We plant seeds and eat berries and brew mint tea. We talk about the food pyramid and it dawns on them that Bic Mac's were once a mooing animal. We talk about the destruction of the rainforest and what it means to them. They ask wonderfully simple yet inherently complex questions like, if cutting down the rainforest is bad, then why is it still happening? I walk around camp to the continual calls of nature lady, nature lady. Even I begin to forget my name after awhile. They are fascinated by everything and explore constantly. (Of course, sometimes this means they ignore you when you're speaking or they are exploring what a frog looks like when thrown at a tree.) One time I had a camper drag me to the far side of the softball field to a rock which he proceeded to turn over and opint out, with complete fascination, ants. Ordinary black ants that can be found everywhere, but to this child they were an amazing discovery. The Fresh Air Fund serves 10,000 children every summer. 7,000 go to Friendly Town where they spend two weeks with a family and 3,000 go to the camps in Fishkill. 10,000 sounds like a large number but what about the rest of the kids who don't get to come to where the trees greatly outnumber the buildings, where stars can be seen at night, where the scariest intruder is a raccoon. If the earth truly matters to us we need to alter our cities so that nature isn't just a two week visitor. In order for people to understand why they are connected to the earth, they need to have contact with it.