Sport, Fitness, and Nature

For many children it doesn’t take much to stir an interest in anything having to do with running around, and our society certainly has ways to reward those who become particularly adept at many kinds of sports.

But outdoor recreation and sports have a significant place in the history of American learning and American thought. Pioneers on land and sea were not only engaged in essential work but also in utilizing skills—hiking, hunting, sailing, canoeing, map and compass use—that we now associate with leisure activities. The rise of interest in team and individual sports as entertainment coincides with eras of settlement and the growth of working and middle classes with the time, inclination, and disposable income to enjoy rooting for a home team or playing a game of golf.

Sports and games involve the use of many cognitive skills, from the complex geometry of virtually all ball games to the quick thinking and decision-making required to set up an effective play. Listening and negotiation skills are the most important part of developing the rules and stipulations for even the most informal or spontaneous games. Team sports are based on communication, while success in individual sports stems at least in part from knowing one’s own strengths and capabilities. And the world of extreme sports (now a big business) grew out of curious and creative minds’ explorations of what simple machines and human ingenuity can do with the help of (or in opposition to) gravity and sometimes (to the outside observer, anyway) common sense.

Inasmuch as sports are important expressions of culture, the young person who chooses to explore the hinterlands of sport will also make interesting discoveries about the nature of the human experience. In the patterns of popularity of one sport or another may be found the faint traces of human history—cricket in the former British empire, for example—as well as unexpected evidence of socioeconomic differences.

Virtually, perhaps, until COVID-19 stay-at-home orders are lifted and recreational areas re-open, interested kids can imagine woods and the water as places to learn self-reliance and, about the interaction of man with nature as well as, perhaps, a bit more about nature itself. And, when it can be done "for real" in safety, in exploring all these areas they will enact old Roman dictum, mens sana in corpore sano—a sound mind in a healthy body—an ideal motto for a balanced life.

The suggestions in SPORTS, FITNESS, AND NATURE run the gamut from action to appreciation, but the idea is to find fun and intellectual and spiritual stimulation in new places.

SF&N 1. Learn about a new sport in each of these areas: team, individual, land, water

Sports and games come in all sizes and degrees of complexity, from those requiring little more than a ball and some play space to those involving thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment. Whether the new activity is team handball or horseback riding, the point here is not only to imagine the acquisition of a few new skills but also to explore the breadth of this field of human endeavor.

Along the way, there are lessons to be learned—rules, procedures, stances, commands—that will inspire the thinking child to wonder at their origin as well as to find new areas in which these lessons can be applied. Until one tries archery, for example, one may never know which is one’s sighting eye, but that knowledge may also be useful in other arenas from painting to music. Handling a horse or a sailboat will make Westerns or sea stories all the more real, while the strategies of water polo may be of surprising utility in basketball (and vice versa). Tossing a javelin will involve any number of principles of physics and the mathematics of trajectories.

There are abundant reference material and videos online relating to and explaining in detail sports and games, and it is likely that the youngster already has some ideas about things he or she would like to learn more about. Finding ways to play a new sport may be a bit more difficult for now, but perhaps in time a few friends could be enlisted to play a scaled-down version—think of the various ways in which baseball can become a two-person sport (Three Flies, Running Bases) and use the imagination.

Some sports or activities—especially those that might involve animals, the water, heights, projectiles, or vehicles—will later need some thought given to matters of safety and even supervision. Enlisting an expert as mentor or coach would be a very good idea.

SF&N 2. Acquire a good-quality compass and learn the basics of navigation
Acquire a good-quality compass designed to be used in navigation and learn the basics of navigation using the compass and a map; there are online resources as well excellent books available in libraries to teach these skills.

Some outdoor enthusiasts will tell you that map-and-compass land navigation has gone the way of the dodo in the age of GPS, but when the batteries run out, or when the satellites are down (as they were for a period after 9/11/2001) it takes a magnetic compass and a good map to tell you where you are.

The location of north has been part of the human knowledge base for millennia, but understanding the magnetic compass gave medieval Europeans the ability to navigate precisely. Greater sophistication in compass design (and an awareness that magnetic north is not always true north) has made possible not only voyages of discovery but also more mundane activities such as land surveying.

Learning even the most rudimentary skills involving a compass—following a set course, for example—involves logical and mathematical thinking as well as sustained attention; lots of instructional resources can be found on the internet. Land navigation using a compass and a map is even more complex, involving visualization of landform and structure as well as an understanding of angles. Even a short journey accomplished by this method can bring a considerable feeling of accomplishment, and it is not then difficult to imagine how it might even be possible to cross a mountain range or a desert using just simple instruments.

A serviceable compass need not be expensive—adequate models can be had for under fifteen dollars—but it may be possible to find a local hiking or orienteering (a sport involving running as well as compass navigation) group willing to provide both instruction and equipment to an interested novice. Maps suitable for serious navigation can be located through the government—U. S. Geodetic Service topographical maps for land use and NOAA charts for marine use—or though websites specializing in maps or outdoor recreation.

(ALSO: STEM; Language, Literature, and History)

SF&N 3. Find the website for and read an entire issue of a magazine about a sport you don’t know anything about

Magazines about specific sports abound, and the chances of finding one online—or in a library or a bookstore in time—are great; consider just the number of magazines devoted to sailing, or automobile racing, or mountain biking, or surfing.

Like any publication about whose subject one knows little, sporting magazines at first seem to be written in some alien language. The visual images may be accessible, but the nouns and verbs refer to unknown activities and obscure performers. It is often the advertisements that provide the first keys to understanding, a reference here illuminating the gist of an article there. In time one begins to understand some of the key values of the sport as well as some of the issues of the moment, and a careful reading can be enough to make even a complete novice feel at least a bit like a real fan, although a few sports—like cricket—are so esoteric in their nomenclature and terminology that they defy easy comprehension just from reading.

It should be noted that some cable television plans include access to channels devoted to rarefied or uniquely cultural sports; an afternoon watching (for example) rugby, windsurfing, or some form of equestrian sport can be pretty engaging, as well.

Perhaps the magazine will inspire further investigation. No doubt there are surfers from Iowa who first learned about the sport from a magazine, and their example should not be taken lightly.

SF&N 4. Practice an amazing (but safe) feat of balance, like standing on one foot for a long time or carrying something on your head. Perhaps start by practicing keeping a yardstick balanced on your finger, or your chin, or on top of your foot.
There are no easy ways to do this, and the practitioner probably learns more about patience than about balance. The art of balancing requires a Zen-like ability to place yourself, and your body in particular, deep in the moment and shutting off much of the conscious mind. This is indeed a subtle art.

So how does turning off the conscious mind help turn someone into a thinker? From earliest times wisdom has been seen as something arising from a level of consciousness that many people are unable to access easily. In this place of deep concentration and of deep insight there exist possibilities of thought that the normal preoccupations of even the child or adolescent mind tend to obscure. The kind of deep “unconscious” concentration required to balance an object, or to properly aim an arrow or throw a strike for that matter, can be a place of power for the young person. Learning to access this place—athletes who can do this easily call it “The Zone”—and the clear channels of thought within it can be a useful skill in many areas, from taking standardized tests to completing tasks requiring great concentration and patience to performing other physical acts; it is even the place from which artists and poets often draw inspiration and vision.

Balancing a yardstick on a big toe for 30 seconds may not turn a young person into Picasso or William Tell, but it will help them explore an important realm of consciousness while having fun—perhaps even amazing others—at the same time. And better yet, balancing wizardry can be performed based on senses other than sight.

SF&N 5. Learn to identify at least three different kinds of animal tracks
While animal tracking is no longer a vocational necessity in most parts, learning to observe the passage of other creatures through our world is an exercise in looking closely and analytically at our environment. The tracks in this activity do not necessarily have to be of wild creatures; learning to differentiate one family pet from another would also fit the suggestion.

Animal track guides can be found in most reference books, even including some dictionaries, and local environmental organizations or hunting clubs may have specific guides to animals found in your region. In much of the wintry Northern Hemisphere, snowy yards and fields become a great places to find well-articulated and easily identifiable animal tracks. If the child who finds this activity engaging should have occasion to travel, it might even be worth trying to locate tracking guides for the destination.

Identifying a track is one thing, but actually following an animal’s trail is another. If there is a teacher or acquaintance skilled in this art, then perhaps they could be enlisted as a mentor. Otherwise, the aspiring Davey Crockett can start by trying to identify all the tracks in a certain small area, perhaps, and then expanding the territory. Over time patterns may emerge, and the youngster can learn to see not just tracks but animal movement. Other clues that can be learned include animal scat (droppings), which differ significantly from one species to another.

The outdoor aspect of the activity should only be undertaken when it is deemed safe to do so, and, as always, if the youngster’s tracking takes them into an area with natural hazards, some safety guidelines should be put in place through rules and instruction. If there is serious danger—poisonous snakes, for example—it would be better if the child tracked with a friend, and possibly an adult friend at that.

(ALSO: STEM)

SF&N 6. Learn to juggle. You’ve always wanted to, anyhow; now’s the time. Practice until you are good enough to juggle for an audience.
Like the balancing activity suggested in #51, learning to juggle—an art that is just plain fun to watch as well as fun to perform—is another way into a whole host of parts of the brain: juggling requires close observation, timing, balance, and spatial perception, all at once. Even those with limited dexterity can master basic juggling moves, and there are even juggling kits with instructions intended for “klutzes.”

Getting the skills of juggling down requires practice, practice, practice, and along the way the learner must control impatience or a tendency to give up. The motivation must come from within, and perhaps the learner may find that his or her desire to learn is not commensurate with the time and effort required to succeed; a person cannot be forced to learn to juggle (or to do much else).

But the persistent student will suddenly begin to make two-object and then three-object sequences, and then all the hard work and frustration will pay off. An act that at first requires immense concentration will become almost automatic, with the juggler able to “switch on” the juggling brain more or less at will.

While juggling may please the juggler, they will soon learn that the sight of cascading balls or other objects is enormously entertaining to others. If the impetus is there, there are infinite ways in which the art of juggling can be expressed, in the number of objects in the air, say, or the kinds of objects. Performing jugglers usually have a patter that they can perform while juggling, even interacting with members of the audience, and then there are always the high-risk juggling objects—knives and torches—that always seem to thrill watchers. (We emphatically do NOT recommend the juggling of dangerous or fragile objects; we are just making an observation on one aspect of the art.) 

SF&N 7. Find a bird guide and start trying to identify the birds you commonly see and hear. Your local Audubon Society can help you develop your skills, and when the stay-at-home orders are lifted they will probably again sponsor organized bird-watching events at which you can learn from serious birders. Start your own life list.
No creatures so lend themselves to observation as birds, and the extraordinary profusion of species and the relative ease with which a serious birdwatcher can pile up a long list of species sighted has made birdwatching one of the world’s most popular hobbies. 

Committed watchers travel the world, often undergoing considerable hardship and vast expense, to build up their life lists, logs of all the types of birds they have ever seen.

Even better, birds are also audible, and many birders are as eager to hear and recognize new species as they are to see them. This auditory birdwatching adds another level of challenge to the activity as a whole.

Field guides to birds of various regions are readily available in print and on line.. Increasingly publishers are producing guides that use photographs instead of the old, and often lovely, paintings and drawings. There are also online audio guides to bird calls.

A sharp-eyed young person armed with a good guide can easily spot several dozen species in most locales over the course of a season, and if there are migratory flyways nearby this number can increase dramatically. Add some binoculars to the watcher’s toolkit and the number will grow even more. As fall turns to winter in the northern hemisphere many bird species migrate, but the thinner foliage can make those who linger more easily visible.

If the youngster is truly bitten by the birdwatching bug, the next step is to find a local birding group—perhaps through a local Audubon Society chapter—and go out with experienced members. Many birding groups conduct periodic counts of species and individual birds in their area, and participating in one of these events can be exciting and profitable in terms of additions to the list.

Some birders specialize, and so the young watcher may want to work mainly on shorebirds, ducks, birds of prey, owls, or the many species of sparrows. But specialist or not, the youngster who has become adept at sighting birds and looking closely enough to differentiate among similar species will have gained important observing and analytical skills.

(ALSO: STEM; The World and Its Cultures)

SF&N 8. Look for patterns in nature—start by learning about Fibonacci numbers and then hunting for them, both in nature and in man-made situations. What is the most surprising place you find a Fibonacci series?

There are innumerable patterns in nature, but few are quite so common or so startling as Fibonacci numbers. Leonardo Fibonacci, a 13th-century Italian mathematician, noted the property of a series of numbers 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 …, where the next number in the series is the sum of the two numbers preceding it.

Interesting to a mathematician, perhaps, but astounding when one notes the many ways in which nature enacts Fibonacci’s series. The number of seeds on a pine cone, the proportions of a chambered nautilus shell, the number of petals on a flower—all express the regular pattern of a Fibonacci series.

And while these number sequences are common, there are other patterns to be observed in nature—the number of leaves on a stem, the pattern of leaf alternation that separates False Solomon Seal (a shrub) from the real thing, the structure of insects, the times when certain birds sing, the relationship between the temperature of the water in a lake and the direction of the wind. The more closely one observes the natural world, the more the young scientist discovers order and symmetry and balance. The Fibonacci series is just one amazing example.

If the young observer is inclined to keep a journal of his or her “discoveries,” any science or mathematics teacher would be more than pleased to see and discuss the results.

(ALSO: STEM)

SF&N 9. Learn how to read a weather forecast and a weather map. Become familiar with the words, the concepts, the symbols, and the numerical information that appear on a comprehensive weather map, weather site, or weather forecast page.
The weather probably matters more to young people more than they realize. And never before has information on the weather been so readily available to the average person—on television and radio weather forecasts (and you haven’t heard a serious forecast if you haven’t heard Vermont Public Radio’s “Eye on the Sky” broadcasts, rich in detail and available on line, in newspapers, and above all on a variety of public and commercial internet weather sites like AccuWeather, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and Weather Underground.

Winter brings snow, sleet, and other phenomena, and summer can be a time of extreme weather events like heat waves and hurricanes. The young person who can become an adept consumer of weather-related information and who understands the significance of terms like high and low pressure, fronts, dew points, degree-days, and precipitation will be equipped, perhaps, to help friends and relations make plans and avoid or take advantage of meteorological phenomena. Simply the ability to read local radar maps can be a useful skill in predicting where and when “scattered showers” may fall, and the information often expressed as probabilities—”a 20% chance of rain tonight”—can also help the young weather maven understand more about the probability and statistics as well as to read different kinds of graphs and charts. There are also specialized forecast formats for aviators, mariners, and forest rangers—even major league sports teams have their own private forecasts made.

Global climate change is making more and more weather oddities into common experiences, and so the chances are good that we will all need to become more adept at parsing news on weather and its trends as our local environments become more and more subject to the forces that have been set in motion and that will require us to adapt our behaviors and our expectations to new conditions. If indeed “everybody talks about the weather,” those who make sense when doing so will be increasingly worth listening to.

(ALSO: STEM)