Outdoor and Environmental Studies 1Understanding Outdoor Experiences

Name: ______________________________ HG:_______

VCE Outdoor and Environmental Studies

Unit 1. Exploring Outdoor Experiences

Course Outline Outdoor and Environmental Studies is a course designed to study the ways humans interact with

and relate to their environments. This course will enable you to develop relationships with natural environments, understand factors that will influence nature over time, develop skills to

live comfortably in natural environments and understand sustainable environmental relationships.

Next year your will complete unit 1 and unit 2 which include the following outcomes:

Motivations for outdoor experiencesWays of experiencing outdoor environmentsInvestigating outdoor environmentsImpacts on outdoor environments

  Term 1 Term 2 Term 3 Term 4

Topics Motivations for outdoor

experiences

Experiencing outdoor

environments

Investigating outdoor

environments

Impacts on outdoor

environments

  Risk in the outdoors

Technology in the outdoors

Understandings of the outdoors

Revision

Assessments SAC 1 Sac 2 Sac4  Sac 6

  Sac 3 – Unit 1 exam

Sac5  

    .  

ExcursionsAll To Be

Confirmed*

Hard rock*3 day climbing camp at Mt. Arapiles *

Lerderderg low tech overnight trip

Day trips to Brimbank park

Otways NP or Wilsons Promontory NP3 day bushwalk

     

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Key knowledge• The use and meanings of relevant terms, including nature, outdoor environments, wilderness, managed parks and urban/built environments• Types of outdoor environments, including wilderness, managed parks, and urban/built environments• The range of motivations for seeking outdoor experiences• The range of differing personal responses to outdoor environments, such as fear, appreciation, awe and contemplation• The influence of media portrayals on personal responses to outdoor environments• The variety of personal responses to risk in outdoor experiences, including the interplay between competence, perceived risk and real risk• Strategies for planning for safe and sustainable interactions with outdoor environments.

Key skills• Plan for and reflect upon a range of practical outdoor experiences and analyse relevant information collected during these experiences• Define and describe a range of relevant terms• Analyse motivations for seeking outdoor experiences• Describe and analyse a range of personal responses to outdoor environments and outdoor experiences• Plan for and use appropriate skills for safe and sustainable interactions with outdoor environments.

Old book = no good New Text book for 2015

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Key knowledge from the OES study design:

• The use and meanings of relevant terms, including nature, outdoor environments, wilderness, managed parks and urban/built environments

Which of these environments are natural places?Which are not?

What’s the difference between them?

In this section we’ll set the scene for the OES course. In particular we’ll look at someseemingly simple terms – nature and natural environments – and examine some of the ways people use these terms and what we understand them to mean. We’ll also look at some of the implications of our use of these terms – implications that we’ll come across again and again in this study.

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Uses of the term ‘nature’

Nature is one of those words that seems pretty simple – until we have to actually come up with a definition for it. And what seemed common sense and simple starts to have a number of different aspects and becomes more complex.

The first thing to recognise with the word ‘nature’ is that we use it in a wide variety of different contexts and situations – including some where the meaning seems to change or at least be a little different from others.

The following list gives some of the different contexts and uses of the word:

• Human natureHuman nature is a term that is used to talk about the innate qualities of humans – that is, the characteristics of our behaviour that we’re born with.So, some people would say that aggression is human nature, or that sadness is human nature.

• Nature versus nurtureThis is the term that refers to a common debate in the past few decades over the key aspect of human development – your genetic makeup, or nature, versus the environment you are raised in, or nurture. So, nature here is taken to mean the genetic code that is found in your cells and governs how your cells and body operate.

• The laws of natureOften discussed when talking about science and physics, the laws of nature refer to descriptions – often mathematical – of the way the physical world works, and the way parts of the physical world interact with, and relateto, each other. So, you might have heard of Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation which is a mathematical description of how gravity works between two objects – this is a law of nature.

• The nature of …We often use the expression ‘the nature of … something’ when describing how something works, or some important feature or characteristic of something.

• Mother natureMother nature is a term that refers to the Earth’s biosphere – that is, all of the living things on Earth and the processes and systems that are part of, or related to, these living things.

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Mother nature

The concept of mothernature, mentioned above, raises an interesting question.. W h y mother natu re , as opposed to father natu r e?

We often give a gender or sex to particular objects or ideas – she’ll be right mate, she’s a great car, and so on – and often that gender is female. But in particular, when humans refer to the Earth’s biosphere – when we talk about the living things and the ecosystems that they’re a part of – we almost always seem to use a female gender.

This is probably a throwback to, or remnant from, early human societies where the female qualities were the life giving ones. Women were the bearers and nurturers of children, and so ecosystems and other living things were seen from this female-specific perspective.

Many early human societies had belief systems based on a large number of gods and it was common for the gods of the Earth and of living things to be female.

The ancient Greeks had a huge collection of gods, including Zeus, Apollo, Poseidon, Aphrodite, and many others, as well as the Mother Goddess – Gaia. For the Romans, there was Terra. For the Andean peoples of South America, there was Pachamama. And some indigenous Australian tribes had the goddess Eingana.

For these cultures, the Earth goddesses usually created and nurtured the physical world and were used to explain and understand the world around them.

Meanings of ‘nature’

So, it turns out that we use the term nature in a variety of different ways. This is always going to make defining something tricky.

But we all know what it is we’re talking about, don’t we?

Nature, for us in an OES course, is probably best thought of as the living things, the ecosystems and the processes that form them, and the places in which we find all of these – what we saw above was the usage of nature in the term ‘mother nature’. In essence, what we call nature could also refer to natural environments, which we’ll mention shortly.

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Natural, unnatural and artificial

Nature often comes in a kind of continuum too. As when we talk about something that is natural, or something that is unnatural, or even something that is artificial.

Something that is natural is said to occur ‘out there’ somewhere or comes from ‘nature’ itself. Unnatural usually refers to an object or process that humans have influenced in some way. Artificial, at the end of the continuum, refers to things that are created by humans.

Natural is easy enough – a eucalyptus tree or an echidna or a tropical rainforest are all examples of natural things.

Artificial is probably just as easy – a car, a computer, or the nutrasweet chemical in a diet soft drink are all examples of artificial things.

Beauty in nature

There’s a common view that nature – natural things and the natural world – is beautiful. Conversely, anything that is unnatural or artificial – that is, anything created by or modified by, humans will therefore not be beautiful.

This view may well explain why so much human art attempts to represent, or is at least inspired by, nature.

Unnatural gets a little trickier and the normal use of the term raises an interesting issuethat we’ll look at briefly a little later. The introduction of rabbits into Australia, the rose garden in someone’s front yard, or a downhill ski slope would all be examples of unnatural things, since each of these occurs only as a result of human impact in (or on) a particular place.

Natural environments

Like the natural – unnatural – artificial continuum, there’s a sort of progression or hierarchy of places that we give the label ‘natural environments’ to.

There are the local parks, some of which might be nearby your school or your house. These might have native Australian plants mixed with gardens of flowers and non-native shrubs and trees. They might also have some sports grounds or ovals, as well as nearbycar parks, a bike path and maybe a children’s playground.

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Built environments

Just as we have artificial which acts as an opposite to natural, for natural environments we have built environments as an opposite. Built environments is the term used to refer to any environment that has been significantly modified by humans – so a city or town environment – say a shopping centre, residential area, or school, are all examples of built environments.

Indoor rock climbing centres, artificial surfing reefs, and indoor snow skiing centres are all examples of built environments that attempt to recreate conditions found in natural environments.

For many Australians – particularly those who live in big cities – using these sort ofparks might be their most common experience of the ‘outdoors’. Beyond these parks are the larger and ‘wilder’ protected places – the state parks, national parks and other wilderness areas. And it’s often these places that we think of when we talk about natural environments.

Are human impacts really unnatural?

A debate that has begun to occur in recent times relates to some of the descriptions here about natural and unnatural. Remember, unnatural usually is taken to refer to objects or process that humans have influenced in some way – so, the infestation of Northern Australia by Cane Toads could be considered unnatural in this view.

But, say some, there’s a problem with this perspective. If we take nature to mean the living things and ecosystems and environments – the Earth’s biosphere in effect – then we should consider humans to be a part of nature. We are, after all, living things and we do interact with ecosystems and environments, just as other living things do.

So, if humans are part of nature, then how could what humans do be considered unnatural? The introduction of Cane Toads to Northern Australia and their subsequent spread across the Top End might be unfortunate, but is it really unnatural? It was caused by humans, who are a part of nature after all, wasn’t it?

Well, this may or may not be true. Certainly it masks the deeper debate that lies behind it – how much impact have humans had, or are humans having, on natural environments? Are large scale effects – like global climate change – the result of humans and their impacts? In the end, whether we call something natural or unnatural probably doesn’t really matter that much. Rather it’s the effects that do. Is the spread of Cane Toads natural or unnatural? It doesn’t really matter what we call it, one or the other, if we accept, as everyone in Australia does, that this spread is a bad thing for the Australian environment.

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The use and meanings of relevant terms, including nature, outdoor environments,

wilderness, managed parks and urban/built environments

1. Meanings of the word nature

Consider the following definitions of nature & match that definition with the most appropriate sentence.

Match up!

Nature

physical world a. It is in the nature of machinery to fail when you most need it.

forces controlling physical world (i.e mother nature)

b. We haven’t yet learned that we can never beat nature.

countryside/outside city limits

c. Humans have been trying to understand nature since time immemorial.

essential character of person or thing

d. It is in his/her nature to continually make childish remarks.

temperament e. Their plan is to produce their own food & get back to nature.

uncomplicated lifestyle f. Ah, smell those flowers - ain't nature grand?!

2. Exploiting the words ‘Nature’ & ‘Natural’

The words nature & natural are used to promote various products (some of which seem to have little to do with nature).

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One example is cereal "full of natural goodness." See if you can give 5 other examples.

a.

b.

c.

d.

e.

3. The natural environment versus...

a. What is the opposite of the natural environment?

b. What is the difference between natural objects and synthetic/artificial/man-made objects?

c. How natural are ‘nature strips’ in front of houses?

d. Are humans a part of nature, or are we outside nature?

Media and Nature tasks

To be completed in your workbook

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Task – part 1: Find and describe at least FIVE examples of the way nature and natural environments are used in newspapers and magazines, on television, and in other media.

Notes: Include with each description a note about the media source

Task – part 2:Choose any TWO of the examples you found and write an analysis of each one.

Notes:Your analysis should include responses to the following questions:

What is the purpose of this media use of nature/natural environments (that is, why are nature / natural environments being used in this way)?

Do you think this purpose is or may be achieved? Why/why not? What might be a result of this particular portrayal of nature/natural

environments? Do you think this media portrayal is good or bad or neither? Why/why not?

What makes an environment natural?

Go to a local outdoor environment (park, oval or open space) and answer the following:

Location:

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1. Would you describe the environment you are in as a 'natural environment'?

2. List some reasons why you would describe it as a 'natural environment'.

3. List some reasons why you would not describe it as a 'natural environment'.

4. Describe a place you know well that is a more natural environment?

5. Describe a less natural environment you know?

6. What potential does a natural environment offer that a modified environment does not?

7. What are some of the values of a natural environment?

8. What do you think some groups might use this area for?

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9. What animals do you see evidence of?

10. What birds can you hear?

11. Identify the plants you can see around you and which are native and which are introduced.

12. How does this environment make you feel?

An extract from Nature, by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Read through the excerpt. The language is a little strange to figure out at first – Emerson was a poet and enjoyed playing with words. He also was writing almost 200 years ago and so our uses of English have changed over this time. You may need to read some (or all) of the piece more than once.

Once you’ve read it, respond to the questions on the final page..

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Introduction

Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs? Embosomed for a season in nature, whose floods of life stream around and through us, and invite us by the powers they supply, to action proportioned to nature, why should we grope among the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe? The sun shines today also. There is more wool and flax in the fields. There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own works and laws and worship.

Undoubtedly we have no questions to ask which are unanswerable. We must trust the perfection of the creation so far, as to believe that whatever curiosity the order of things has awakened in our minds, the order of things can satisfy. Every man's condition is a solution in hieroglyphic to those inquiries he would put. He acts it as life, before he apprehends it as truth. In like manner, nature is already, in its forms and tendencies, describing its own design. Let us interrogate the great apparition, that shines so peacefully around us. Let us inquire, to what end is nature?

All science has one aim, namely, to find a theory of nature. We have theories of races and of functions, but scarcely yet a remote approach to an idea of creation. We are now so far from the road to truth, that religious teachers dispute and hate each other, and speculative men are esteemed unsound and frivolous. But to a sound judgment, the most abstract truth is the most practical. Whenever a true theory appears, it will be its own evidence. Its test is, that it will explain all phenomena. Now many are thought not only unexplained but inexplicable; as language, sleep, madness, dreams, beasts, sex.

Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul. Strictly speaking, therefore, all that is separate from us, all which Philosophy distinguishes as the NOT ME, that is, both nature and art, all other men and my own body, must be ranked under this name, NATURE. In enumerating the values of nature and casting up their sum, I shall use the word in both senses; -- in its common and in its philosophical import. In inquiries so general as our present one, the inaccuracy is not material; no confusion of thought will occur. Nature, in the common sense, refers to essences unchanged by man; space, the air, the river, the leaf. Art is applied to the mixture of his will with the same things, as in a house, a canal, a statue, a picture. But his operations taken together are so insignificant, a little chipping, baking, patching, and washing, that in an impression so grand as that of the world on the human mind, they do not vary the result.

Chapter I NATURE

To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and what he touches. One might think the atmosphere was made transparent

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with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the sublime. Seen in the streets of cities, how great they are! If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.

The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence. Nature never wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort her secret, and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection. Nature never became a toy to a wise spirit. The flowers, the animals, the mountains, reflected the wisdom of his best hour, as much as they had delighted the simplicity of his childhood.

When we speak of nature in this manner, we have a distinct but most poetical sense in the mind. We mean the integrity of impression made by manifold natural objects. It is this which distinguishes the stick of timber of the wood-cutter, from the tree of the poet. The charming landscape which I saw this morning, is indubitably made up of some twenty or thirty farms. Miller owns this field, Locke that, and Manning the woodland beyond. But none of them owns the landscape. There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye can integrate all the parts, that is, the poet. This is the best part of these men's farms, yet to this their warranty-deeds give no title.

To speak truly, few adult persons can see nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child. The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily food. In the presence of nature, a wild delight runs through the man, in spite of real sorrows. Nature says, - he is my creature, and meagre all his impertinent griefs, he shall be glad with me. Not the sun or the summer alone, but every hour and season yields its tribute of delight; for every hour and change corresponds to and authorizes a different state of the mind, from breathless noon to grimmest midnight. Nature is a setting that fits equally well a comic or a mourning piece. In good health, the air is a cordial of incredible virtue. Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear. In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life, - no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, - my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, - all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign and accidental: to be brothers, to be acquaintances, - master or servant, is then a trifle and a disturbance. I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the

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tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature.

The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister, is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me, and I to them. The waving of the boughs in the storm, is new to me and old. It takes me by surprise, and yet is not unknown. Its effect is like that of a higher thought or a better emotion coming over me, when I deemed I was thinking justly or doing right.

Yet it is certain that the power to produce this delight, does not reside in nature, but in man, or in a harmony of both. It is necessary to use these pleasures with great temperance. For, nature is not always tricked in holiday attire, but the same scene which yesterday breathed perfume and glittered as for the frolic of the nymphs, is overspread with melancholy today. Nature always wears the colours of the spirit. To a man labouring under calamity, the heat of his own fire hath sadness in it. Then, there is a kind of contempt of the landscape felt by him who has just lost by death a dear friend. The sky is less grand as it shuts down over less worth in the population.

Questions

1. What does Emerson mean when he talks about looking at the stars to get a sense of being really alone?

2. ‘But none of them owns the landscape.’ What does Emerson mean by this?

3. ‘I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear. In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth … Standing on the bare

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ground, - my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, - all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign and accidental …’ What is (or what might) Emerson talking about here?

4. Write your own short poem or piece that describes what and how you feel when you are in a natural environment (won’t be shared unless you want it to, don’t stress)

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