a mélange of Lilliputian rocks.A lens-aided view into patch and moss reveals a dense tropical jungle, in which insectslarge as tigers prowl amid strangely formed, luxuriant trees. Pondweed or seaweed put ina glass container and studied under a lens is found to be populated by hordes of strangebeings.Senses other than sight can provide avenues of delight and discovery. Down in theshore early in the morning, Roger and I savored the smell of low tide – that marvelousevocation combined of many separate odors, of seaweeds and fishes, of tides rising andfalling on their appointed schedule, of exposed mud flats and salt rime drying on therocks. I hope he will later experience, as I do, the rush of remembered delight that comeswith the first breath of that scent, as one returns to the sea after a long absence. Hearingrequires more conscious devotion. I have had people tell me they had never heard thesong of the wood thrush, although I knew the bell-like phrases of this bird had beenringing in their backyard every spring. Take time to listen and talk about the voices of theearth and what they mean – the majestic voice of thunder, the winds, the sound of surf.No child should grow up unaware of the dawn chorus of the birds in spring. Hewill never forget the experience of a specially planned early rising in the predawndarkness when the first voices are heard. Perhaps a few cardinals are uttering their clear,rising whistles, then comes the song of a whitethroat, pure and ethereal, with the dreamyquality of remembered joy. Off in some distant patch of woods a whippoorwill continues
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