There is an urgent need for young people to learn to know the natural world of which they are a part. Outdoor education is the only means by which people can recover their stone-age identity and discover that they are wildlife, no different in the basics of life than any other species. For most of their story, human beings lived in harmony with…

Outdoor education programs help students realize their "wild" nature by linking them concretely with their surroundings, providing stories that explain the natural world, encouraging feelings of wonder, and expanding identification with nature as parts of the world, previously perceived as "outside," become part of the self.…