09/21/2025
"On Volcan Mountain" by Richard Louv, Bestselling Author and Director, Volcan Mountain Foundation
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Julian, CA
September, 2025
For six years, my wife Kathy and I have been privileged to live a few miles south of Volcan Mountain. We’re still newcomers.
This morning fog, like white lace, moves in and across the valley below our house, obscuring everything except the primary peak of the Volcan Mountains range. Later, great clouds boil up from the Anza Borrego desert. They loom above Julian, then move on.
During my 24 years as a columnist for the "San Diego Union" and "Union-Tribune", I often wrote about the need to protect the region’s back country – for all the life that our forest, mountains, and waters contain; for our sense of place and belonging; and for human health.
In my 2005 book, "Last Child in the Woods", I coined the term nature-deficit disorder to describe the growing divide between people – especially children – and the natural world.
I’m always careful to say that nature-deficit disorder is not a known medical diagnosis, though perhaps it should be. What the term offers, however, is a way to talk about the replacement of nature by an increasingly digital life. This alienation fueled by fear of stranger danger, poor urban design, and a host of other reasons.
When I was researching the book, I could identify only about 60 studies in the world about the benefits of nature experience. We’ve seen some progress. Today, over 1,500 scientific studies have underscored how important time spent in the natural world is to the cognitive, physical and emotional health of children and adults.*
Recognizing this, pediatricians in the U.S. and Canada have begun to prescribe time spent in the nature.
In fact, one of the reasons Kathy and I moved here was a recognition of our own nature-deficit. Julian and Volcan Mountain are now at the center of our experience, as they are for many who live or visit here.
Since 1987, the Volcan Mountain Foundation has worked to protect Volcan from development with an ultimate goal to preserve the entire 15-mile-long Volcan Mountains range.
But VMF doesn’t stop at preservation.
Through its multi-year forest health stewardship project, the foundation regenerates fire-damaged forests and lowers the risk of future wildfires.
VMF helps thousands of San Diegans, particularly children, connect with the natural world – to feel the excitement and awe in the presence of ancient trees, and to attend nature classes on the trails and at VMF’s Volcan Mountain Nature Center. Among its many programs, it offers Club WILD, Julian Young Birders Club and a new partnership with Julian schools bringing students from kindergarten through 8th grade to the mountain twice each school year.
Janice Bina-Smith, VMF’s education coordinator, says her goal “is to have the kids feel like they are a part of something special and bring in the wonder and magic of nature.” The kids learn about the array of plant and animal life on the mountain. For adults, VMF offers naturalist classes, nature therapy, and volunteer opportunities to help protect this special place.
Surrounded by Tijuana, San Diego and Los Angeles, Volcan Mountain and Julian are at the epicenter of one of highest concentrations of human population in the world. Yet, San Diego ranks as the most biodiverse county in the continental United States. The progenitor Adam or Eve of rainbow trout around the world may still exist in these mountains.
Despite growing eco-anxiety about climate change and biodiversity collapse, Volcan Mountain is, to many of us, a symbol of what was and what could yet be.
You and other supporters of the Volcan Mountain Foundation keep that hope alive.
Now, light from the west slides across the valley, painting the mountain red. Like us, Volcan changes from moment to moment. It has stories to tell.
Please join me and our generous dollar-for-dollar Matching Fund donors: Cliff and Carolyn Colwell, Dave and Kathie Rubenson and the Willis and Jane Fletcher Fund, in supporting VMF with a gift.
We welcome donations at volcanmt.org/donate
Or by mail:
VMF
PO Box 1625
Julian, CA 92036
-Richard Louv
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Richard is a new member of the VMF Board of Directors. He is the author of “Last Child in the Woods,” “Vitamin N,” “Our Wild Calling,” and other books. He is also co-founder of the nonprofit Children & Nature Network, which supports the movement to reconnect children and communities to the natural world.
*Summaries of the growing number of studies about nature and the health of children, families and communities can be found at https://research.childrenandnature.org).
