All Experiences Shouldn't Be Virtual

Recently, longtime Houston Chronicle columnist Leon Hale wrote about his fascination with some caterpillars that he had trapped in order to see them turn into either butterflies or moths. When his partner caught him trapping the caterpillars and asked him why he was doing it, he replied:

"I wanted to see what the caterpillars would become, especially that red and black one. She said I didn't need to imprison those poor worms to learn that. I could just Google up caterpillars on the Internet and see nice pictures of the larval stages of moths and butterflies.Yeah, but I wanted to watch the process again, as I did when I was 10 years old. I'm getting tired of looking on the Internet for the answer to every question that crosses my head. I get the nervous feeling that we're headed down the Digital Information Road to a point where we won't have Experience, we'll just look it up."

There are a growing number of people, myself included, who also worry that we all - kids and adults - are losing 'Experience' with not only nature but with historical artifacts, art, live music and live theatre. Sure, Google and Wikipedia are great for school reports and quick reference, but there is no experience like walking the halls of an historic home or carding wool at a living history museum or visiting any of the other hundreds of other historic sites, parks, theatres and museums of America. The legacy of Experience is one in which we should all take part.

What do you think?

Photo: Plebeian sphinx caterpillar, (Paratrea plebeja), Jesse H. Jones Park & Nature Center, Humble, Texas 0510100840 by accent on eclectic, 2010.