For today's kids with flashing sneakers, Facebook addresses and cell phones, the great outdoors is more the great unknown.

The Bermuda National Trust aims to change that with an annual nature walk around Spittal Pond.

The walk has been going on for several decades and coincides with most Bermuda schools' half-term break. This allows children to go on the guided walk with their parents or with their camp group.

Yesterday morning The Royal Gazette took the tour with BNT volunteer Cathy Gosling and the Busy Bee Club camp group mostly consisting of four- to six-year-olds.

Before the walk, a quick Royal Gazette survey among the children found that only one child could actually remember having been to Spittal Pond before.

However, later on, several children were heard reminiscing about the tour they took when they were four (which was last year), so perhaps some had simply forgotten.

"For many of the children though, it really is the first time they have been to Spittal Pond, which is a bit sad, really," said Mrs. Gosling.

The theme of this year's walk was 'Life at Spittal Pond'.

One of the objectives of the walk was to encourage and model respect for nature and open spaces. Before the walk, students were given a handout with a Spittal Pond map on one side and pictures of various plants and animals on the other.

In this group, many of the kids were too young to read the plant and animal names. They took to consulting The Royal Gazette, (the source of all accurate information).

"Excuse me, what's this? What's that?" said one child pointing to a coot (a kind of bird) and then a Bermudiana.

"That's OK if they can't read it, because we are going to show them," said Ms Gosling.

The map turned out to be the most popular feature of the handout. The little boys debated among the themselves where exactly they were on the map. Then one little boy rolled it up."Look, it's a pirate map," he said cheerfully.The walk was divided into stations with most of Bermuda's ecological celebrities spread out across the nature reserve, including Jeremy and Leila Madeiros, Keith Rossiter and Robert Chandler, among others.At the first station, the children met scientists Jamie Bacon and Mark Outerbridge to talk about amphibians and terrapins.Unfortunately, some of what Dr.Bacon had to say went over the heads of this particular crowd.While she talked about fish that eat mosquito larvae and pollution, two little boys debated about whether birds could swim under water. It was unclear whether the children knew what larvae or even pollution even was.Luckily, photos of mutant frogs seemed to reel their interest in. And they seemed genuinely curious about what they were looking at."Excuse me what are those," said one little girl consulting The RoyalGazette. "Life plants.What are lifeplants?Why do they call them that?Do they save people's lives?"She ran off ahead to tug on Mrs. Gosling's sleeve and ask her the same question.A station with a telescope and former Government ConservationOfficer David Wingate proved to be popular. Here, the campers took turns staring through the telescope at a yellow-crowned night heron.While Dr. Wingate helped the children identify a palmetto tree, there were cries of excitement as the yellow-crowned night heron took off into the trees.Mr.Wingate looked through the telescope again. "Nope, nothing is visible now," he said.Another camp group appeared and suddenly the little clearing by the pond became very crowded. The Busy Bees Club moved on to the next point.One of the aims of the BNTwalk was to promote observation. In this regard the BNTcertainly seemed to be succeeding, although the children weren't always observing exactly what the scientists had intended.Near Spanish Rock some of the children noticed a boat out on the water."A boat!A boat!" All eyes turned to admire the boat.While there were many camp groups on this day, there were also a fair number of parents out with their children. Some daddies led their children around while chatting on a cell phone, but other parents took the walk as a bonding opportunity.One mother with a six-year-old daughter said: "To be honest, I brought my daughter today because it was nice to tour the park with other people around.We've been here in the afternoon by ourselves, but I had to stop because it wasn't safe. We go to the Botanical Gardens a lot now, because it isn't as lonely. My daughter loves coming here though."The children weren't always paying attention.Sometimes they were debating whether birds swam underwater, sometimes they were looking at boats, and sometimes they were struggling to get their fair share of the handouts. And yet, from the looks of wonder on their faces you could see they were getting something out of the experience, if nothing more than plain old fresh air.Richard Louv, author of 'Last Child in the Woods' coined the phrase 'nature deficit order' to explain how the broken link between today's children and nature has caused increases in the rate of health problems such as obesity, attention disorders, stress, depression and more. Mr. Louv surmises that children need to get outside, and make pirate maps, run around and generally enjoy being outdoors.Mr.Louv wrote in his book: "Healing the broken bond between our young and nature is in our self-interest, not only because aesthetics or justice demand it, but also because our mental, physical, and spiritual health depend upon it."