• In cool, wet weather, layer with rain gear as needed.
• In sunny weather, a sun hat with a strap under the chin and thin, long-sleeved UV clothing help protect the child from the sun.
• Shoes are optional!
Friluftsliv—Open-Air Life
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The Scandinavian zest for fresh air is maybe best summed up by the word for “outdoor recreation” in Swedish and Norwegian—friluftsliv. The term was first used in print by famed Norwegian playwright and poet Henrik Ibsen in 1859, and describes a culture and a way of life that heavily revolve around exploring and enjoying nature. Friluftsliv can encompass anything from skiing and hiking to berry picking and fishing, or be as simple as going for a nature walk or bike ride near one’s home. In Sweden, friluftsliv is generally defined as “physical activity outdoors to get a change of scenery and experience nature, with no pressure to achieve or compete.”
To a great extent, friluftsliv is made possible by the Swedish common law of allemansrätten (the right of public access), which grants anybody the right to walk, ride a bike or horse, ski, pick berries, or camp anywhere on private land, except for the part that immediately surrounds a private dwelling. In short, that means you can pick mushrooms and flowers, as well as light a campfire and pitch a tent, in somebody else’s woods, but not right in front of their house unless you have permission. You can also walk through cattle pastures and other farm fields as long as you make sure to close all gates and don’t damage any crops. Unlike in the US, where private property rights are king, and land use tends to be ruled by the risk for potential lawsuits and the premise that if something can go wrong it probably will, allemansrätten relies on an honor system that can simply be summed up with the phrase “Do not disturb, do not destroy,” and trusts that people will use their common sense. What may sound like an impossible free-for-all works amazingly well, with little to no visible littering or destruction in natural areas. The law democratizes outdoor recreation and means generations of Scandinavians have come to view access to nature not only as an inalienable right that is protected by the constitution but also as very much a shared responsibility.
Some even suggest that nature fills the void left by the decline of organized religion in Sweden, which is now one of the most secular countries in the world. “Nature has become the ultimate point of reference,” says Carl Reinhold Bråkenhielm, a theology professor at Uppsala University, to Svenska Dagbladet, one of the biggest Swedish daily newspapers. “When traditional faith is waning we search for something else to relate to. We need something to create narratives and gather strength from.” In what could be interpreted as a move to adapt to the new order, some churches occasionally congregate under the sprawling tree canopies in a forest, with the churchgoers taking in the word of God sitting on blankets on the moss-covered ground.
When the Swedish psychiatrist and author Nils Uddenberg surveyed his countrymen’s attitudes toward nature for his 1995 book Det stora sammanhanget (which roughly translates to The Big Connection), as many as 96 percent of them expressed an actual need for being in nature. But when asked why, they often provided vague answers, just referring to nature as “beautiful” or “relaxing.” “Asking [Swedes] why they like to be outdoors is like asking them why they want to have children; they are forced to find motivation for something that is so obvious to them that they have never given it a second thought,” Uddenberg writes. American researcher Louise Chawla made a similar discovery when she compared the backgrounds of environmental activists in Kentucky and Norway. She found that more of the Americans attributed their activism to positive childhood memories of experiences in the natural world, but only because several of the Norwegians weren’t sure whether the outdoor activities they had taken part of as children—skiing and hiking in the woods, for example—really counted. After all, they reasoned, that didn’t set them apart from anybody else. They were “just being Norwegian.”
Considering the popularity of outdoor recreation in the region, it comes as no surprise that Scandinavians are nearly unanimous in their support for environmental protection. In the 2007 Eurobarometer public opinion survey, a staggering 98 percent of the Swedish respondents—more than in any other country—declared that it is their responsibility to protect the environment, even if it means putting limits on human development. Denmark and Norway were close behind. As a result, Scandinavia is often cited as a world leader when it comes to air and water quality, cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, and overall sustainability. For example, Denmark is a leading producer of renewable energy and environmentally friendly housing; Sweden recycles more than 99 percent of its household waste and is a primary exporter of “green” technology; and Norway was one of the first countries in the world to adopt a carbon tax.
From clean water, zero-waste policies, and green energy the leap to parenting may seem big, but, as Sobel and Chawla have pointed out, it all starts by forming a bond with nature in childhood. And the Scandinavians are experts at it.
A Crime at a Creek
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On a hot and sticky Memorial Day afternoon, when Maya is seven and Nora four, I finally make a mistake at a local nature preserve that leaves me wondering if, after twelve years of living in the US, I will ever fit in.
The preserve is just a ten-minute drive from our house, near a small, unincorporated community that, in its heyday from the 1850s until the Great Depression, was a bustling trade hub thanks to its location by the Wabash and Erie Canal. The raucous hotels and taverns that used to accommodate weary travelers on the canal are long gone, and today only a church, a few scattered houses, and a smattering of dilapidated mobile homes remain in the area. If you take a deep enough breath when you drive into town, you’ll exit it on your exhale. Unless, of course, you turn onto the dusty gravel road that leads to the nature preserve on the outskirts of the community. The lush woods in the small preserve are home to many of the common Midwestern tree species—hickory, sugar maple, black walnut, oak—as well as some white pines and an abundance of wildflowers. Meandering through it all is a shallow stream that flows to the northwest and eventually feeds into the Wabash River. Over time, the creek has carved deep ravines through the Pennsylvania sandstone that rises from the earth along its banks, creating dramatic ninety-foot drop-offs and jagged talus slopes. In one spot a tributary has whittled an archlike hole through the stratified auburn and ocher rocks by undercutting the sandstone bluff on both sides. The unique rock feature gave the area its name and remains its main attraction. During the canal era what is now a preserve was a popular resort with a park, dances, log cabins, and a dam with a water wheel and dynamo to power it all. A deteriorating concrete base from the dam still stands by the creek, now a giant gray leaf trap that pays quiet homage to busier days.
Among living locals the area is mostly known from the time it was a Boy Scout camp, from 1938 to 1966. Back then, kids would camp, swim, and create some of their most vivid childhood memories here until, tragically, a boy accidentally fell off the cliffs and died. The Boy Scouts eventually sold the property, and it was dedicated a nature preserve in 1972. Today it’s owned and managed by the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, Division of Nature Preserves. It’s also one of the best-kept secrets of western Indiana. Aside from the presence of some local dog walkers, a few camera-toting out-of-towners, and the occasional college students working on a science project, the preserve is usually quiet. Ten visitors in a day would be considered a crowd. To me, it had been an oasis for nearly a decade, a tiny island of reclaimed wilderness in a verdant ocean of corn and soybean fields. I had come here in the dead cold of winter and the sticky height of summer, on foggy fall days and in the wake of heavy spring rains. I had continued to hike both the north and south trails throughout my first pregnancy; then I’d come back with an infant strapped to my chest. By the time Maya was two she could hike the rugged north loop unaided. The following year her new baby sister, Nora, joined us on the trail, tightly bound to my chest.
Here, they slowly evolved from babies and toddlers to pint-size hikers.
On this Memorial Day, only a few other families have signed the logbook before us as we start trekking down toward the arch. When we get to the creek, the girls do what they have done several times before—they strip down to their underwear and jump into the foot-deep, slow-moving water. As I sit down on a log to watch them, the sun breaks through the clouds and a few stray rays dance on the rippling water while the girls giggle and play and get into a few friendly mud fights. After about half an hour they get out and dry off, and we start heading back to the car.
Maya gets back to the parking lot first, since I’m waiting for Nora to climb a rock. When I get there, I see a brown SUV emblazoned with the IDNR logo, and a uniformed officer. Then Maya comes running toward me. “Mom, there’s a policeman here who says we can’t swim in the creek,” she says. “Why, Mommy?” Thinking that she’s misunderstood the situation, I walk to my car and get ready to leave. But as it turns out, the officer, a blond guy who looks to be in his mid-twenties, has not only just told my daughter that swimming is not allowed in the creek. He’s also decided that we need a lesson.
“I’m going to let you off easy this time. It may not seem like it, but I really am,” he says when he comes back from his vehicle with some paperwork. He explains that rather than adding additional citations for all of us for getting off the trail and “disturbing wildlife,” he’s only going to fine us for violating section 312 IAC 8-2-9 of the Indiana Administrative Code—for “swimming in an unauthorized area.”
“The only thing you’re allowed to do here is walk on the trail. That’s it,” he says.
As I’m standing in the preserve’s parking lot with my daughters tugging on my shorts, anxiously wondering why I’m being accosted by an officer, my heart sinks as if it were weighted down by a pile of serrated Pennsylvania sandstone. If walking on the trail is the only thing allowed at this preserve, they may as well put up a children not welcome sign at the entrance. It suddenly dawns on me that I’ve probably unintentionally broken several of the preserve’s rules over the years just by allowing my children to play freely here.
“There was another family downstream from you and I’m going to give them a ticket when they come back too,” the officer says, as if this is supposed to make us feel better. “We have these rules to keep you safe. There are some loose rocks and the creek is a health hazard. Manure from the farms upstream gets in the creek and the kids can get infected with E. coli.”
I stare at the pink ticket in disbelief, then buckle up the kids and go home. We have a month to pay our fine of $123.50, and a court date in case we want to fight the charge.
Over the next few weeks, I went through something akin to a mourning process. At first, there was denial. How could this possibly happen to me? After all, I was known as the town’s local environmentalist and resident health nut, who had helped start a farmers’ market, organized litter pickups, promoted recycling, and done Earth Day presentations at the elementary school. I had grown organic vegetables in our backyard to connect my kids with their food and had tried to persuade my daughter’s preschool to switch to eco-friendly cleaning products. My “crunchy”-parent credentials were solid. Yet now I stood accused of the bizarre crime of harming nature by letting my children wade in an agricultural cesspool.
Then came anger. Why this double standard? If the creek was full of agricultural waste, wouldn’t it be more productive for the state to track down and stop the source of the contamination instead of treating a hiking family like a weapon of mass environmental destruction? And if the state was truly trying to protect us, wouldn’t some sort of information about the contamination and other possible hazards have been more useful than a fine? (The fact that the shallow creek was barely moving and that nobody in our family to date had come down with a case of explosive diarrhea told me that it was probably reasonably safe.)
I bargained. If only I had showed the officer the empty Styrofoam cups and plastic bottles that I had picked up along the trail that day, he would’ve understood that we were really on the same team. If only he had known about the box turtle that my daughter had helped across the road on our way there, maybe things would have gone in a different direction.
Then I was engulfed in sadness. This was more or less the only public nature area available to us within a forty-minute drive, and I knew that it would never be the same to me again. Frankly, I wasn’t sure we’d ever want to come back.
In an attempt to make sense of it all, I wrote about our run-in with the law on my blog. The post quickly went viral and set off a firestorm of comments, shares, and discussions about children’s access to nature versus the need to protect it. Clearly, I had struck a nerve. Stories started to trickle in, from both locals and people across the country. “I hope my grandsons will get to see the beauty [of the preserve] before someone decides we can’t visit it,” wrote Terry, who used to camp there in his youth.
The majority of the locals sided with me and told me they let their children or grandchildren do the same thing. This of course didn’t make it legal, but it told me that I wasn’t completely off base for thinking that it was. One woman shared her frustration over being fined for having a picnic at the preserve; another told me she wouldn’t take her kids back there after learning about my experience. And, unsurprisingly, it didn’t take long before I started receiving unsolicited legal advice from complete strangers, encouraging me to sue the IDNR for failing to warn the public of the contamination of the creek and, furthermore, to file a harassment complaint against the officer for basically ruining my day.
Other commenters were less sympathetic.
Of all the things I was accused of (stirring up sediment from the bottom of the creek, potentially destroying a raccoon’s nest on our way to the water, endangering my children’s health, setting a bad example, having an inflated sense of entitlement, complaining over first-world problems, etc.), what hurt the most was that some people thought that I, through my actions at the preserve that day, had earned myself an honorary membership in the American Association of Bad Parenting.
For some readers, the million-dollar question was whether the swimming ban was posted at the preserve. The answer was more complicated than a simple yes or no. The brown metal sign at the entrance does not say anything about staying out of the creek. It does say to stay on marked trails only, but there are several well-trodden trails leading down to the water and nothing posted on any of them indicating that they are off-limits. Whether we had left the official trail or not didn’t even matter, because the minute my daughters’ toes hit the water, we had violated a state code that makes it illegal to wade or swim in any public waterway unless it’s a “designated swimming beach or pool,” or it’s done from a boat. Even then, the permission comes with a litany of restrictions. The take-home message of the code seemed to be that unless wading and swimming is explicitly allowed, the presumption is that it is prohibited. Whether this was clear or not, and whether the state should have posted information regarding the alleged contamination of the creek, is something that two overpriced lawyers could probably debate in court until the end of time.
All potential legal wrangling aside, to me the question was not mainly whether the rule was posted or not; I couldn’t wrap my mind around why it existed in the first place. The idea that we were damaging or disturbing anything that day wasn’t even on my radar. In Sweden, where you can leave the trail, have picnics, pick flowers, forage for mushrooms, and swim your heart out almost anywhere, including at nature preserves, the idea that children playing in a creek would be considered a crime or a threat to the environment is unheard-of. Different place, different rules. I got that. But the Swedish approach also told me that there is more than one way to go about conservation.
As far as the contamination goes, the IDNR’s own trail guide describes the creek at the preserve as a “very clean stream, nearly pollution free.” But when I called the Division of Nature Preserve
s I was once again told that it’s full of fertilizer runoff and agricultural waste. We will never know for sure, however, since I was also told that the state lacks the funding to test the water, let alone clean it up.
Regardless, what happened that day was more than the story of an overzealous conservation officer and my injured sense of pride. The reactions to my story from across the country made me realize that I wasn’t the only one who felt like outdoor play, which research has confirmed is essential to children’s physical and mental health, had come under attack. “My son was once yelled at for trying to skip rocks into a river because he ‘might harm macroinvertebrates,’” said Laura, one of my readers. Heather from New York chimed in with, “Sadly, something that was once normal is now incredibly regulated, due to liability, or simply as a means to make money.”
“Too many parents and people in authority have embraced rules that their own parents would have scoffed at,” said Michael Lanza, author of Before They’re Gone: A Family’s Year-Long Quest to Explore America’s Most Endangered National Parks, in response to our incident. “Unless we push back against this trend, we risk raising a generation of children who don’t value outdoor time or even preserving places like this, where kids can’t even play in a creek.”
In some ways, our incident at the preserve symbolized a larger, national narrative, first depicted by Richard Louv in his best-selling book Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. It’s a story that I’ve heard many times from Americans who are my age or older. The time and settings vary, but it always goes something like this: “When we were little we were out in the woods all the time, setting up forts, splashing in the water, using our imaginations. Mom kicked us out in the morning and we wouldn’t go back inside until the streetlights came on.”
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