The New Outdoors Movement
Of wellness and wildness, where we’re headed, and a list of essential resources
The old, now outdated, and now recognized as a threat-to-our-survival view of nature reduced the outdoors to a set of resources that could be extracted from it.
The newer, more enlightened view recognizes that our need for nature is deeper and broader than a set of material things. We need nature itself, as it is, in its totality. And — because humanity now has the power to destroy entire ecosystems—nature needs us.
To my knowledge, what I’m calling “the new outdoors movement” doesn’t have a name — or at least it didn’t until now. This movement started thousands of years ago. It began with spiritual seekers from various religious traditions who went into the wilderness and later returned with newfound wisdom. It continued with writers as varied as Rumi, Henry David Thoreau, and Rachel Carson. The movement picked up speed in the 1970s and continues to gather momentum today.
The science is now in: we can’t be the best versions of ourselves unless we spend time in the outdoors. In particular, in the last two decades, science has brought new understandings of how spending time in nature is intertwined with human wellness. All of this confirms that when we work to protect nature, we work to protect…
