Why Millennials Need the Outdoors More Than Ever

“Yes, mine was the generation where sports were optional but extra hours of chemistry were not. Where participation medals were as valuable as breaking records and where instant gratification replaced the pursuit of happiness.”

Mine is the American Pie generation, born in the mid to late 80s, way too young to have experienced the very short lived boom that accompanied 90s deregulation, but young enough to have grown with the private use of internet, the innovation of mobile technology and the unipolar westward facing world. And of course, we came of age around the time of the first American Pie movie, a genre that pretty much informed a global population of teens on what it meant to grow up; namely, alcohol, sex and of course going to college where we’d drink more alcohol and have more sex. And off to college we went, determined as ever to get a degree, follow a career path and ultimately climb that magic ladder that would lead to a place we would one day call the top.

Ten years after graduation and there is a clearly something that’s gone terribly wrong. For starters, that ladder seems endless, that is of course, if you’ve been lucky enough to find it at all. The promise of prospects, prosperity and a life that could accommodate both professional and private activities pretty much died with the most recent recession. For the lucky few of us who managed to ride whatever tiny ripple went our way, we’re left questioning whether the choices we made when we were 15 years old, the ramifications of which we are probably still living, really put us on the right track in the first place.

Yes, mine was the generation where sports were optional but extra hours of chemistry were not. Where participation medals were as valuable as breaking records and where instant gratification replaced the pursuit of happiness. And now, 10 years since school and college, I think we’re starting to realize it.

For starters, less and less people call me crazy for pursuing outdoor experiences. That was certainly not the case 10 years ago when I was a part time scuba instructor. I actually remember being told how much time I was wasting by my career driven classmates, many of whom I’ve actually ended up teaching or guiding in recent years. Don’t get me wrong; I myself was in law school at the time, but less willing to dedicate all my energy to that singular pursuit, even if it meant reaching the top of that elusive ladder a little later than everyone else. I’ve also noticed how the idea of a holiday has changed. There was a time when holiday was a synonym for which town we’d travel to and get hammered in or which resort we’d confine ourselves to. Today, those same people are finding themselves on expeditions to Kilimanjaro, Nepal, the lesser-known regions of South East Asia and beyond. I’ve even had friends of my parents ask me to organize “crazy” trips for them and this has really got me wondering: What’s changed?

I gave a talk about how the outdoors can change your life at an adventure festival in Kuwait recently and a young kid asked me about how he could climb Everest. I told him I’ve never been to Everest and subsequently asked him what his motivation was for wanting to climb it. He said, as most individuals would, because it’s the highest. I immediately noticed the crowd of 30 somethings shake their heads in disapproval, probably animated by years of politically correct conditioning to put down, or more likely, to hide and conceal such a vain and egocentric motive. I like to call it participation medal illness or PMI.

“We must pursue experiences and learn the lessons from them. To stand in the way of that is to stand in the way of what makes us human. We are meant to experience and we are meant to grow and the outdoors is an incredible place for it.”

Just as my fellow thirty somethings began to vocalize their disapproval I decided to answer with my own story.

“Yes,” I said “Everest is the highest, and not so long ago I said the exact same thing. I too wanted to climb Everest because it was the highest. It’s the ultimate prize. So I went exactly where all the would-be 7 summiteer go as a first step: Kilimanjaro. I didn’t even look at the itinerary or gear list. And why would I? I’m an Everest summiteer in the making. This is just a silly little box I need to tick to get there. Of course I did go to Kilimanjaro and low and behold that easy mountain ripped me to shreds. At nights I froze from an inadequate sleeping bag. During the days, I lagged behind because of altitude sickness, popping Diamox pills like candy. On summit night, my motivations were so exposed for their lack of substance that I was very close to turning around. But the mountain ultimately spared me, or at least spared the parts of me that were willing to reassess why I was there and where I wanted to take it from here. The mountain led me to gain experience elsewhere until ultimately I found myself in the Alps, pursuing alpine mountaineering and finding myself there.” The point here is that it’s ok to have shitty motivations. If we all already knew the lessons that life would ultimately teach us then why on Earth bother with living in the first place? We must pursue experiences and learn the lessons from them. To stand in the way of that is to stand in the way of what makes us human. We are meant to experience and we are meant to grow and the outdoors is an incredible place for it. But reprimanding that kid for only putting to words the thoughts that every single one of us have at least contemplated is the reason we have a generation of arm chair critics more concerned with form over substance. But this is changing.

I’m not entirely sure why it’s changing but it is. I’d like to think we’re finally coming out of the American Pie induced hangover that has kept us from pursuing experiences in our most natural environment. I’d like to hope that it we’ve been through enough cycles of instant highs to actually realize that what necessarily follows is an instant low. I would certainly like to think that the understanding of what it means to pursue happiness, the experiences of both ups and downs, success and failure has somehow taken root in our global consciousness. But the truth is I have no clue. All I can say, with any degree of certainty, is that the outdoors and the incredible experiences that we as explorers have the ability to pursue those experiences, can only be positive. One of the reasons I often sight to justify this conclusion is that it is insanely difficult to find a real asshole outdoors. That’s probably because of the lessons we learn out there. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but the likelihood of an encounter as compared to the 5 meter radius of your office cubicle is next to never.

Yes, we need the outdoors. We need to reconnect with experiences and with other people. We need to get ourselves out of the coma we’ve willingly induced ourselves into always trying to shield ourselves from pain and gratify ourselves instantly. We need to learn the lesson that the mountains, the hills, the trees and the sands have for us if we’re ever going to get beyond this rut we find ourselves in.