Taking a Hike and Hucking the Stout: The Troublesome Legacy of the Sublime in Outdoor Recreation

Abstract

As Henry Thoreau noted in the 1850s, the simple act of walking can be loaded with political and spiritual meaning. Today, taking a hike as an act of engaging in outdoor recreation is equally non-trivial, and therefore subject of the following analysis. As this paper argues, outdoors recreation is still influenced by the legacy of the Sublime and its construction of wilderness. This troublesome legacy means that the cultural self-representation of outdoor sports -and the practice itselflays claim to the environment in ways that are socially and sometimes even ethnically exclusive.This essay uses William Cronon's critique of the cultural constructedness of wilderness as a point of departure to see how Western notions of sublime nature have an impact on spatial practice. The elevation of specific parts of the environment into the category of wilderness prescribes certain uses and meanings as nature is made into an antidote against the ills of industrial civilization, and a place where the alienated individual can return to a more authentic self. This view then has become a troublesome legacy, informing the cultural self-representation of those uses of "wilderness" that are known as outdoor recreation.In its cultural production, outdoors recreation constructs "healthy" and "athletic" bodies exercising in natural settings and finding refuge from the everyday alienation of postmodern society. Yet these bodies are conspicuously white, and the obligatory equipment and fashion expensive. Outdoor recreation is a privileged assertion of leisure, often denoting an urban, affluent, and white, background of the practitioner. These practitioners then lay exclusive claim on the landscapes they use.As trivial as taking a hike or any other form of outdoors recreation may thus seem, they put a cultural legacy into practice that is anything but trivial.

Shapeshifting Nature : Ambivalent Ways of Seeing the Non-Human World within Swedish National Park Tourism and its Visual Culture

“…In this way, the non-human world becomes a kind of visual commodity for tourists to experience from viewing points (paper IV). This is an interest that is deeply grounded in the nature conservation movement (Drennig, 2013;Urry & Larsen, 2011), which often approaches national parks as icons of sublime and inspiring nature (Bilbro, 2016).…”

Organizational presence and place: Sociomaterial place work in the Swedish outdoor industry

“…Participants themselves narrate how "Fjällräven" makes the trek possible. Signs guide and "proper brands" logos on other participants create an atmosphere of "genuine wilderness" (only partly disturbed by not all participants having highly functional clothes, see Drennig, 2013). Generally, the presence of Fjällräven is related to the positive experiences and emotions of the participants.…”

“…Note that it is the narratives that speak of wilderness. Analytically, it can be considered a construction of the natural environment, not an entity existing a priori (see also Drennig, 2013; Greider and Garkovich, 1994). In such a configuration, not only is the organization presentified, it is also given meaning.…”

“…On the other hand, when the trek is performed, ongoing negotiations and connections re-enact certain trajectories as a legitimate part of wilderness, benefitting the organization at the same time as producing participants as experiencing wilderness. The construction of wilderness based on many technological artifacts being mobilized in the practice of hiking in “nature” makes the presence of Fjällräven and Fjällräven products necessary for wilderness to be experienced (Drennig, 2013)—thereby sustaining a market for the company. Poorly designed rain clothes are constructed as an inappropriate trajectory that simply confirms that functional clothes are legitimate trajectories, and the persisting rain becomes an ally in such a construction.…”

“…Fjällräven Classic is built on an already existing construction—the trail is much older than the event and had been made part of the construction of Sweden and wilderness long before Fjällräven Classic (Werner, 2014). This is not to say that the Kungsleden is wilderness in itself; mountains and streams would not be wilderness without people equipped with functional gear walking on trails and feeling awe and fatigue (Drennig, 2013).…”