HOLDEN – Unstructured outdoor play, the beginning of a lifelong connection with nature, is slowly becoming a thing of the past for children today.

Some sobering statistics have been released. More than 60 percent of the nation’s young children do not have access to daily outdoor play. Schools are reducing or eliminating recess. Computer-related repetitive stress injuries among young people are on the rise.

Richard Louv, author of “Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder,” said, “Within the space of a few decades, the way children understand and experience nature has changed radically. Their physical contact, their intimacy with nature, is fading.”

You can be part of the solution to this growing national problem.

Take a child out into nature as often as possible. Encourage your community to have natural areas with trails right in town. Provide an important and safe place for children to explore and discover the wonders of the natural world.

The outdoors deliver health benefits, too. Recent studies show that connecting children with nature helps fight childhood obesity, depression and even attention deficit disorder. Children who spend more time outdoors show improvements in test scores, grade-point averages and in critical and creative thinking.

You can affect the lives of children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews and all those children who don’t run around the neighborhood and play in the woods like the previous generation did.

You can help connect children with nature. Think about the future of the children you know. Do they play outdoors like you did as a child? They need to connect with nature. You can take them to a place of sanctuary in our ever-complex, stressful world.

Bring a child to the Fields Pond Audubon Center in Holden this spring. Take the child on a simple walk. You can give that child a chance to relate to you quietly in a natural setting.

Here, finding a stream or a wildflower opens a world they can touch and smell and feel – a world where the sight of a red squirrel, a bluebird or a red-winged blackbird sends squeals of excitement through the forest, the meadow or the cat-tail marsh.

I learned from my parents that a gift of such an experience, a relationship and a treasured memory, is the best gift of all – better than any toy.

For information on Fields Pond Audubon Center, call 989-2591.