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.
Challenging yourself against nature is a valid way to appreciate it; it can help you humble yourself and get in tune with your body and build a connection to nature.
Nature does not have to be a shared experience to be valid, doing stuff by yourself is an ok way to experience nature, too.
You’re being pretty judgemental of how people like to enjoy nature, when you should be encouraging people to enjoy nature.
That isn’t solarpunk.
Yes it does, otherwise you are just moving around a living landscape remaining isolated from it. Going into nature is inherently a shared experience, that is my point.
You’re saying being by yourself in nature is being isolated from it? What are you on?
Going into nature is not inherently a shared experience, that’s just objectively like, wrong.
Also you know hiking and climbing and those things where you challenge yourself are usually group activities anyway, right?