Some of the best times I've spent in Colorado have been in the

Hear the words of Mark Udall, spoken as both memory and warning: “Some of the best times I’ve spent in Colorado have been in the backcountry with my mom and siblings, and more recently, with my own kids. That is why I’m concerned to see today’s kids spending more time browsing the Internet than exploring nature.” In this utterance lies the contrast of two worlds—one shaped by the mountains, rivers, and skies, the other by glowing screens and endless digital noise. His words remind us that the soul of humanity has always been bound to the earth, and that to forget this bond is to lose a part of ourselves.

The meaning of his words is layered with both nostalgia and responsibility. As a child, he knew the joy of the backcountry, where silence and wind spoke more truth than any book or machine. These moments with family shaped him, taught him resilience, awe, and humility before creation. Later, as a father, he passed the same gifts to his children. Yet now, he laments, many of the young turn instead to the Internet, seeking connection in circuits and pixels rather than in soil and sky. The sadness of his concern is not against technology itself, but against imbalance: that the screen has replaced the meadow, the keyboard the trail, and the artificial world the living one.

The ancients knew well the wisdom of nature. The philosophers of Greece walked their gardens and groves, teaching beneath trees and by flowing streams. Aristotle gathered his students in the Lyceum, where the earth itself was his classroom. The Stoics, too, spoke of harmony with nature as the foundation of virtue. To step into the wilderness was not escape, but return—to the rhythms that birthed humanity long before wires and walls. Udall’s call echoes their teaching: without communion with the natural world, we risk losing clarity, strength, and perspective.

History offers examples of this truth. Consider Henry David Thoreau, who retreated to Walden Pond to learn simplicity and to discover that “in wildness is the preservation of the world.” His experiment was not against progress, but for balance, reminding a growing industrial age that without nature, man becomes a stranger to himself. Just as Thoreau warned his people, Udall now warns ours: that when children know the Internet more intimately than they know the earth, a dangerous forgetting has begun.

The wisdom here is that nature does not simply entertain; it teaches. The trail teaches endurance, the river teaches flow, the mountain teaches perspective, and the forest teaches patience. These lessons cannot be downloaded; they must be lived. To lose them is to grow shallow, mistaking information for wisdom, distraction for wonder. A child who only browses the Internet learns quickly, but a child who also climbs mountains, plants seeds, or listens to birds learns deeply.

The lesson, O seeker, is this: seek balance. Let not the Internet be the sole companion of the young, nor of yourself. Embrace the tools of the age, but do not forget the roots of humanity in the soil. For no matter how advanced the world becomes, the heart will always hunger for the peace of streams and the majesty of skies. And if we deny this to our children, they will inherit not only our technologies but also our emptiness.

Practical is this counsel: take your children, your friends, and yourself outdoors. Walk in silence, climb where the earth rises, sleep under the stars. Share stories around firelight rather than only screens. Teach the young to know both the language of machines and the whispers of leaves, that they may inherit not just knowledge but wisdom. In doing so, you give them what Udall received: the eternal gift of belonging to the earth.

Thus Mark Udall’s words resound as both gratitude and warning: “Some of the best times I’ve spent… are why I’m concerned to see today’s kids on the Internet instead of in nature.” Let us take heed, lest we raise a generation who know everything about the world but have never felt its breath upon their skin. To walk with the earth is to walk with life itself, and to forget it is to grow rootless in a world that desperately needs grounding.