Elementary school will be dismissed tomorrow; placed on hold for the next two months. High schools already have been, for the summer months. Usually at this time of year there's a brief, but notable influx of young people coming into the ravine. Very few of them walk along the trails. Usually they're on bicycles. Our little dogs, not quite familiar or understanding of what bicycles are, view them as threats and react accordingly, barking furiously while they're in view.

It is seldom that we see young children, pre-teens and older normally in the ravine. But when we do it pleases me mightily. Not those who are destructive, who try to start fires, or push over decaying tree trunks, or snap the slender trunks and branches of saplings. Or those who build earth ramps in the middle of trails, to give them the thrills they seek skate-boarding and trick-bicycling. Let alone those who toss huge chunks of granite from the construction, into the creek. This is, however, typical bored behaviour of young people who have never been taught to respect nature.

Often, when there a public holidays we brace ourselves for the presence of family groups sauntering through the woodland trails, on a yearly tribute-to-nature outing. Or when people have guests over for dinner and later take them on pleasant post-prandial tours through the ravine. At least they are enjoying exposure, however brief, to the natural world that all too many people have no idea exists, and couldn't care less that it does.

When I was a child some of my earliest memories are of being taken to a public park by my parents. And then, having had that exposure, yearning for more. As I grew older and more independent I would seek out those green spaces where trees grew and all seemed calm in the order of nature's benevolence. When at the age of fourteen my husband and I wanted to spend quality time together we searched out parks, to stroll among the trees and talk, talk, talk.

So when we come across several or a crew of young people curious about what might be in the creek or the forested ravine in general that they would like to have a closer look at, or strolling about, talking to one another calmly and with a semi-awareness of t heir environment, it brings back to me old memories. I enjoy seeing them there, as though they too are on a lifelong voyage of discovery of the natural world.

It is a world we have divorced ourselves from, living in our concrete landscapes interspersed here and there with public parks and playing fields with playgrounds and climbing apparatuses that encourage children to exercise their limbs and familiarize themselves with the out-of-doors. All too often forgotten, discarded and shunned for the greater attraction in this current era of online social media and exploring the Internet, as though the two preoccupations cannot live in harmony in anyone's life.