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Nature First: Outdoor Life the Friluftsliv Way

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Heritage Lost
A Review of Nature First (Outdoor Life the Friluftsliv way)
Edited by Bob Henderson and Nils Vikander

by Tom Lindblade

Trees growing in the middle of cross county ski trails, hiking trails long abandoned or turned over to ORVs, silent sports a thing of the past. This nightmare could happen as our children become increasingly ensnared by the seductive call of the keyboard and the adrenalin rush of high speed. Are our children increasingly forgoing the primary experience of nature in favor of the secondary manufactured thrill? An increasing number of people think so. And if they are right, the scenario above could become a reality, and not in the distant future, but as early as the next decade or two. Richard Louve in Last Child in the Woods coined the term Nature Deficit Disorder to describe what is happening to large numbers of our children Louve says that "Healing the broken bond between our young and nature is in our self-interest, not only because aesthetics or justice demand it, but also because our mental, physical, and spiritual health depend upon it."

All of us who participate in Silent Sports or just enjoy being in nature have experienced that bond and know what a powerful experience it is, but somehow, we have failed to communicate that to our youth, and things have gotten to the point that alarm bells are beginning to go off. What to do? I was recently given a copy of a new book called Nature First, Outdoor life and the Friluftsliv way by a friend of mine who is one of its editors, Bob Henderson. I believe that this book may point us in the direction of a way out. Many of us in the Midwest have strong Scandinavian ties, and as we look at those Midwestern states that are heavily influenced by the Scandinavian out-migration of the last century, we can see in many small ways, that they do seem to have a greater appreciation for the outdoor life.

What most of us third or fourth generation Scandinavians do not know is that our forbears brought that appreciation for nature with them, and that it has a long and distinguished history in Scandinavia (largely Norway) where it is called Friluftsliv (translated as free air life). Don't ask me, I don't know the proper pronunciation, and maybe it is because the word does look so strange in our English limited view, that the philosophy and traditions that the word friluftsliv represents has only made it across the cultural and language barrier in a very limited way. What the twenty five essays in the book do, is to give some of us back an important and neglected piece of our heritage. The essays make it clear that there is no magic bullet, but for all of us, whether of Scandinavian heritage or not, a rediscovery of the traditions of Friluftsliv might provide enough validation for change, so that there might never be a "last child in the woods".

Maybe it is time for us to recognize that reacting to each individual threat can only be a stop gap unless we find a way to more effectively frame the problem. I recommend Nature First which is published by Natural Heritage Books, a member of the Dundurn Group in Toronto