Connecting With Kids and Nature

Seated at a wooden picnic table, Barbara Benoit Baron, naturalist and volunteer for the William O. Douglas Outdoor Classroom, spread out her teaching tools--pine cones, eucalyptus “nuts” and wildflowers.

“I just plain love it,” Benoit Baron said recently about her role as a teacher and docent at the outdoor classroom’s Sooky Goldman Nature Center. “My experience here has given me balance in my life.”

The 62-year-old Van Nuys resident stopped and glanced at a curious blue jay nearby. She then turned her ear toward choral music drifting down from the amphitheater, where Dixie Canyon Avenue Elementary School students were holding a Saturday morning concert.

“I’m passionate about the program here because I believe children must connect with nature,” Benoit Baron said. “The impression nature makes when they’re young is so powerful. I want them to grow up with the idea of protecting the forests.”

Benoit Baron, who has guided children along the outdoor classroom’s mountain trails for nearly four years, connected with the outdoors at a young age.

The Southern California native spent her early years in San Diego, where she romped through local hills and strolled along beaches on frequent nature walks with her grandfather.

Benoit Baron moved around a great deal in her youth, following her Army officer father from state to state. Rather than resenting the experience, she said, she found her itinerant upbringing gave her the chance to stand in an Alaskan stream among running salmon one year, and explore the Arizona desert the next.

“I first saw the glaciers along the coast of Alaska when I was 14 and started crying,” Benoit Baron said. “The trees touched the waterline and I just couldn’t believe what I was looking at.”

Benoit Baron said she still feels a sense of wonder every time she points out the symmetry in leaf formation or delves into the geometric shapes on display in the stems and seeds of plants, trees and flowers.

“Barbara’s so intelligent and she brings a sense of excitement to the subjects she presents,” said Angi Bates, volunteer coordinator for the William O. Douglas Outdoor Classroom. “People come back from her tours and say how her excitement rubbed off on them.”

Benoit Baron began her association with the outdoor classroom in 1995, after raising her two sons. She said she took the assistant docent coordinator’s post because she wanted to be surrounded by nature, which has always sustained her in an urban environment.

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In addition to the children’s tours through the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy site, she offers a “Sacred Geometry” tour for adults. She and fellow docent Andrea Diamond are developing a preschool program for children and their parents, which they’ll introduce in the fall.

“I’m amazed by how much children already know at such a young age,” Benoit Baron said. “Many of them have never been in nature before. If I can encourage them to grow up and save this planet, I feel I’ve done something significant.”

For information about William O. Douglas Outdoor Classroom programs and tour schedules, call (310) 858-7272.

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