Who here was raised on nature?
 

I have always lived on the edge of the suburbs, with nature a short walk away, if not a short drive away. When I was very young, my parents often took me on walks through woods, parks, botanical gardens... We have always gone for a weekend or two every year to a nearby country park ever since I was about 3 or 4...

We would go out for (what seemed like at the time) really quite long walks, my parents would try to get me involved in the woodland, to get me to interact with it and (naturally, as a curious 4 year old) I happily obliged. I would have crude bows and arrows made for me to have fun with... We slept in tents, we slept in tiny houses in the mountains that had no beds, but a stone shelf with a sleeping bag for comfort...

As I walked home from school, my Grandfather would teach me how to identify tree types and flowers, he would tell me the distances to the moon, to the sun, teach me natural cycles and a whole lot more.

And so, as I grew up, the forest and the woodland became a part of me, as much as I felt a part of it.

Then, I lost it all. Lost all the simple wonders to technology, to school, to work...

And then Avatar happened, and reminded me that the woods were a real place of home, whether that be blind nostalgia or a true feeling of belonging. It was like the fire - for living with our planet, not just on it - was rekindled and eventually roared again inside me and I again knew where I was meant to be.

After that overly poetic story, the question still stands, who else here lived a large part of their childhoods in, and around, nature?

I never lived really close to anywhere, but we went out occasionally on trips, sometimes went camping. Maybe I was a little too old, because I remember enjoying it, but I also remember not really enjoying it so much as well :(. I guess it varied depending on how I felt, but I never felt any real particular connection.

I grew up in a relatively urban area in California, then from there moved to multiple other areas that were more "wild" so to speak. Now, living in Massachusetts, I'm out in the middle of nowhere and love it. My house is on an acre of land, but behind me are about 90 acres of trails that only me and a couple of neighbors walk on, so it's rare I see anyone when I'm out there. In the summer my yard looks like a jungle.... Sometimes it feels like a Pandora on Earth. :D

My family moves around a lot, so I can't stay here forever.......but I'm just thankful I live in such a beautiful place.

While I grew up in the suburbs, I have always been attracted to natural spaces for as long as I remember. These days I get out whenever I can. It's not really enough though as I spend most weekdays in my office cube looking out the windows to where I should be. I am powerfully connected. I feel much more at home out in the middle of nowhere than in the city. I have places in the mountains and deserts that I have been visiting for more than 30 years. I am very familiar with those places.

I did spend lost of time outdoors as a kid but never grew up purely on Nature. Sometimes we would go out and build shelters in the woods which was pretty fun and i've done lots of riding in trails and stuff. Winter here can get pretty intense, actually, i'll be doing a winter survival course this year hopefully so we'll see how that goes.

We've got an acre of woodland out back. I don't venture there though. Very much an inside person.

LOL radio active tree? Wtf?! XD

You actually explained my childhood pretty damn well XD but add in the occassional camping trips to the rockies. My uncle used to live in South CA and we would visit him every summer when I was little and go surfing or boating.

I mean I was a Rocky Mountain girl scout or w/e the eff they call it XD

Only really in the last few years. Before that I lived smack-dap in the middle of suburban Dallas, and then in the close suburbs of Chicago. It wasn't until I moved further north, where the forests still are (and also got into camping in the Northwoods of Wisconsin), that I finally really got a chance to have true, wild nature in my life. One of the greatest things ever to happen in my life. There's nothing quite like feeling the flow of energy out in nature. It's incredible. Nature is really where I feel I was meant to be, it's home. :)

This sounds a lot like my childhood as well....

I spent quite a bit of time hanging out in a forest near my house.

I would spend hours and hours out there by myself. There was no one around, just me and the trees.......sometimes it felt sort of like they were trying to talk to you with their creaking and swaying branches, snapping pinecones and falling leaves.

At home, I would walk around my backyard, catching bugs and recording their appearance and keep them in jars for a few days before letting them go again. My favorites were centipedes and these guys:

http://share3.esd105.wednet.edu/rsan...0nemoralis.jpg

European ground beetles.

One day, I was walking to the forest as usual, but there seemed to be something wrong.....I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but everything was....quiet. Like the scene of a car accident right after it happens. I felt worried, somehow, and I walked faster through the thicket before the trees really started to get dense.

Bulldozers. Dozens of them. In a huge pile across the torn expanse of land, there were the trees. They sat like dead bodies in a pile, unceremoniously stripped of their branches and leaves. Almost the whole forest had been torn down to make way for development.

I ran home in tears.

A few months later, the housing development completed, and people moved in. The animals, suddenly out of a home, left. No more Coyotes, Deer, or Foxes. A few raccoons and squirrels dared to stay, but they were soon plagued by feral housecats and litter.

So, yeah, I was brought up in nature. I just wish my little stretch of "home" was still around for me to visit....

And so, I decided I was going to become a conservation biologist, so that this would never happen to anyone or any forest ever again.

I can't do much by myself, but I don't care; I'll die knowing I did my best to make a difference.

Wow. Just wow. What a profound and Avatar-like story.....that must have been really painful, though....

I'm lucky that I live in conservation land, but sometimes when I walk in the forest across the street I'll come across patches of torn up earth with tree roots sticking out--the lumber company claims they just come in to take out some of the smaller, weedier trees so the big ones can grow, but I've seen some pretty big stumps.....and it takes quite a long time for the forest around to recover from having heavy machinery come in.

I lived and still live in the suburbs of Sydney. Not many large parks or forests here either.
Luckily, we've been lucky enough to have a large garden.

Not being near any other nature, I compensated.

I walk outside, in my garden, imagining things and thinking, for at least 1 hour a day.
It's actually entertaining, and one of my favourite things to do. It also helps here, because of daylight savings, the sun goes down at 7:10 PM. :D

I also lived on the edge of suburbia. There's a park that preserves an oak forest very close to my childhood home, and my backyard had/has two mountain peaks for a view, with their bases only a mile or so away. My dad would frequently take me camping in Kings Canyon and Seqouia National Parks, and I always loved those trips. Later, he helped me take up backpacking, which I really enjoy. The rest of my family doesn't enjoy it, so we'd also go camping in trailers. :P There was also sort of a blank period in my life in which I didn't do those things as much. Though I didn't quite lose my love of backpacking...it just got intensified after seeing Avatar. I really wanted to go hiking through the Sierra Nevada mountains again, so this last summer I brought along some friends and spent some quality time walking through Yosemite. I love that place, and all of the Sierras. :) I now have a goal of hiking the entire John Muir Trail someday. BTW, I'd love it if I could get together with some other people here and have a ToS backpacking/camping trip.

Wow, that's a really moving story Raiden. Very reminiscent of the movie. But it's cool that now you're planning on being a conservation biologist.

I grew up in an old house in the middle of a forest. We didn't really have any neighbors to speak of, it was just me, my family, and the forest. There was 20km away to the nearest town - so one could really say I was raised on nature :D

Every day I used to be outside in the woods - and I learned a lot too, since my father's a biologist. ;)

I still hate cities. :P