My twin grandsons, (age 9), are angling for BB guns. One morning last week when a wild bunny hopped across our backyard, I shivered, picturing two Dead-eye Dicks, hoisting BB guns to their shoulders and firing away.

Actually, it's the habits of squirrels they ask about, where they live, if they are expendable.

Their grandfather, "Papa," is their authority on shooting. He grew up in a small town where woods were within running distance and he tells stories about his Red Ryder adventures.

"What about a nice pop gun?" I ask when the BB gun topic comes up.

"You know the one with a cork. Pull the trigger and the cork pops out of the barrel."

There is uniform eye-rolling when this gun is mentioned.

"Too babyish," one of the boys replies.

We tried marshmallow guns to stem this weapon longing. Unfortunately, marshmallows got stuck in the plastic cylinders and there were frustrated cries from little boys whose ammunition never made it down the shoot.

I wish I could say I was an early participant in equal outdoor play for boys and girls, but, in my day, no starched pinafore-wearing, 9-year-old female could be persuaded to charge into the fray in a vacant lot, wooden sword in hand, slashing her way to the kingdom of "Queen of the Mountain."

We left that hunter-gatherer stuff to our brothers and male cousins. If we ventured outside, it was to read in the shade or jump rope, though we did line up for nature walks at Girl Scout camp, collecting leaves to press in books. We were marginal explorers.

Yet, we jumped in as the sun set, counting and searching, playing hide and seek. That way of life, coming naturally to our generation, neighborhood games, played until mothers called from front porches, (gathering their chickens in for the night,) is now in such short supply, our culture has given the condition a name, "nature-deficit disorder."

Richard Louv's book "Last Child in the Woods" makes the case for "natural play," for a new connection to nature, offering children not only more freedom and space, but a sense of place and better physical and emotional health.

For their futures, Louv believes, children must learn to value and protect the natural world. As the woods at the end of the block disappear and tree houses must be built by permit, as parents fear a child's solitary sojourn into a shady glen, today's 9-year-old's natural play is hampered by vanishing green space and by the lure of in-house technology - video games, television and computers.

Summer entertainment has moved indoors and research contends children are more anxious and depressed because their outdoor worlds have narrowed.

"Nature," Louv writes, "does not steal time, like television, it amplifies it. Nature inspires creativity and the full use of the senses. Given a chance, a child will bring the confusion of the world to the woods, wash it in the creek and turn it over to see what lives on the other side."

Plus, it's free and it gets a small body moving. One of the shocking findings in Louv's book is a forecast: Pediatricians now warn us today's children will be the first generation of Americans since World War II to die at an earlier age than their parents.

The sedentary lifestyles of too many children, who ages 6 to 11 spend 30 hours a week looking at a television set or a computer screen, are villains in the effort to cut childhood obesity, affecting two out of 10 of our country's young people.

Scary stuff, and, ironic, in a time when organized sports for children have never been more popular or available.

Louv argues "green play," unorganized, experienced under sun and stars, is more physically taxing and emotionally calming. I doubt his vision includes BB guns, but I am pushing tree climbing and giving thanks for Cub Scouts, a group relishing time in the Great Outdoors.

Judy Elliott is an award-winning columnist from Marietta.