1 post tagged “utah”

I was listening to a podcast from Backpacking Light today about a couples' trek from the central coast of British Columbia to Jeuno, Alaska, and the subject came up that youth today don't spend as much time outside as they used to, opting, instead, to play video games, or spend time on the computer generally. They called this Nature Deficit Disorder. The term intrigued me, and when I got home, I entered the phrase into Google, and it seems, the term is bigger and more widely known and used than I thought it was. There is a book review on Salon.com (which, apparently, is a blog) that discusses NDD: what it is, what are the causes, etc...I, myself, haven't read the whole article yet (I can only get so much done in one evening), but it seems pretty interesting.
The conversation then seg-wayed to wilderness and nature, and they said a lot of things that really apply to my parks project. It was (and this is a horrible paraphrase; I'm going to need to go back and give that part of the podcast a second listen) said that some people are scared to go into nature or the wilderness. There is a lot of unpredictability and unknown in nature, and people, in my opinion, and as stated in the podcast, are scared of what they can't control and what they don't understand. So as it applies to my project, some people go to parks to stay away from the uncontrollable nature and go to a "safe" nature.
It all needs some more thinking and stewing to get my thoughts on the matter organized well enough to incorporate into my ever evolving artist statement, but it was all very interesting. I think anyone who is into the outdoors should give this one a listen. I just tried to dig it up on their website, but I didn't see the episode there, but it can be found on Itunes. Just search for Backpacking Light, and it's the episode entitled Journey on the Wild Coast: Survival Risks and is episode number 27.