From peak-bagging to thru-hiking, Americans have turned traversing land into personal milestones. This wilderness ranger and Indigenous writer has witnessed it firsthand

Outdoor recreation often slips into what I call an achievement-based relationship with nature. I’ve been guilty of it myself. Whether it’s “bagging peaks”, racing to finish the AT, or stamping the land with machines and monuments, the focus shifts from ecology to ego.

Being obsessed with Peak Bagging is not Solarpunk.

Nature is not your personal obstacle to challenge yourself against, it is a shared place of discovery you trample when you only see it as a place to endlessly, exhaustingly conquer.

  • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyzOP
    01·
    2 months ago

    By saying jogging through nature is inherently selfish compared to walking through it. I’d also say you pretty clearly look down upon those who like to exercise in nature based on your other comments here, and your framing of people doing it for ‘the drug chemicals’.

    I like drugs, I have no problem with taking drugs I just don’t like when people pretend they aren’t taking drugs when they are.

    You say you’re not bashing them, but I’m not sure that defense works since you’re kind’ve framing a different way of experiencing nature as inherently inferior and ‘selfish’ compared to your preferred way, instead of framing it as two equally valid ways to experience it (as long as it doesn’t hurt the local ecology, or leave any litter).

    Yes and you are framing this conversation in a way that if I criticize a broad cultural movement centered around the outdoors for being shallow this necessarily means I think I am superior. You allow no other perspective other than one that agrees with your own unless that perspective is relativistic about everything with no judgements possible at all.

    I can criticize outdoor culture without being selfish or adopting a position of assumed superiority and even if I was those things it doesn’t actually negate the points I am making since I am arguing the overall selfishness of outdoor culture is even greater? We are all a part of this problem as we are all part of the same society.

    • ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.netEnglish
      1·
      2 months ago

      I just don’t like when people pretend they aren’t taking drugs when they are.

      There are many people who do not appear to experience ‘runners high’. I am one of those people, I have never experienced any noticeable pleasant side-effects from exercise itself, just a rather unpleasant burning sensation in my lungs. Regardless, I still ride my bike or jog to maintain my health, and I vastly prefer doing so amongst nature if I can.

      you are framing this conversation in a way that if I criticize a broad cultural movement centered around the outdoors for being shallow this necessarily means I think I am superior.

      Claiming the way an entire subset of other people experience nature is inferior and shallow compared to yours is kinda the definition of a sense of superiority, yeah.

      I have no problem criticizing people who litter in nature, or destroy it in some way, but putting every jogger into the same box, with disregard to the variability of those people’s respect and appreciation of nature just due to the way they personally enjoy it? Oof.

      • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyzOP
        01·
        2 months ago

        Claiming the way an entire subset of other people experience nature is inferior and shallow compared to yours is kinda the definition of a sense of superiority, yeah

        I am arguing our cultural framing around outdoor culture is inferior and shallow compared to a deeper more thoughtful relationship with the natural world and and an awareness of the living history of colonialism as it bends and warps our perspective our relationship with nature.

        If you do not allow me this without labelling me as attempting to claim I am superior than you simply do not allow any kind of criticism of your beliefs/actions in this area. How else am I supposed to interpet this?

        • ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.netEnglish
          1·
          2 months ago

          My opinion is that painting with such a broad brush that anyone who simply jogs in the woods is performing a selfish act and unable to appreciate nature the correct way is an elitist claim, as it doesn’t allow for people who do deeply respect and appreciate nature, but who may also enjoy exercising among it, or for people who experience nature differently from the way you do.

          You seem to have an absolutist viewpoint that there is objectively only one correct way of experiencing nature. No one is stopping you from making that argument, but you are not entitled to everyone agreeing with that viewpoint or how it is presented.