My son packed his backpack, an old aluminum-frame overnight pack, for the third-grade trip to the YMCA camp on Lake George. He tied on his sleeping bag, hoisted the pack onto his back, and strolled around the yard, getting the feel for it.
“It’s a Himalayan-style pack,” he told us. “But not for Mount Everest, because there’s no room for an air pack.”
Pilot Knob is far enough away for third-graders, and no air packs needed. It’s the trip they look forward to — and start saving pennies for — from the day they start school. Three days and two nights, sleeping in a cabin, learning about stream ecology, building tree forts and, of course, pushing Mr. Diamond into the lake.
Our high schooler went on the same trip six years ago. She remembers learning about frogs and their habitat, how every kid in her cabin woke up bawling in the middle of the first night, and which kids got the honor of pushing Mr. Diamond into the lake.
The trip is part team-building, but it’s mostly a good chance for the kids to immerse themselves in the outdoors. There’s a lot of literature about the problems of kids not being outside enough, not running through the woods or digging in the dirt or filling their pockets with rocks and frogs. “Nature-deficit disorder” is what author Richard Louv called it.
It might be where we live, or how we live, but my kids don’t have that problem. They wander the woods, picking up frogs and salamanders, chatting softly with them for a bit before setting them free again. They dig in the garden, they forage for wild greens and berries.
My son rides his bike a mile down the road to his friend BW’s house, where they spend hours crafting boats for their stuffed bear and frog, then send them sailing down the stream.
The stuffed frog got stuffed into the backpack for the camp trip, and I’ll bet BW’s bear went too. Whether they’ll stay in their cabins or be out in the stream, studying wetland habitat, I’m not sure.
The kids are likely to find lots of frogs at camp. But frogs worldwide are suffering from their own kind of nature-deficit, and some scientists think their extinction is imminent. By some estimates, the world has lost a third of frog species in the past few decades.
Warming temperatures, loss of wetland habitat, pesticides and pharmaceutical chemicals, a mysterious fungus, even over-harvesting of frogs for eating have been blamed.
The journal Science reported more than five years ago on a fungal disease spreading around the world, killing frogs, toads and other amphibians. An international team of biologists writing for the journal estimated that one-third of all amphibians are threatened with extinction because of the fungus, pollution and over-development.
The journal Nature published a study linking climate change with the disappearance of 65 different species of amphibians in South and Central America. “The fate of amphibians — whose permeable skin makes them sensitive to environmental changes — is seen by scientists as a possible harbinger of global warming’s effects,” The Washington Post reported.
“Scientists fear the largest mass extinction since the disappearance of the dinosaurs because of a deadly disease which is sweeping through populations of frogs, toads, newts, salamanders and caecilians across the globe,” said the British newspaper the Telegram.
Save the Frogs, a nonprofit organization of scientists and educators dedicated to saving amphibians from extinction, held its first “Save the Frogs Day” in April. The event, expected to become annual, was designed to raise awareness of the plight of amphibians, and to focus energy on finding ways to slow their demise.
It’s hard to imagine a world with no frogs. A summer night with no peepers and bullfrogs would be a sad thing. And the increasing loss of species — insects, plants, amphibians — is a scary comment on how we treat our Earth.
Amphibians are particularly sensitive to habitat disruptions, both because of their porous skin and because they rely on two different habitats, water and dry land.
I’m not sure how much the third-graders will learn during their three days at Y camp, but the trip comes at the end of a science unit on environmental issues. If my kid is any indication, the third-graders are talking about saving energy, resources and habitat.
Maybe one of them will find a way to save the frogs.
Margaret Hartley is the Gazette’s Sunday and features editor. Greenpoint appears in the Gazette’s print edition Sundays on the Environment page.
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