About Steve

Viewpoints from the Publisher's View

NatureMarch Issue, 2010, Potrero View

By Steve J. Moss

Growing up in Southern California – and later in the Bay Area – my sisters, brother and I would ride our bikes, walk to school, or play in the dry creek beds near our house without a second thought.  Long-time Potrero Hill residents experienced that same childhood freedom, exploring the then marshy Mission Bay, or rolling down undeveloped hillsides on what’s now called the north slope.  Youth was spent biking to friends’ houses, investigating tadpoles in meandering creeks, searching for fossils, arrowheads, or old bottles, and playing hide-and-seek in wide open fields.  

Today our children do none of these things, at least not unsupervised.  Much of the City’s open space has been paved over.  Most parents wouldn’t let anyone younger than a teenager play alone in Candestick Point, McLaren, or even Jackson parks, or bike much further than down the block.  Relative to even a generation ago, our children’s sense of freedom and familiarity with nature has been substantially diminished.  

Low-income children living in Bayview-Hunters Point or Visitacion Valley may never see a redwood tree, or even dip their toes in the Pacific Ocean.  Even upper income families’ interaction with nature is often limited to tightly supervised nature walks and highly scheduled camping trips.  In San Francisco, at least, gone are the long days when a pair of ten year olds could spend hours wandering along a quasi-urban stream, occasionally squatting down to poke a stick into a leaf, or stare at an unusual-looking beetle.

This loss coincides with a period in which urban society’s relationship with nature tends to center on divisions over who gets to use what amount of scarce open space for which activities.  Dog walkers – increasingly paid professionals – herd up to a half-dozen free range canines into available patches; preservationists try to fence off tracts to be populated by native flora and fauna only; soccer players, ultimate Frisbee gamers, roller skaters, and mountain bikers all vie for their part of what’s left of paradise.  Meanwhile, by and large, once children have graduated from whatever plastic playgrounds are available to them they’re kept away from experiencing the urban eco-system entirely.  Nature is found at the zoo, or behind glass walls at the Academy of Sciences.

City living has always been full of trades-offs.  While we can’t skinny dip in the local watering hole – unless it’s a bar tucked away in a back alley – we do have access to superlative art, science, and natural history museums, multiple live theaters, and, though struggling, a public transportation system.  Children who don’t have unbridled access to nature can learn about art at the San Francisco Modern Art Museum, dance at the San Francisco Ballet, and experience the San Francisco Symphony.  While our kids may not have the same intimacy with nature as their country cousins, they’re arguably better off than their suburban counterparts, who grow up in a middle ground where nature principally consists of manicured lawns, and culture is found at the mall or multiplex.

Still, San Francisco has the ability to improve families’ access to nature, particularly in the Southeast neighborhoods, where a large proportion of the City’s children are raised.  Nascent efforts at Starr King Openspace to develop programs with next door neighbor Starr King Elementary School; SF Urban Riders’ attempts to create kid-friendly mountain bike trails to access oft desolate McLaren Park; and the McKinley Square Community Association and McKinley Square Park Foundation’s work to make larger swaths of that park safer for everyone reflect emerging attempts to recreate our relationship with nature.   

We may never again experience the childhood freedoms we had a generation ago in San Francisco.  But we can provide our children with a sense that they live in a place that’s consists of more than buildings, asphalt roads, swing sets, and street trees.  If we don’t, we risk replicating half-millennium old attitudes towards nature, in which a walk in the woods is a scary thing to do, and quiet contemplation sitting on a boulder next to a stream is forever replaced by the restless chatter of video games and online media.