1. A Personal Reflection

Cover image: a scene of a mountains and grassy plants with a narrow trail winding through

I decided that I wanted to write about disability in the outdoors for my mid-semester project because I’ve always been very passionate about exploring nature but had not done much reflection on its relation to disability until recently. Over the fall, I got more serious about hiking and started going on more arduous hikes as well as backpacking by myself. This led to me getting an internship as an assistant glacier trek instructor in Alaska this summer. What appealed to me most is how I would be physically challenged and how remote the area is. However, these two things rarely go hand in hand with disability; certain physical challenges in the outdoors aren’t possible for people with physical disabilities and lack of nearby medical care can be dangerous for people with certain health conditions. My goal in writing this blog is to gain a better understanding of this challenge narrative, how disability interacts with the outdoors and how to make nature more accessible. Hopefully you find this interesting and helpful!

For this post, I will be focusing on my own experiences. I recently read about what environmentalists and disability scholars have defined as adventure culture, a popular framework that the greatest connection to nature is often found through extreme challenge and/or seclusion. Hardship and solitude tend to be the most valued experiences in the outdoors, creating the perception that they are necessary to “experience the spiritually uplifting magnificence of brutal nature” (Ray 36). Before reading about this, I had not realized how I’ve come to embody certain aspects of this framework.

Though I definitely believe that just being in nature itself (in a non-brutal fashion) has great merit, I tend to find more satisfaction when I have to physically challenge myself. For example, hiking to the top of a mountain to reach a view is often a more meaningful experience for me than seeing the same view from just driving there. Not that why I love hiking is all about the views, that’s more of a cherry on top. I think why I love hiking, especially hiking alone, is to have a place to fully be with my thoughts, reach places that feel relatively untouched and just being surrounded by nature naturally brings me joy. However, I know I tend to find more value when I get to scramble over rocks, go further and more secluded places than others can and feel satisfyingly exhausted. These things leave little to no room for the disabled body.

Even though the challenging aspect of hiking does bring me joy, it’s more of a personal preference and one that I’ve been socialized towards than a universal truth. Though this socialization has created the idea for many people that physical challenge is the “correct” way of experiencing nature, there’s countless other ways that enriching experiences can be had that are just as valid but don’t receive the same clout. The idea that an outdoor experience has to be “brutal” is simply untrue. Meditation, bird watching, simple strolls and much more can also provide connectivity with nature, potentially of a better kind because they don’t incorporate ideologies about “conquering” nature.

After reading more about disability in the outdoors and as well as doing personal reflection, I felt a bit disturbed by how I’ve embodied certain aspects of the solitude and challenge centered ableist framework without realizing it or being aware of its interaction with disability. Disabled people are rarely present in adventure culture and the only place disability is consistently featured is as “an invisible looming threat” of potentially getting injured (Ray 37).

I still do think that solo experiences in nature and intense hikes can have a lot of value for someone and even though often inaccessible, aren’t inherently problematic. However, I believe that there are very toxic aspects to the prevalence of the solitude and challenge narrative and its implications. I think that adventure culture needs a lot of revision as it implies that challenge is what makes an outdoor experience valid and meaningful. This is untrue as well as harmful and ableist. Throughout the course of this blog, I want to explore deeper into the prevalence of adventure culture and its relation to disability as well as examine what access in the outdoors looks like.

Reference:

Ray, Sarah Jaquette. “Risking Bodies in the Wild: The ‘Corporeal Unconscious’ of American Adventure Culture.” Disability Studies and the Environmental Humanities, 2017.