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In my work at YMCA camps, I met dozens of kids under eight who were terrified of getting their shoes dirty, sitting on the grass, being near any insect or being exposed to a breeze or raindrop. Many were so unaccustomed to doing anything other than passively watching TV or escaping into a portable video-game player that focusing their attention on an outside activity felt too difficult to bear. They panicked, started crying or shut down.

Many of us are growing up profoundly disconnected from nature and are often afraid of it. We have weeks when the only daylight that touches our skin comes during the walk between our house and car, and our minds are too busy to notice the birds singing. A good number of us are so over-stimulated by media we're numb to subtle things, to details shifting in the world outside our door. In fact, it's possible to forget there is such a world. This is why wilderness schools are so necessary. Happily, the number of them is growing, and most offer programs to people of all ages.

A wilderness school teaches not just how to survive in the risky wild, but how to relate with, learn from and be a part of it. The school provides opportunities and means to connect with fascinating animals that must be carefully sought out to be seen, local edible and medicinal plants living quietly about our feet and winged creatures crying out to us in warning or in a steady "song line" to say that all is well. Often a wilderness school will provide challenges to calm the mind and awaken one's intuition, inner compass or leadership abilities.

New wilderness schools are being founded, and many are growing in popularity all over the country as more and more people feel the hunger to reconnect to the earth. Websites such as the wilderness schools resource list (www.geosmith.com/wilderness/schools.cgi) provide connections with schools in 30 states, from the Great Lakes region, the South, the Northeast and the West Coast to Alaska and even Canada. There is a school in my backyard in Duvall, Washington that is a leading pioneer in the movement. (See wildernessawareness.org.)

Jon Young founded the Wilderness Awareness School (WAS) in Duvall in 1983, inspired by his childhood mentoring by renowned animal tracker and wilderness-survival author Tom Brown, Jr. The curriculum revolves around an indigenous mentoring approach that honors individuality, encourages self-sufficiency in learning and awakens a kinship with nature. School traditions are derived from several indigenous cultures. The Thanksgiving Address, a daily circle-up to honor all the aspects of creation, comes from the Iroquois peoples. The Six Shields of Awareness curriculum model is inspired by the Akamba peoples of Kenya.

The Wilderness Awareness School offers programs such as the tracking club for adults, The Art of Mentoring for parents and teachers and teen winter and summer wilderness expeditions like the popular Idaho wolf-tracking expedition. There are also fun monthly programs and intensive summer camps for children, which use creative play and exploration to foster naturalist knowledge and awareness skills. Nationally and internationally, people follow the home-study-based Kamana Naturalist Training Program, learning to see the world anew through "native eyes."

The school also offers alternative education options for youth from age three to college level. Coyote Mentoring, which requires students to figure things out on their own, is the primary method used. The instructor, like trickster Coyote, teaches in a clever way: by example, through sharing inspiration and by piquing the student's curiosity to know something, without handing over an answer.

Lucky three-to-six-year-olds enrolled in Roots and Wings play and explore the natural world through songs, stories and sensory walks. In the Youth School, children ages seven through twelve learn about plants, mammals, animal tracking, birds and survival. They also enjoy field trips, overnights, guest speakers and rites-of-passage opportunities upon graduation.

Teenagers up to the age of eighteen thrive in Community School, where the spirit of individuality is nourished and all are embraced by a supportive community. Students immerse themselves in intensive, experiential studies of nature, explore scientific perspectives and study movement and spirituality, learning to reconnect with their senses, intuition and heart. The goal of the program is to create truly centered, healthy, self-motivated young adults with the confidence to dream a vision of their own future.

For young adults there is the Residential Program, a naturalist college woven into the school's cedar forest and the Duvall community, offering a unique yearlong intensive training in subjects such as ethnobotany and stewardship, wilderness survival, indigenous models of education and the science of tracking.

The summer after my college graduation, I interned as an assistant naturalist instructor in the WAS summer day camps, and the joyful experience is still teaching me. I remember wandering along the river with a gaggle of five-to-eight-year-olds on hot days with field guides in hand, feathers and leaves stuck in our hair for fun and camouflage. We would stop to peer a long time at tracks in the sand, then continue, pausing to eat soft, red thimbleberries that tasted like mellow raspberries. We learned how to pick stinging nettle leaves safely and ate them all day long. We covered ourselves in debris and hid from each other with absolute silence and stillness, then took breaks to lie in the grass and watch a hunting hawk. Instead of teaching, I was being taught and learning volumes about the power of calmness, of fostering inspiration, of respect for the wisdom of youth and the rhythms of nature.

I'm certain we could all use more time outside, experiencing the elements as our ancestors did, challenged to see anew, feeling more alive with the air against our skin. Even one day a month in a wilderness school program could open an entirely new sense of wonder. A teenager might discover that he is amazing at teaching by example. A child may find she is more fascinated with than scared of spiders. A grown man may discover, after so many years, that he has a great ability to focus on essential details in the absence of noise and can see hundreds of variations of color in the river stones that all used to look gray.

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