I liked Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter. I liked him a lot. I enjoyed watching his show on Animal Planet with my kids. I think everyone at some time when they are growing up feels a connection to nature. It's a Peter Pan thing where you don't yet realize the full danger of the world.
I tell a story of when I was a teenager on a hike and decided to go off a mountain with one of my buds. We got lost. Of course, I neglect to tell you we decided to hike off a mountain in the middle of a forest fire. I also neglected to tell you we hiked up the mountain in the middle of a forest fire. Somehow, in that hike, coming off the mountain, we got lost. We wandered around in the smoke and ash trying to find the trail. Time goes by, we start getting thirsty. We start getting a little hot and tired and... We start realizing how quick nature can kill you. We'd hiked this mountain so many times. We'd been hiking around in the forest fire all weekend. It never occurred to us that maybe we could get lost. That day, my friend and I lost our wonderment for nature. We lost being at one with the the rocks, the trees, the snakes (the rattlers, the copperheads... ), the bears, the deer.
Steve Irwin never lost that wonderment. Whenever he said, "Crikey," which is a euphemism for Christ, you knew he was in that zone where he'd have hiked in and out of that forest fire. He was in that place that most all adults left long, long ago. Somehow, he never started living in a world where he declined to take a step in a forest fire because he felt that pang in the gut that told him "nature can kill you."