... ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ John Fiske: I think the rule is if you eat four marshmallows in one night, you turn into a marshmallow.

John: When I was young, probably in elementary school, my parents brought home a poster, and the poster said, "Natural Beauty in Every Direction," and it had four photos on it.

The kelp, a pelican, desert, and mountains with snow.

And the idea is that in San Diego County, you have this incredible biodiversity and geodiversity.

From the ocean to the coastline to the upper grasslands to the mountains and the desert.

And I remember thinking as a kid without much life experience that was relatively normal.

And as I grew older and I learned that was not the average county, I started to appreciate it more and more as I became an adult.

And I just always loved that poster.

It hung in my room as a kid and it now sits in the room of one of my boys.

It is a way of communicating to him that San Diego is a special place, the place to protect.

It's a place to enjoy.

It's a place to appreciate, to pass on to maybe one day his kids.

♪♪♪ John: San Diego has some of the most important ecosystems in America, but they're also some of the most quickly disappearing.

So I want to take my sons on a journey to explore those areas before they disappear too quickly.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ John: So with my family traveling east to west, we plan to meet up with certain experts.

Like a desert guide, a plant biologist, a geographer, an animal biologist, an educator, and a boat captain.

Captain Joe Cacciola: You got it.

Thank you.

John: If I can show them how important these ecosystems are, and if I can show them how important the smallest bugs to the largest trees are, they may understand how important it is to protect these natural resources and pass them on to future generations.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Johnny Fiske: Should I touch it or-- Dr.

Clarissa Rodriguez: These are seeds.

It's like a dandelion, you know, when you go, [blowing] except these are native, so you can totally blow these all over the place.

So each one of these is one seed.

This is one seed right there.

Johnny: Do they fly?

Clarissa: Yes they do.

So they disperse by wind, so they're really good at taking off in the wind.

Or just going on the floor.

John: One of the most important resources in San Diego County is the Anza-Borrego State Park, and Anza-Borrego is massive.

♪♪♪ John: It is 1/5 of San Diego County.

It's the largest state park in California, and it tells a story of millennia.

When you go to Anza-Borrego and you go to places like the mud caves, the wind caves, or you go to the slot canyons, you are looking at earth and clay and dirt and soil that has been carved by either wind or water over thousands of years.

And you are immediately transported back in time, looking at geographical anomalies that are very unique to the United States.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ John: There is a mixture of mystery and elegance and danger.

♪♪♪ John: And you do have to be careful when you're going to these locations.

There's always a chance if you go into a place like a mud cave that it could collapse.

But in Anza-Borrego, a lot of things live in the desert.

Dr.

Brooke Rose: San Diego has more than 200 threatened and endangered species within the county.

It's the most of any other place in the United States.

So not only is it the most biodiverse place in the world, it has the most threatened and endangered species as well.

Richard W. Halsey: Anza-Borrego provides opportunities in a way to connect your wild self that is not available anywhere else in the county.

In Anza-Borrego, you can find a place where you can't find roads, you can't see lights, you can't see humans, and most regions don't have that, so you can go there and get lost spiritually and mentally and physically.

Clarissa: I feel like deserts don't get enough love.

Plants there are some of like the toughest, you know, they withstand these 120 degree temperatures, but also occasionally they'll get snow.

They're just adapted to live in these really harsh environments.

Super blooms are just these years where we haven't seen this plant necessarily for like decades or years.

These super blooms, they can actually see them from space, the satellites, like the flowers are just so vibrant.

We had this insane super bloom 2018, 2019.

So many people that normally don't go out on hikes and walks came out to go see the wildflowers, so it was really great for that, but there was also lots of trampling.

And so for me it was a dark day because if you trample the plants and if they haven't set their seed then they're not gonna make more seed for next time and that's gonna reduce the chances for a super bloom in the future and so it's just like bittersweet.

Like, I'm happy people are out here but I just wish there was more education on maybe there's like safer ways so you can view or like take your selfies.

We want people to take selfies and enjoy the nature but there's just ways to do it that would be better etiquette for nature.

John: Most people think of San Diego County, they don't think of mountains or snow.

They might think of the beach or the zoo.

But if you drive 1 or 2 hours north or east, you can hit mountains in San Diego County, and Palomar is one of those unique places that I like to take the boys so that they can experience snow.

We have multiple mountain ranges that crest over 6000 feet in elevation, and they are really important parts of the biodiversity in San Diego County because of the freshwater they provide.

The elevation alone brings in different species of plants and animals.

And Palomar Mountain, much like Mount Laguna or Mount Cuyamaca, presents its own ecosystem, birds and plants and animals.

We had a great time because everything looks so different under snow.

We got to take a look at the sunny side of trees and the shady side of trees and the difference between the two.

There's nothing like playing in the snow.

We had a great snowball fight.

And it also was a reminder of the importance of snowpack because snowpack is good for the environment for snowmelt to occur over weeks and months.

And the more that climate change makes the temperatures hotter in San Diego County, the less snowpack we're going to see.

♪♪♪ John: Three Sisters Waterfall is one of the coolest places to visit in San Diego County.

It reminds us how important snowpack melt is.

It's a massive waterfall over 100 feet tall, and it has 3 separate waterfalls in one.

Feels like something from the prehistoric ages.

It's an extremely spiritual experience.

And the amount of water resources coming out of that one or three separate waterfalls is really quite incredible.

There's something powerful about large amounts of water falling fast over rock.

It's really cold, so it feels really good if you put your feet in it, if you put your hands in it, if you play in it.

And you have to be safe.

I mean, it's powerful enough to sweep you off your feet.

♪♪♪ John: I was happy to show Johnny Three Sisters Waterfall because I know he had never seen anything like that before.

And that's what's really important is these riparian corridors.

Because you have all of this rain and snow up in the mountains, you need that water to travel from the snowpack through the high valleys, down into the coastal regions.

♪♪♪ John: And those riparian corridors are corridors for animals, wildlife, and they're corridors that can be cut off by human development like roads and freeways and housing developments and projects.

Understanding where freshwater originates and ends up is an important part of understanding why all of these biodiverse ecosystems in San Diego County work.

The biggest concern in Southern California, that we don't have enough freshwater to support 20 million people.

A lot of the freshwater that Southern California needs comes from Northern California and from the Colorado River.

We should be aware that there's not enough water for us to survive.

It's important to understand that freshwater and riparian corridors are absolutely essential to maintaining San Diego's unique biodiversity.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Clarissa: Plants offer more than just visual beauty.

They offer food, fiber, and medicine, right?

We use plants for wood.

We use it to create things, but we also use it for a lot of our medicine that we use today are actually extracted from chemicals from plants and so, and a lot of people don't realize that because we don't talk about it a lot.

John: And it feels like sometimes as we progress we start to lose a little bit of our connection to plants and nature each generation.

Clarissa: Yeah, and so that's what is really important is teaching the youth how important it is to be outside and I mean there's like research that's been shown like when you go out to like a forest like the chemicals that are released actually make you feel good like these like these pheromones, these chemicals, and so like nature is really good for us.

Clarissa: Yeah, look, it's a square.

Do you feel it?

Clarissa: I don't like the idea of like nature will take care of itself because I mean it might, but also humans are contributing to the loss of a bunch of species that wouldn't have gone lost.

I don't like that of like, "Oh, we'll engineer it" or like, "Nature will be fine," because, yeah, something will always be here, some plant will always be able to persist, right?

But that doesn't highlight the fact that, okay, well, there may be a bunch of plants that could have been alive that we could have saved but we didn't.

♪♪♪ John: What's really unique are these coastal lagoons.

That there are very few other places, especially here in California, that we have coastal lagoons.

John: Talking about where water starts and where water ends up.

Penasquitos Lagoon is an excellent location as an example for an estuary where there is brackish water, and anybody who visits Penasquitos Lagoon understands how special and unique it is.

It's a place that is protected and it's a place that hosts and harbors all sorts of wildlife that you really don't see in other places other than these estuary locations.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ John: North Torrey Pines Road goes over the beach and the bridge, so that the water exchange back and forth between the ocean and the freshwater occurs.

If you cut off those riparian corridors, those water corridors, you're blocking off the exchange of salt- and freshwater, and therefore you're losing that brackish environment.

That's an important part of harboring a biodiverse ecosystem.

One of these important riparian corridors is Penasquitos Creek, which runs through Penosquitos Canyon, which not only has volcanic rock but has evidence of human settlement that dates back thousands of years.

And a lot of those rocks and a lot of the geology there is formed by volcanic activity, and so you have again this very majestic, incredible river or creek that runs in between these very large suburban areas, and it's sort of a respite from the urban world, but it takes water from the mountains and it transports it from inland locations through the Penasquitos Creek down waterfall and into the Penasquitos Lagoon.

And it's a great place for hikes, it's a great place for kids.

It's one of those areas where you can go and bring your bicycles, bring your horses, bring your feet, bring your sneakers, and you can enjoy Penasquitos Lagoon on the trails without disturbing the environment.

And really spend time with your family.

You can stick your feet in the water and again you get that same crisp cold feeling and you understand where the water came from and where it's going.

So you can connect Three Sisters Waterfall to Penasquitos Creek, to Penasquitos Lagoon, and you can understand how important this transport of water is from inland to coastal.

♪♪♪ John: I see some scheming going on here.

John: Agh, agh.

Clarissa: It's a galium, they're super sticky.

John: Oh, those are sticky.

You know what, they're tiny little things, aren't they?

Tiny, tiny little, like claws.

♪♪♪ John: So Santa Ysabel and that entire high elevation grasslands area again presents its own entirely unique ecosystem.

We got a chance to walk around that open space with Johnny.

And as he's sitting in the grasses blowing in the wind, it felt like we were in the grasslands of Kansas or Nebraska or somewhere in the Midwest.

It just didn't feel like San Diego or what most people think about when they think of San Diego.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Clarissa showed us the east side of Volcan Mountain where she was studying California live oak, studying the health of the trees, doing some very sophisticated academic work, measuring the trees, and she got to show Johnny how to measure trees.

And it was in that location that she taught us a lot about the invasive species.

And she taught us how human activity introduces invasive species into native species.

Clarissa: The best thing to do to protect the biodiversity is, one, to conserve what we have and, two, is to help reduce the invasive species because that's something we don't talk a lot about.

Like here, we're walking in a sea of a bunch of invasive grasses, so a bunch of these grasses were brought over for cattle, for the industry, for medicinal purposes by when people were like colonizing this area and so, for example, these mustards here are from the Mediterranean area not from here, and these release these chemicals that actually inhibit germination of other species around it and so there's a lot of negative effects from invasive species.

Clarissa: San Diego is literally the most biodiverse county in all of the contiguous United States.

It's amazing that we have so many people and such a vibrant natural community.

In California we have a Mediterranean climate and so what that means is we get these like really wet winters but we get these really dry summers and so if we don't get a wet winter then the plants and animals have to go basically like a whole another year before we get our rain.

And so that then stresses out our trees.

For example, we were looking at the oak trees and the health of the oaks, and so oaks, if they already are experiencing drought, they get stressed out.

And if the tree is stressed out, then they're more susceptible to invasive species like the GSOB, or the golden spotted oak borer, that are really hitting these trees hard.

And so, drought really impacts things in a bunch of different veins, and so the animals, you know, they rely on these pockets of water.

The large mammals have to travel for miles and so if they can't find any water, that's also very detrimental to them.

John: Johnny had a lot of fun learning how to measure trees.

Clarissa had all sorts of tools and gadgets that Johnny really enjoyed using.

Now still to this day, after that visit with Clarissa, Johnny will ask me when we visit places, "Are there any invasive species here?"

♪♪♪ John: At San Diego State we met up with Dr.

Marshal Hedin who runs the San Diego Biodiversity Museum.

And he took the boys on a tour of the college campus looking for trapdoor spiders hidden in the hillside and in the bushes.

Dr.

Marshal Hedin: Being outside for me is where I'm at most peace.

San Diego County is tremendously biodiverse.

There are more trapdoor spider species in California than any other state in the nation.

They build a little burrow.

Burrow is very, very clean, it's just so perfectly round that you can't actually believe that it was constructed by a little spider, but it was.

And they will stay there their entire lives.

Females can live for 40 years or 50 years, which is astounding for such a little animal.

These spiders aren't doing particularly well.

Non-native grasses basically choke out the habitat for them.

Pesticides, swimming pools, sidewalks, streets, they're all negatively impacting trapdoor spider populations globally.

I think that they were astounded by the trapdoor spiders.

I think that that will stick with them for a long time.

Marshal: You can see that there are layers of silk because she's lived there for a very long time.

John: So is she not in there anymore?

Marshal: No, she's dead.

John: She's gone.

Marshal: She's gone.

Johnny: I want to put this in a picture frame.

Marshal: Yeah, that's right, it's cool to keep.

You can put some toilet paper in there and then it'll keep it round and circular.

Johnny: Oh my God, this is sick.

Charlie Fiske: It's sick?

Marshal: I brought them back to the biodiversity museum.

I showed them some preserved specimens.

So the visit with the boys was also fun because it's clear that they're trying to make a connection to nature.

We're less connected to nature for lots of reasons, and because of that we care less about it.

If you're more connected to nature, it's just a better life.

It impacts our well-being in so many ways, but we are more well off when we're more connected to nature.

♪♪♪ John: The boys got to look through a microscope at the same types of trapdoor spiders that they were finding out in nature.

And I think for the very first time they got to look at a part of nature that is so small that they wouldn't normally be able to appreciate how beautiful and complex these tiny structures can be.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ John: Torrey Pines is a true national treasure.

The torrey pine tree itself is only found in one of two locations.

And one of those locations is in the Torrey Pine State Park.

♪♪♪ John: And it is also an indicator species because if the torrey pine is not doing well, due to drought and due to bark beetle, then we know that this is a sign of climate change.

But when you're at the Torrey Pine State Park, I think it's important to look at the trees themselves and to see some of the dead and dying trees and ask why are those dead and dying, and it's largely due to a bark beetle that is thriving in conditions that are too hot and too dry.

And so it is a harbinger, it's an indicator species for a greater ecosystem.

Richard: I'll find a good one here.

Okay, so, see this?

Is this a flower?

Johnny: Yes.

Richard: Okay, you ready?

I love you.

I love you not.

I love you.

Every one of these is an individual flower, okay?

And then in the middle, you ready for this?

Okay, watch carefully.

John: Whoa.

Richard: Isn't that cool?

Every one of those is an individual flower.

So this is not a flower, this is a bouquet.

John: Oh.

Richard: So when you want to give a girl or your mom, a bouquet, just give her one of these.

It'll save you a lot of money.

John: Yeah, we got to meet up with expert Rick, and he was a wealth of information.

He and Johnny had an instant connection because they both have an intuitive naturalist sense to themselves.

He was able to teach us about all sorts of plant species that I had never even heard of or known about as an adult, and it was really a unique experience.

And Rick got to share with us some of his past and history as an educator, which is ensuring that you get youth out in the field, actually at the site is probably the single best way to educate kids about nature.

Richard: Yeah, see that little-- Richard: What happens is once people start learning about nature, it's no longer something that's foreign.

Every plant and every animal becomes a friend.

So there's discovery and the curiosity that comes out because nature constantly surprises, and that's what keeps me going.

I cannot go out in nature without being surprised.

Torrey Pines is really the only place like it in Southern California because it has what we call maritime chaparral.

For the most part, it's been compromised because of development because everybody wants to be on the coast.

And so it's old growth maritime chaparral, and that means there hasn't been a fire there for a very long time.

Well, the coast of San Diego County has the lowest lightning frequency in most of the United States, so you just don't have fires along the coast like that.

Plus it's moist from the fog drip and so it's allowed this environment to be preserved.

You can also find scrub oak, which is another chaparral shrub with big old trunks that are all gnarly, and they come around and they can actually create a tunnel there in their own way, in the Torrey Pines.

And so you can walk through these tunnels in the same way the California grizzly bear used to do.

And one of the greatest joys I have is being with kids who walk through that the first time.

You don't have to say anything.

They just-- they just fall in love.

And they'll, you know how they can get lost, and they get in their own world and that place probably is one of the most magical natural settings that you can find.

Brooke: There's a lot of questions about torrey pine.

It's such an interesting species because it's critically endangered in its native range, which is here in San Diego.

What people studying this have found is that it's actually becoming invasive in Central California, but when you plant it in these new environments, north in wetter places that maybe aren't as hot as what we're experiencing here in San Diego, it's actually sort of becoming a problem for the species that actually exist there.

But it's such an iconic tree species here in San Diego.

It's, you know, really the main native tree species that we have like in the city.

And I just think that the coastline up there by La Jolla and you go up to Torrey Pines reserve, it just would not be the same without that species.

It really occupies a really special niche here in San Diego.

♪♪♪ Joe: All right, so look what we got here, boys.

We got a Mylar balloon that was floating in the water, and this is what you don't want to put in the water, right?

Because some fish will eat these.

Like the mola mola, they think it's a sun-- the sunfish, the big mola mola, they think it's a jellyfish.

Or this will break up.

See the film, right?

It breaks up into little pieces.

The fish eat it, the turtles eat it.

And it gets stuck inside them and then they die.

That's why we don't want to put these in the water ever, ever.

See, somebody was holding onto it and they let it go.

And it went up and then eventually it came down and landed in the ocean.

So that's a Mylar balloon.

So we're gonna put that in the trash.

It's gonna get disposed of properly, right?

Yes, all right.

On the cruise ships, they don't do it as much, but they used to let the latex balloons go and you'd find big clusters of them out here, but they don't do that as they used to.

But some of the cities now here along the coast, they've actually outlawed this.

They don't let them sell them.

John: Good.

Joe: Yeah, yeah.

All right, we're gonna keep moving down the coast here just a little bit.

John: One of the most famous and enjoyable resources in San Diego County is the Pacific Ocean.

The salty air feels so good on my face and skin.

I love seeing species and animals that you can't see on land.

We met up with a pod of dolphins that surfed alongside the boat wake, and the boys got to look through the holes in the bottom of the boat and see the dolphins up close, just playing.

The incredible biodiversity of San Diego County is the ocean, and Captain Joe taught us a lot about protecting the ocean, being stewards of the ocean, conserving the ocean, and conserving the resources in the ocean like fishing and overfishing as something to avoid.

Joe: All right, let's-- go like this... John: Charlie, smile.

Joe: Thumbs up.

John: Charlie, smile, thumbs up.

That's great.

Joe: All right, now we're going to release him, okay?

I got it.

Joe: As a child, my dad actually got me out on the ocean, down at the beach, surf fishing out on boats and such, so I just fell in love with the ocean.

As you get on in your life, you realize what's important and what's not.

The payoff is when we get out to sea.

You leave all the busyness behind.

You disconnect.

And you're in the natural world.

Over the last 50 years of doing this, there are definitely things out in the ocean that have markedly changed.

The water used to be so clear.

There were times where it even amazed me.

We'd be anchored in 40 feet of water and I'd look down and go, "My gosh."

You can almost see the bottom or you could see the bottom, and a huge kelp forest growing.

Through the last 15 years or so, the water has stayed really green.

And that's because there's these huge plankton blooms, and it was not unusual to see those blooms in late winter, spring.

Well, now we have those year round.

With that green water and at times you have abnormally warm ocean water, the kelp forests have really taken a huge hit.

The main issue in my opinion is light penetration.

We don't get enough light down to the bottom of the sea where these plants first start.

Photosynthesis can't start.

See, when I initially came to Oceanside, we had 35,000 people here.

Now we have almost 180,000.

That's five-time increase in population.

Now, the wastewater gets treated, but they don't remove the nitrogen.

Nitrogen is one of those nutrients that the plants need, and if you're pumping that nitrogen out there 5 times the amount that we did 40 or 50 years ago, well, there you go.

There's your plankton blooms.

You've removed those kelp forests.

We're down to about 10% of coverage.

And when you do that, what happens to everything that was living there, that biodiversity?

It's just like if you had removed 50 miles of coastal forest.

Everybody would be up in arms.

What's going on here?

Where are the birds?

Where are the animals?

Where are the insects?

Well, same thing's happening out here, but nobody sees it, except people like me.

So I think that's an issue that really needs to be addressed.

Joe: What do you think?

Kind of cute looking, huh?

But this one needs to grow up.

How old are you?

Charlie: Five.

Joe: That's about as old as this fish is.

But he needs to grow up, so we're gonna release him, okay?

Charlie: He's 16.

Joe: All right, here we go.

We're gonna release him so he can grow up.

Ready?

One, two, three.

Look at that.

He swam right back down.

All right, good job.

Joe: Oh, the biodiversity in San Diego County is just amazing.

That all of this diversity on land is connected to what happens out here and vice versa.

The ocean is a great climate moderator.

Keeps us from getting too cold and too hot.

And if that changes, then all sorts of other things change and then the land changes, what goes on there.

So biodiversity, it's just amazing here in San Diego County if you really pay attention.

You really pay attention.

But you gotta get out of your car, you gotta get on your two feet and start walking and start experiencing that in those different areas.

But once you do that, wow, it's just-- it's great.

John: Johnny got to meet Richard Herrmann, the photographer who created the poster that I had when I was a child.

The two of them got to spend some time on the beach, learning about snorkeling, learning about the ocean, learning about the waves, and they had a great interaction.

So for me as a father, it was a full circle moment.

That Richard Herrmann got to meet my son, and my son got to meet the photographer who had an impact on my life as I studied that poster as a child.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ John: So after traveling from east to west across San Diego County, I wanted to bring my family to one last stop, and this time instead of looking down at the earth, I thought it might be interesting to see a different kind of marvel looking away from Earth out into space.

Palomar Observatory is a unique resource in San Diego County run by Caltech, which hosts one of the largest telescopes in the world.

It has a 200-inch mirror.

The doors in the building that houses this telescope are modern marvels that were designed almost 100 years ago and studies planets and star systems and galaxies that are light years away.

They have to keep the inside of this telescope extremely cold to avoid change in temperature which would then potentially warp the 200-inch mirror that makes the telescope work.

If you do look at these very small objects, and if you do look at these very large objects very far away, you end up with more questions than answers.

And I think that's a really important place to be because that's what fosters exploration and that's what fosters curiosity, and that's what fosters the next generation of adventurers.

We've spent a lot of time looking on the ground in San Diego County, and I wanted to solidify their experience by showing them that not only are we big in the context of our own ecosystem, but we're actually quite small in the context of the larger universe.

And so going up to Palomar Mountain was the perfect place to end our journey.

♪♪♪ John: So as a young person I experienced San Diego County's natural resources like the desert, like the mountains, like the coast.

And I experienced them as a young boy's adventure and I appreciated them personally.

As I grew up and went to college and started to work, I think I lost a lot of connection because I was so focused on working and making money and being a productive member of society.

And as I started to have boys, I started to remember how important it was to go out and expose the next generation to our natural resources.

The fact that I could bring Johnny and Charlie and Peter out to see the many wonders of San Diego County is and of itself a success.

But also I got to teach them some important life lessons about conservation, about stewardship, about balance, about enjoying nature, about respecting nature, about invasive species, about urban development, drought, and climate change.

What's interesting for me to see over the next several years and decades is what kind of impact that has on them as they grow up.

Will they hold on to those lessons?

Will they continue to appreciate and visit these locations?

Will they participate in any way that's meaningful for these locations?

And will they understand themselves better as people traveling through the world?

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ John: The longstanding tradition in our country is that nature is accessible.

And whether it was accessible to rangers traveling from east to west with their cattle or to homesteaders or settlers, or whether it became accessible through the National Park system, we were one of the leaders in the world of setting aside land for the public to enjoy specifically in its natural state.

We have a lot of history and tradition of providing access to the public so that anybody and everybody can enjoy it.

After "The Most Biodiverse Place in America" premiered in San Diego, I had many families approach me, and specifically these were parents of younger kids, who lamented and quite frankly regretted not taking their kids out into nature more often.

They described their world where they were caught up in activities and sports and planned organizational events, and they described to me that their lives were maybe a little bit too overstructured.

And so they were the ones who were really standing out to me as people who wanted to get out, take their kids out, and do it just for the sake of exploration, do it for the sake of discovery, and do it for the sake of taking a step back and breathing a little bit out in nature, rather than always being on the go, always stuck in traffic, always on the move.

You know, a lot of parents feel like they're chauffeurs for their kids as they travel from structured activity to structured activity, and several of them said they were inspired to go out and to experience nature without any real schedule or itinerary.

They liked that idea which I totally support.

♪♪♪ John: Yeah, the great thing about exploring nature is that it is relatively very inexpensive, or in most cases, it can be free.

A lot of the national park access, a lot of the state park access, a lot of the local park access, is simply free.

And if there is a charge, it's usually a very small charge, and it's a charge that goes to support the parks.

So one of the things that is so democratic and so welcoming about these park systems is that you don't need to have a lot of resources to enjoy a day trip.

And while some equipment is needed for an overnight trip, it is really very inexpensive compared to so many activities that American families find themselves engrossed in.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ John: A very interesting thing that parents would tell me is that they weren't sure what to do or if they were going to do it right.

I remember laughing with a set of parents because they said they didn't want to do it wrong or something to that effect.

And I remember thinking how strange that was because there's no doing nature wrong, you're just going to go out and enjoy it.

Of course, you want to be safe.

You want to bring water when necessary.

You want to bring proper clothing, but they were afraid that they weren't going to be able to show their kids the best trails to go on, and so, one of the lessons I've learned from this is, there's no wrong way to go out and enjoy nature.

Everybody's gonna enjoy it the way that they feel the most comfortable and what their own desires are.

As much commentary on the sort of hyperstructured, hypercompetitive, hypervoyeuristic world we live in, where someone felt that they were going to do nature wrong, and there really is no doing nature wrong, you just go out and enjoy it and breathe it in and it will guide you as you're exploring.

♪♪♪ John: A great place to start and no matter where you are in the country, you can always start at a local park and recreation department with a city or a county.

I think that is one of the best places to start because the locations are local, they're usually free or very inexpensive, and they are accessible and intended for the residents and citizens of that city or county.

And from that vantage point, you can look at state parks and, of course, national parks.

National parks aren't always close to everyone.

But local and state parks tend to be more accessible and closer to families, no matter where they live.

So my advice is to first look at local recreation and parks districts and state parks.

Another great resource are natural history museums that are located all over the country.

And it doesn't have to be the Smithsonian.

Sometimes they're very, very small, and sometimes they're quite elaborate and involved, in larger cities.

But that's a great place because a lot of those natural history museums have societies and clubs and groups that take families out on tours and explore.

They'll also show you regional areas in your location that you can go explore.

For example, in "The Most Biodiverse Place in America," we have the San Diego Natural History Museum, and they do focus on the different ecosystems throughout the county and that's a great way to get exposed maybe academically before you go out and explore it personally.

One of the things I've done with my boys and my father did with me is join camping groups.

There are all sorts of groups that will coordinate and facilitate camping for families.

Camping is a wonderful activity, because when you're completely immersed in nature, and you rely on nature or you're rather at the mercy of nature, you really come to appreciate its power, its sights, its sounds, its smells.

And that immersive quality is where most people get lost in nature, and when they get lost in nature, they tend to find themselves.

When I have friends or neighbors who don't prefer to go camping, it is usually because they are uncomfortable or feel like they will be uncomfortable, or their kids will be uncomfortable physically.

And one great place to start is a local sporting goods or camping store.

Because you'll be surprised at how many modern features there are that help families enjoy nature very, very comfortably.

And the equipment is fun.

Camping equipment is a lot of fun.

The other thread that I've noticed for those families that take their kids camping: Almost all of them had their parents take them camping.

So they grew up with it and they camped when they were young, and they feel very comfortable passing on that tradition to their kids.

Clarissa: San Diego is the most biodiverse county in all of the contiguous United States.

I think it's really important to show the next generation how important these areas are and what their role is in, you know, keeping this alive.

John: No matter where you are in the country, from the northwest to the southeast, from New England to San Diego, you can find these resources in communities all across America.

You don't realize how good you feel in nature until you're out there.

And so you really have to protect that space.

You have to create a bubble around your own sanity, to schedule yourself to go out into nature.

Well, if you don't create that space and you don't protect that space to go out in nature as an activity to prioritize for your family, then you'll be consumed by all of the other activities.

Richard: Both of my sons, I took them out on backpack trips.

What I saw happening for them was it developed a calmness in their hearts that they're always able to retrieve.

You live in San Diego County, and you're blessed with some of the most magnificent biodiversity on the planet.

And that is something that most people don't realize, but once they get out there and they find out about it, then they can't wait to find the next habitat.

You start seeing it everywhere, and it enlivens your life in a way that no other knowledge can.

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