Earth Day isn't exactly my favorite holiday. A born and bred Gothamite, I never come any closer to roughing it than hiking to the store, hunting for bargains or fishing for something to wear.

The idea of sleeping outside, on the ground -- I believe that's called "camping" -- seems an absurd affront to progress: Why do you think we invented houses? If I had a slingshot, I'd probably use it against those %$#@*!& birds who ruin my rest each morning.

And yet, it is precisely because I am a modern man (and a bit of a cheapskate) that I try to recycle and reuse my household items and limit my use of water, gas and other natural resources.

In this spirit, I was almost happy to join my youngest daughter's Indian Princess tribe last weekend as they cleaned up Raleigh's Fallon Park for Earth Day.

While we collected muddy cigarette packs, sticky candy wrappers and submerged beer cans, my initial reaction -- yuck! -- was replaced by larger environmental questions, especially about our regional drought and global warming.

I wondered what impact eco-friendly but nature-free people like me will have on our ability to confront environmental challenges. Must one know and love Mother Earth in order to protect her?

This question is becoming pivotal as Americans increasingly turn away from the great outdoors, choosing malls over mountains, couches instead of cold streams, cyberspace over open spaces. During the past two decades, the number of people who visited national parks or went camping or hiking declined between 18 percent and 25 percent, according to a study published by the National Academy of Sciences.

Applications for fishing permits fell by 25 percent between 1981 and 2005. The number of hikers on the Appalachian Trail dropped 18 percent between 2000 and 2005. Since 1987, the study notes, "time spent in nature [has] dropped by about one percent annually" with no signs of improvement.

This retreat from nature has many causes. But the study pays special attention to the rise of the Internet and video games.

Echoing a Kaiser Family Foundation survey that found that kids between ages 8 and 18 spend an average of 6.5 hours a day with electronic media, the authors asserted: "The replacement of vigorous outdoor activities by sedentary, indoor videophilia has far-reaching consequences for physical and mental health."

Paradox of attitude

As a denizen of the concrete jungle, I haven't much considered these developments. So I spoke with two people who have thought deeply about the environmental implications of our fraying relationship with nature, writers Richard Louv and Bill McKibben.

Louv focuses on how our disconnection from nature is affecting kids.

In his book "Last Child in the Woods," he coined the term nature-deficit disorder to describe the myriad ill effects of our shut-in culture.

While many of these consequences involved health -- including rises in obesity, attention disorders and depression -- Louv also explored the troubling paradox our retreat from nature has created as we grapple with environmental issues.

On the one hand, Americans are more ecologically aware than ever.

"When I was a boy growing up in the 1950s, I played in the woods, loved the woods, without understanding how they were connected to a larger world," he said. "I'd never heard of climate change, acid rain or holes in the ozone layer."

Nowadays even elementary school students recognize how our ecological fate is tied to what's happening in the Amazon, the Arctic, China and India.

Briefcase vs. heart

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