Filed with 60.5 Parenting · Related: 60.21 Psychology · HQ
What is the elevation of your home habitat? Almost three-fourths of the earth is covered by our oceans, which are all connected. The highest point of land on earth, Mount Everest, sits 29,029 feet above sea level. The lowest point of land on earth, the shoreline of the Dead Sea, is actually 1,355 feet below sea level. How far downhill (or uphill, for that matter) from your doorstep is the ocean? Imagine yourself as a drop of rainwater that falls on your roof and begins its journey to the ocean.
By what network of ditches, creeks, and rivers would you travel? It’s helpful to print a map of the waterways in your state and trace the route. What’s the name of the bay or estuary where you’d end up before flowing into the ocean?
How many inches of annual precipitation does your home habitat get? What percent generally falls as rain, and what percent falls as snow? How does this year’s precipitation compare to the long-term average? How does it compare to the record highs and lows? Set up a rain gauge and begin measuring precipitation.
Turn on your kitchen faucet and have a sip of water. Try to actually taste the water. Concentrate on it. Where did that water come from? A reservoir? An aquifer? How does that reservoir or aquifer get refilled with new water? Is your water supply regarded as sustainable? Is it imperiled by irrigation, industry, or climate change?
What is the dominant wind direction where you live? Does it change seasonally? What direction do storms generally come from? What wind directions tend to precede clear weather? How about storms? What kinds of trees are closest to your home? Are they native tree species that have always been here? Or were the trees relocated here from somewhere else?
Identify the nearest large body of water and learn what fish live there. Are there fish species living there now that weren’t there before the arrival of Europeans? Are there fish that have vanished from those waters due to man-made causes?
What birds visit your home habitat? Buy a bird identification book and install a birding app on your phone. (The Sibley Guide to Birds is a phenomenal book; the region-specific Eastern and Western North America books are even better. For apps, try eBird, which was created by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.) Start building a list of the birds that visit your home habitat. Make your own rules about what to include. In my family, we include all birds that are seen or heard from our yard. A high-flying flock of migrating geese is fine, as long as it’s seen or heard from home.
What’s the earliest known time frame of human habitation around your home habitat? What Native American tribes lived in your home habitat at the time of European contact? What animals did they hunt? What fish did they catch? What crops did they raise, if any? What types of homes did they live in? Were they frequently at war with neighboring tribes? By what processes were they displaced from the landscape?
What were the first European settlers looking for when they arrived in your area? Fur? Gold? Farmland? Who first cut down the trees and cleared the land where you live? What crops or livestock were they trying to grow or raise? What crops and livestock are raised around your home habitat now?
Where do those crops and livestock end up? Are they consumed locally, or shipped far away? What is the basic geology of your home habitat? What factors, such as glaciers, mountain building, and erosion have shaped your landscape? Are there active mines near you? What minerals do they extract?
What insects share your home habitat? Find and identify four or five bugs around your home. Were you surprised by how quickly you found them? Or did it take longer than you thought? On a warm spring or summer evening, listen carefully at dusk to see if you can hear the buzzing or chirping of insects. What species is making the sound?
When you look out the window in the morning, what direction are you facing? If you have access to an east-facing window, pay attention to the time and location of the rising sun. If you’re looking to the west, observe the path of the setting sun and mark the place where it disappears against objects on the horizon. How does the sun’s course through the sky, as well as the position where it sets and rises, change over the weeks and months? Acknowledge the winter solstice, which is the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. Celebrate the fact that days will now begin growing longer. Do a countdown to the summer solstice, our longest day of the year. Go somewhere with a clear view to the west, so you can watch the sun set on this day.
What can you learn from the stars in the night sky? For eons, humans have used the stars and their constellations to find their way on both land and sea. You can start by finding the North Star, or Polaris, which stays fixed in the northern sky. But what about other constellations, like Orion the Hunter and Taurus the Bull? As the seasons change while the earth orbits the sun, the stars in the night sky shift westward. Likewise, the moon cycles from new to waxing to full to waning and back to a new moon once every month. Learn why the first full moon of fall is called the Harvest Moon. Why is it orange?
Steven Rinella. Steven Rinella - Outdoor Kids in an Inside World_ Getting Your Family Out of the House and Radically Engaged with Nature-Random House Publishing Group (2022) (pp. 21-25). Kindle Edition.