What Kind of Outdoors Person are You?

G'day stabman

stabman said:
So, what is it you're all into the outdoors for?
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I spent a lot of time by myself outdoors in the '70's, 80's & 90's.

My longest solo trip was 3 months in the western side of our Snowy mountains.

Everything I needed came from the bush. Man is that a truly empowering feeling to realise that you really don't need the trappings of an increasingly capilist world in order to stay alive.

Now I'm older and have chosen the responsibilities of a wife, children & a mortage, I'm no longer free like I was.

So for me, I guess there are now four main reasons.

(1) I continue to have a love for the wild areas (where there is no sign of anyone else having been there), because it's becomming increasing rare in a world with more people in it.

(2) I also like to test myself to see that I'm still capable of the things I was able to do when I was younger.

(3) Now that I am a Father, I want to ensure that I'm in a position to advise my kids from current first hand experience, rather than reminiscences of the "Golden days". :D

(4) The best fishing spots are still to be found where few people are prepared to go. :D





Kind regards
Mick
 
The busy kind, lately. Right now I'm taking full advantage of my night shift schedule. 9 holes of golf, climbing(solo toproping) twice, and hiking one or both off days, every week. Also managing to get my kayak wet, even if it's just for a couple of hours in a local lake, every couple of weeks.
Off tonight, and would be in the woods, now, but got rained out of climbing Tuesday. Getting into that more, so climbed today, and going again in the morning.
Sleeping and dating(and falling asleep while dating:p), are the biggest challenges, along with remembering that I have to go back to work.
I like solitude, physical challenge, the beauty of nature, and combining them as often as possible.
 
Nature is life. Most cities are full of cold, dead steel, concrete, brick and black top. There are some exceptions and some cities do well and integrating the outdoors within their city limits. San Antonio’s river walk is a good example of losing yourself within a little nature in the middle of the city.

For me, it’s about peace. I like the comment that the outdoors in their church. It’s a place for solitude and peace for me. When out backpacking, rock climbing, hunting, stalking, bushcrafting, a little switch gets turned on and my spiritual, mental and emotional batteries get recharged. I will admit I much softer than Og; I enjoy coming home after an extended weekend trip in the dirt and taking a hot shower, enjoying the cold AC and ice cold beer. Our ancestors lived rough lives despite their skills in the bush. I still want to learn and practice those skills, but I have no delusions about moving to a remote area and surviving off the land and my pathetic skills…it’s still makes for a good book, but the reality is that there are few that could pull off a life in the outdoors…to those that live that life, my hats off to you and even in I can’t physically aspire to that lifestyle, my soul does yearn for it.

ROCK6
 
This is a very nice topic indeed....
To me, the outdoors is a kind of shrine, a place of solitude and peace, a place to enjoy the wonders of nature. I live on an island and in a relatively small town, so I don't really need to get away from the concrete jungle, and coming from mainly rural traditions I learned to enjoy the outdoors when I was young, even if it was just small walks to get berries or figs.
I still have the same kind of goal when I go hiking/trekking. I rarely try to test myself on hard paths or climbing and so on, even tho it does feel good to test my skills and succeed or learn how "far" I can go.
But mostly I enjoy the awesome pleasure of walking in silence and peace and discovering new and beautiful places and enjoy being there.
When I go outdoors, I'm not escaping from anything in my everyday life. I'm just going towards something else that I love.
:cool:
 
I work outdoors 50 hours a week. I spend most of that time in the city, but I am out in the country sometimes. My outdoors "skills" come into play a fair amount there.

I "play" outdoors whenever I can. I go to the woods for the solitude sometimes, to be away from everyone and all of their noise. Sometimes I go with friends to just hang out without the rest of the crap of the world bothering us. I don't do things just for the sake of practicing skills typically... I do the things that I need/want to do to be comfortable while I'm there. Yes, I can build a shelter, set traps, etc etc... but I don't need to do those things on a dayhike.

I probably spend at least 75% of my waking hours outdoors.
 
I love this thread. In my twenties, I was pretty hardcore, 7-10 day backpacking trips with a 60-70 pound pack, in areas where I would usually not see another person the whole time. I'm far from an old man now (36), but things have definitely changed a bit. I still love/need to get out in the woods, but a couple days of car camping, or a dayhike every week or so does me a world of good nowadays. It helps that I live in avery outdoorsy city (Portland, OR), and live about 2 miles from Forest Park, the largest park in any city limits in the US (and not really a park at all, just a huge untouched forest with a few trails bisecting it here and there!) My bushcrafting/survival skills are rudimentary, but I'm working on it, slowly but surely. I always want to get out more, it definitely soothes the soul, & I do feel a sort of connection to nature, though I'm not religious at all. It simply helps me feel more at peace, I guess.
 
Fluffy, savage, learned, clingy, stoned, awe-inspired, humbled, omnipotent, challenged, privileged, irritated, and satisfied. In no particular order.
 
I grew up in a small town with the woods all around.

When I was a kid one of our family activites was hiking.

We used to spend the family vacation at Seneca State Forest in WV which at that time had outhouses, iceboxes wood cooks stoves and kerosene lamps.

My dad always told us tales of the frontierspeople when we were kids and another of our family outings was to go to places of historical interest.

We made sassafras tea, ate squirrels deer and fish my dad caught.

When I was old enough I went hunting too.

We camped when we deer hunted but my family were never big campers or backpackers or anything like that.

After hunting in more rural parts of the state I wanted to live some place like that.

So when I went to college I got a degree in forestry and also one in business.

In college I was exposed to even a greater amount of outdoor activities and wild food eating, including my wife who was ahead of me on a lot of stuff.

This was the 70's when inflation was bad and also there was the "Back to the Land" movement that brought a lot of hippies to the backwoods of WV as well as ordinary people burning wood, planting gardens etc to supplement. All that influenced me.

Ironically when I got out of college there were NO forestry jobs. My idea of getting a degree so I could live out in the country didn't pan out.

However my business degree got me another job in a cubicle in the biggest city in WV. My wife and I got married and rented a place in a rural area. Then we bought 85 acres in a rural area.

Now we raise a garden, eat wild food, milk goats and make cheese, cultivate shiitake mushrooms and also still work at our jobs in the city. So we sort of get all the city things but live in the country.

Our interest in self sufficiency sort of spread out and we learned more about our area, the plants, the area surrounding our land is also land so we got a LOT of woods to hunt and hike in.

Then we also like backpacking and because of our long commute AND sedentary jobs we love hiking long distances backpacking and being on our feet and active.

We aren't into bushcrafting or primitive skills so much except in as much as they make our woods experiences easier or fall into our self sufficiendy do it yoursel credo.

That's it!

Home brewing
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Shiitake Cultivation
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Wild food
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cheesemaking

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goat milking
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I concider the outdoors my big living room. In my younger years I would go on canoe camping trips through the lakes camping and exploring. I would suplement my meals with food from the land, and would eat cat tail tubers with my fish caught from the lake, or the partridge and other game I had shot. Today I go to the remote cabin on a regular bases and spend time close with the land for all 4 seasons.

I live in a rural setting an hour from the nearest community, and spend alot of time in the winter cross country skiing. My day to day activities is controlled by the weather, not by clocks, scheduals, or callendars.
 
Well lets see. I don't enjoy car camping. I like to carry a lot of gear out to the middle of nowhere to make an enjoyable base camp and then forage, fish and and generally soak up the beauty of solitude. I like to test myself and my gear choices and I like to introduce the uninitiated to my style, my places and my passions. I have found that, more often than not, they become addicted. All that without ever eating an animals eye ball or drinking my own urine.
 
I live where there is a woods out back, and grew up with the outdoors. I much prefer it to the indoors. I like to go out just to have a good time, and get away from people and the city. I don't go out for very long trips, but if I could I probably would. I tend to enjoy the woods more and more the older I get.
 
This is the view from my back yard,I'm into the outdoors

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I'm a abo,I go to Rabbit Stick,make fire with bow drill and hand drill,and flint and steel.I make cordage from Dog bane,I study plants,and I am working on my knapping and brain tanning


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It's my solice. I love everything about it. I love learning the plants the animals, geology, etc.
I like the birds:
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The Snakes and Frogs:
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The bugs:
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The plants:
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Just being outside enjoying what god made:
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How could one not relax? Oh and take a camera and a few knives :)
 
I have refereed to myself as a tree hugging dirt worshiper more than once so I guess there is some truth to it. I am not the survivalist type but do feel a responsibility to be prepared. Mostly I just like to walk around outside with my dogs preferably where there aren't any/many other people.
Jim
 
Alot of good answers with quite a bit of overlapping common ground.:)
 
Being in the outdoors is better than doing the dishes, which is what I'd be doing if I were at home....
 
My Dad grew up on the land that my grandfather broke. They lived by what could be gotten from the land, be it garden, field or game. While I'll never break several hundred acres with little more than a few horses and a two bottom plow, I want to remember a bit of what it must have been like for them. Sure grandad used conni-bear traps instead of figure fours, but when meat had to be put on a table, and a pelt could put coin in a pocket that was what mattered. The men that came before me were tougher than I'll ever know, and living in a city removes me farther from that. In the woods, I can feel a small part of what that was like. At the same time I've got skills that my grandfather would have never bothered with, to him, fire came from matches, because matches always work. None of this rubbing sticks nonsense.
As my Dad said, a man that knows where he is from, can be better because of it. A man who does not, will be worse for forgetting. (or something like that, maybe I made it up, but it sounds like something he'd say)
 
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