Outdoor recreation or outdoor activity is leisure pursuits engaged in the outdoors, especially in (but not limited to) natural or semi-natural settings out of town. Examples include adventure racing, backpacking, bicycling, camping, canoeing, caving, fishing, hiking, horseback riding, hunting, kayaking, mountaineering, mushing, photography, adventure park, rock climbing, running, sailing, skiing, and surfing. Outdoor recreation may also refer to a team sport game or practice held in an outdoor setting.
The two primary purposes for outdoor recreation are beneficial use and pleasurable appreciation.
Beneficial use is related to the physical and social rewards which goal-directed activities instills in individuals or groups. Some outdoor goal-directed activities are: backpacking, canoeing, canyoning, caving, climbing, hiking, hill walking, hunting, kayaking, and rafting. Arguably broader groupings of goal-directed outdoor activities would include water sports, snow sports, and Horseback riding. Goal-directed outdoor activities are predominately physical, though they may also be mentally, emotionally, and spiritually rewarding. The outdoors as a physical or social setting may meet the needs of physical health, self-sufficiency, risk-taking, the building of social ties (including teambuilding), and the needs of achievement (such as practicing, enhancing and challenging skills, testing stamina and endurance, and seeking adventure or excitement). The outdoors can be an environment in which people "show what they can do".
Pleasurable appreciation encourages experiences of being "let in on natures show". Enhancement of inner perceptual and/or spiritual life may be experienced through outdoor activities and outdoor-related activities such as nature study, aesthetic contemplation, meditation, painting, photography, archeological or historical research, and indigenous culture among others. These activities may also be physically rewarding.
Many people in modern civilizations believe that the value of nature is found only in its "utilitarian value" (beneficial use). They would discount the inner perceptual and/or spiritual benefits of the "intrinsic value of nature" that may be experienced during pleasurable appreciation.
Outdoor activities may also be pursued for the purposes of finding peace in nature, enjoying life, and relaxing. They are alternatives to expensive forms of tourism. Outdoor activities are also frequently used as a medium in education and teambuilding.
Read more about Outdoor Recreation: Types of Outdoor Recreational Activities, Trekking, Mountain Biking, Canyoning
Famous quotes containing the words outdoor and/or recreation:
“From my experience with wild apples, I can understand that there may be reason for a savage’s preferring many kinds of food which the civilized man rejects. The former has the palate of an outdoor man. It takes a savage or wild taste to appreciate a wild fruit.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Media mystifications should not obfuscate a simple, perceivable fact; Black teenage girls do not create poverty by having babies. Quite the contrary, they have babies at such a young age precisely because they are poor—because they do not have the opportunity to acquire an education, because meaningful, well-paying jobs and creative forms of recreation are not accessible to them ... because safe, effective forms of contraception are not available to them.”
—Angela Davis (b. 1944)