You Should Go Outside

And bring others with you

I grew up as a pretty average suburban kid. My time was spent going to school, doing homework, playing with friends, a few video games here and there, and some television. My parents weren’t big on camping, and family vacations usually involved chain hotels and crowded public beaches. If it weren’t for sports, I probably would have spent the vast majority of my childhood indoors. Like I said, I don’t think that’s particularly unusual.

I never thought about it much, but now that I’m raising a child of my own, the idea of “going outside” seems more important.

Making it happen, though, is significantly harder than when I was a kid. One parent with older kids explained the challenge to me: Although she has done a remarkably good job of limiting her son’s screen time and getting him interested in other things, one of her biggest challenges is that all of his friends would rather be playing Minecraft or Fortnite than playing outside.

This phenomenon is exactly what Steven Rinella attempts to address in his new book: Outdoor Kids in and Inside World: Getting Your Family Out of the House and Radically Engaged with Nature.

I grabbed the book because it spoke specifically to the thoughts I was having about my kid, but it also made me think a lot about my own relationship with nature and the outdoors. So, even if you don’t have kids, you may want to keep reading.

Rinella is best known as the host of the popular Netflix show Meat Eater, which follows him around as he hunts wild game (I think… I’ve never seen it). Knowing only this about Rinella, I was expecting a pretty divisive character. But Rinella is nothing if not self-aware. He knows that his lifestyle is not going to be for everyone, and that some people will balk at some of what he suggests (at one point he argues that letting kids play with fire while supervised is an important ritual, and at another he gives an example of pressing a stonefly into some cheese and eating it so his kid wouldn’t be grossed out). But his goal is to present a menu of options for getting more engaged with nature and letting people go at their own speed, hoping that as they get more comfortable they’ll go further down the rabbit hole.

Why You Should Go Outside

But, let’s start from the beginning. Is there really anything wrong with living an indoor life? After all, isn’t part of the point of modernity to make life more comfortable for us? As my mother used to say any time someone suggested a camping vacation: “I don’t go on vacation to work MORE.”

If that’s your starting point, Rinella hears you, but his point is:

“Like it or not, nature is out there. It cannot be ignored. You can live in fear of it, which is no fun and does little good. Or you can respect and admire it, which opens you up to glimpses of magic.”

One of the ways that Rinella reframes our relationship with nature is by pointing out that “nature” does not exist separate from us. Rather, we are part of nature. There is no me over here, and nature over there. We are all part of the ecosystem in which we live.

This seemingly innocuous statement animates much of Rinella’s ethos when it comes to regarding our relationship with nature. He uses this idea to justify his stance as a conservationist. In Rinella’s mind, it’s absurd to create an environment devoid of humans, because humans are as much a part of nature as any other part of the ecosystem. Instead, Rinella seeks to find a sustainable way for humans to interact with the rest of nature that respects the outside world, without removing us from it.

Use curiosity

So, assuming you buy the idea that going outside is important, the question becomes how do you get started? If you’re like me, and you were never a Boy Scout, and you didn’t do a lot of outdoors-y stuff as a kid, where do you begin?

Rinella’s suggestion is simple, yet brilliant. He proposes using curiosity to lead you. While the tactic should work incredibly well with children, whose favourite pastime is asking questions that parents have no answer to, it can work just as well in adults.

At one point, Rinella lists a set of 20 or so questions about our immediate environment that we can use as a starting point for feeling our curiosity. The questions are things like, “What birds visit your home regularly?” Or “What kind of trees are closest to your home?” Or “Where did the water that comes out of your faucet come from?” Or “What’s the earliest known time frame of human habitation around your home habitat?”

These starting points are meant to get you thinking, and you’ll soon realize (as I did) that you know nothing about the place you live. And once you get started down the rabbit hole of looking for the answers to these questions, you have an easy way of engaging with nature. If birds interest you, download a bird watching app, and learn more about birds and their migration patterns. That will inevitably lead you to know more about other wildlife in the area, as well as the vegetation. From there, the paths of exploration are limitless.

Just channel your inner child and keep asking, “why?”

Why this is so important…

As I read through this book, I found myself at times interested, at times feeling guilty at my own inadequacy, and at times shaking my head in rueful disbelief. However, it was only once I got to the very last paragraph that the true importance of Rinella’s message really hit home for me. So, I’ll end with Rinella’s own closing paragraph:

“Our kids will be left to experience, or perhaps endure, whatever it is thet they inherit from us. Their adaptability will be put to the test. They will be forced to continue to evolve. […] The planet’s salvation will not be delivered by a generation that is disheartened and apathetic. It will come from folks who step outside of their home in the morning with an eagerness to be embraced by the sun and the wind and the rain.”