Without Walls
Powell believes the increased abuse he’s seen is linked to the growing isolation people have from the natural world. “When people are so disconnected from the natural world, the ability to empathize with anything outside their own epidermis becomes very, very small,” he says. “For me, this raised a very red flag. It said that we are doing ourselves a great deal of harm”.

Great article in the Santa Fe Reporter on teaching kids outside, in Nature – the big classroom without walls. Also see Environmental Education Association of New Mexico.

Another quote from the article:

The stream and the pond were my childhood companions, they were a playground, they were books and television, they were the mirrors of a gangly and contemplative Narcissus. In the splashings of any pool there is whatever one will need to see: the dream of everything, the nightmare of nothing, clouds and stars, a self.
— Stanley Crawford, A Garlic Testament: Seasons on Small New Mexico Farm