The Olympics shone in the distance as we waited at the ferry terminal, two car seats and too many adults in an old Camry. My brother's thoughts must have been wandering to moments of greater freedom and elbow room. He'd heard of a study, he said, about the difference in creativity, intelligence, and independence between city kids - who mostly play in structured, adult-created environments; and country kids - who play on their own in forts and woods and the like.

This made sense to the adults in the car, raised as forts-and-woods kids. Joshua and I reminisced about telling mom we were going to play at the beach. For us this meant about a half mile trek down the road and a path through woods of indeterminate ownership. Then there were logs to cross over a tidal swamp before finally reaching a stretch of sand on the undeveloped side of Murden Cove. We'd walk out at low tide to where we could feel the sand dollars crush underfoot, or ride a drifting log down the deepening channel that fed the swamps at high tide, or just spend hours domesticating the chambers of a beached log's weathered root system with shell chairs and twig dolls.

A direct link between such experiences and desirable character traits may be an urban - or maybe rural - legend, but the idea does have its advocates. While unsuccessfully trying to track down the study my brother had mentioned, I came across Richard Louv's new book: Last Child in the Woods - Saving Our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder.

In it, Louv paints a picture of a changed society, where fourth-graders worry about the right college and a good job, and where time spent on physical leisure activities is equal to one-fifth of what we spend commuting to and from work, and one-tenth of the time we spend in front of the TV.

Another component of this changed society is an increased fear of strangers and even a fear of nature. The book points out problems for children that are part of what Louv calls "Nature Deficit Disorder." They include increased incidence of ADHD, obesity, and depression, and seem to be somehow connected with shifts in our attitude toward and experience of nature. He also describes a less clinical consequence, the "know-it-all state of mind" (a term coined by D.H. Lawrence) - a permeating boredom that results from too much information and not enough experience. The know-it-all state of mind is the opposite of awareness and wonder. It is a hazard to childhood, Louv believes, and to the society and environment that children will someday be responsible for.

Louv presents a broad, societal program of change to help children and the rest of us to recover our awareness and wonder. It involves much urban planning - lovely-sounding things like child-friendly design, green urbanism, and adventure playgrounds. After daydreaming once again about beaches and hollow trees past, I was left pondering what we urban parents could do to allow wonder back into our own and our children's lives. I started where Louv thinks we've left off - allowing myself to notice things, to be aware.

It was a sunny day, and Aya had taken breadcrumbs out on our balcony for the neighborhood birds. I'd left the sliding door open and gone back into the kitchen to hurry through the rest of the dishes before we went out to the playground. I could hear her talking - more like barking commands. She was ordering the birds on the roof next door to come get her breadcrumbs. A few minutes later, she was tugging at my jeans. "Mama, look at this." She held something up to her nose and drew in a dramatic breath. "Mmm, it's good!" I smelled it too, concurring. It was a leaf of the curry plant that'd survived the winter in one of my planters. By the time I'd finished the dishes, she was back on the balcony with her face upturned, squinting into the wind that had picked up. Aya was fully engaged in nature experiences of her own making, and all I'd done was left the door open.

I remembered a recent walk to the park, when we'd spent more time walking there (3 blocks!) than we had in playing in the park. Aya had discovered a line of tiny black ants traversing the bricks around a neighbor's flower bed. She spent about 15 minutes not-too-successfully experimenting with ways to pick them up without squishing them. I'd been tempted to hurry her along - baby was getting heavy in the sling while we crouched there, and then there's the matter of ants' rights. But I let her grow tired of the ants on her own time, and was rewarded with clear-eyed exhilaration that lasted the rest of the afternoon. At least I think that's why she was in such a good mood. Thanks, ants.

Will these experiences lead to anything? Will they mesh seamlessly with trips to the zoo and P-patch gardening to keep her happy and healthy? Maybe it takes more than that to nurture "the life-enhancing sense of rootedness in nature" that Louv calls biophilia. But at least for my family, allowing the time for nature play is even more important than having the ideal natural place to play. After all, wouldn't biophilia also mean loving life?

Do you have a parenting question or comment for Alouise? Send an email to bnteditor@robinsonnews.com with parenting in the subject line.