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  1. #1

    Default What does the Outdoors do for you?

    What the Outdoors Does for Me

    Today I want to share with you about why I’m so passionate about the outdoors,...

    So here’s why I love being outside, and especially, outside where I’m surrounded by remote, wild, natural environments.1. I want to be free from over-stimulation.

    Technology, traffic, shopping, todo lists, managing money, making money, responding to other people’s urgency — it’s all overwhelming.

    Being free from that for a few hours, a few days, or a few weeks is good for me.

    It helps me stay healthy, and it helps my mind and emotions heal from the damage they incur from living in a busy, hectic, first-world urban environment.
    2. I want to experience the earth in its purest, unadulterated form - before it’s too late.

    Energy development, residential and commercial development, urban development, consumerism - our society’s thirst for these things is destroying natural places at an alarming rate.

    Given the recent political climate surrounding the Keystone Pipeline, Bears Ears National Monument, and development in the Grand Canyon, it’s apparent to me that nothing seems sacred or untouchable anymore. I hope future generations have the opportunities we do to experience wild nature.

    From Ryan Jordan BPL Founder

    "I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in"


    "One touch of nature makes the whole world kin"

    “Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity”

    By John Muir

    That about sums it up for me too.

  2. #2
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    Leaving behind the nagging realities of everyday life.

  3. #3
    Registered User daveiniowa's Avatar
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    Yep! And when I climb huge mountains or face wild animals and weather or total defeat then succeed, I feel like a total bad a$$. Because I do the things other people only talk about doing. That's living.
    "Hell ain't half full. Hike on!" - Chena

  4. #4

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    I like going on an adventure however short or long. I also get pleasure knowing everything I need is on my back and the only thing that's going to get me home are my legs. I personally don't feel bogged down by technology in my daily life so I still enjoy bringing my kindle and smartphone along. It makes the experience all the better.

  5. #5
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    Default What does the Outdoors do for you?

    I do some of my best thinking when I'm alone for hours or days in the woods. Sometimes I need that time to confront myself and think about how to be a better me.

    It also connects me to my childhood, and aren't we all suckers for nostalgia?

    Great topic. I look forward to reading other responses.
    You can walk in another person's shoes, but only with your feet

  6. #6
    Some days, it's not worth chewing through the restraints.
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    All of the above and more, but I never think of it as an escape... more like getting back to normal. The woods are as real as any other reality, and preferable to most.

  7. #7
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    DW I'd say I couldn't agree more....this song by JJ Grey really hits home....

    https://youtu.be/VwxNZ2mff-o


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

  8. #8

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    Enjoyed it SS. Has a CCR or Allman Bros feel.

  9. #9
    Registered User BuckeyeBill's Avatar
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    There is no comparison to standing or sitting on a outcrop looking over the valley below or across the valley at another peak and wondering what it's like over there. Add a hot cup of coffee and a sunrise or sunset and the world is at peace if only for awhile.
    Blackheart

  10. #10
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    Hey now, first post here. The outdoors hasn't been what it should have for me, or much at all, for a lot of my life. That thought came over me recently while I was looking up the Appalachian trail and realizing I gotta get out and hike that, didn't know much about it until a few weeks ago. I'm planning my thru hike for next year as I prep this year, planning at least a day hike every weekend at different places around me, with some overnighters when I can. Been working in the carpentry field since high school so I'm not really out of shape or anything to begin with. I'm remembering how much I used to love the outdoors and just walking in the woods, it's been too long away.

  11. #11
    Thunder
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    Kingston, Ontario
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    “Before the deed comes the thought. Before the achievement comes the dream. Every mountain we climb, we first climb in our mind.”

    — Royal Robbins

    Being outdoors to me is a place to relax and unwind and get some great exercise and ponder about life and our meanings. Its also nice just to think about ones self and feel the movements of the body. Many other thoughts that the outdoors brings into my mind go thru my head but ill leave them there for me to enjoy. Everyone's reasons for being outdoors are different and are all great reasons to that person, outdoors can do many different things for people.

    Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul. - John Muir
    "In every walk with nature one receives more than he seeks." -John Muir
    "Because in the end you won't remember the time you spent working in an office or mowing your lawn. Climb that ******* Mountain!" - Jack Kerouac

  12. #12

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    Spending time in the outdoors engenders a sense of wonder and a sense of gratitude for the creation we live in.

    Spending time in the outdoors allows me to "unplug" from the everyday grind and gain some perspective on challenges and problems I face. Hiking, especially, gets my brain working and helps me think more clearly.

    Spending time in the outdoors gives me the motivation and impetus I need in my everyday life to stop being so lazy and get myself in decent enough shape to enjoy the times I'm privileged enough to do so.

    I tried to write a blog post about this subject a while back, and here's some of what I came up with...

    "And the deeper it goes, the fuzzier it gets and the harder to explain it becomes, but I’ll try. As eternal creatures, and God’s children, we understand that although we inhabit this world for a time, ultimately this is not our home. We are strangers and pilgrims. We find imperfect happiness here for a season, but we look for and long for something better. As I’m out in nature, walking, wandering, this is what I find myself doing- looking for and longing for something better. Maybe it’s around the next bend, at the summit of the next hill, across that river. And sometimes I find it, but I don’t find IT- that thing that is best. So I walk on and keep searching. I understand that I won’t find it here in this world, but my vision gets a little clearer. Paul tells us that we see “through a glass darkly” and I totally get that, but sometimes. some rare times. the darkness lightens and I get a glimpse."

    (original post here if anyone's interested)

  13. #13

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    I just generally dislike taking showers every day for work..being out in the wilderness allows me to not take one!

    Even though I'm terrible at naming constellations I thoroughly love looking up at the vast sky at night and just being amazed at the universe we live in. Shooting stars are one of my favorite things.

    I despise tap water. Drinking pure natural mountain water is my definition of happiness.

    I don't really care much for beds. I would much prefer my hammock or my sleeping pad on some forest duff.

  14. #14
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    Pretty much sums it up....


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

  15. #15
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    I grew up in a small town out in west Texas. Our family vacations were typically RV trips to Texas parks and campgrounds, my dad and I hunted from a camping trailer, and I would cowboy camp in my yard on summer nights.
    We even had a section of land about a mile outside of Big Bend National Park where we went almost every year.

    Now I live inside the Baltimore/DC I-95 corridor and the rat race contained within. I'm now using backpacking and the relative proximity to the AT to get my two girls out and into the woods. Thankfully they've taken to it just like i did as a kid.

    So getting outside to me is a connection both to the past and the future.

  16. #16

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    The modern fascination with all things Human is a temporary blip---we in fact lived in nature and outdoors for most of our 200,000 year history as modern homo sapiens. So to me backpacking and living outdoors is an old tape and allows me to reclaim my Cro magnon heritage. It's in our blood, despite this current drooling over Everything Human.

    Humans are mammals and animals no different than fireants or rodents. Some even consider us the Planet virus, destroying everything wild and decent. But unbridled earthly Nature will win out in the end, no matter how many battles we modern Humans win in our War on Nature. Living outdoors is the reality, living indoors is a temporary construct of species centrism and our love of ourselves, resulting in the urbanization of America the beautiful and the destruction of the wild.

    I put it into this "mantra"---If you're indoors you're a failure; If you're outdoors you're a success."

  17. #17
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    I LOVE sleeping with fresh air. Winter, summer, nighttime temps in the 20s or 80s, I'll have my bedside window open. Maybe just a crack. Maybe a lot more. I love listening to the chorus of night creatures singing to me from the darkness. You'd think we have hundreds of frogs, or a few thousand even, crickets, owls, and whatever else.

    My husband hates my open window.

  18. #18
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    This is the thing:
    "You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why bother in the first place ? Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen. There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know." — René Daumal.

  19. #19
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    Also this:
    "On this proud and beautiful mountain we have lived hours of fraternal, warm and exalting nobility. Here for a few days we have ceased to be slaves and have really been men. It is hard to return to servitude." — Lionel Terray.

  20. #20
    Registered User runt13's Avatar
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    For me it is a organic, GMO free, all natural form of Xanax!

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