Fear not the outdoors BY ALLEN MACARTNEY
campgrounds are rising, but some experts believe the biggest reason is fear of the outdoors. Why should this surprise anyone? Fear sells in our society, bigtime. In many ways fear defines
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our culture. It hits all our emotional buttons and our wallets. Everyone is cashing in at our expense: banks, insurance companies, home alarm installers, bottled water distilleries. Banks warn that we’ll need uncounted thousands in RSPs to maintain a basic middle class lifestyle. Gut fear. As a child I walked unescorted many blocks to play in parks
after school. A boy was expected to fall out of trees and get the occasional bite from a dog. According to Scientific American, parents today wrap their children in a security blanket of fear. And it helps make them reluctant to venture into the outdoors. Fear isn’t always negative. Sometimes it’s useful, keeping us
from doing something foolish or dangerous, like cutting directly across a wide lake as dark clouds approach. Good fear forces us to listen to the warning bells in our head, tunes us to our gut and makes us aware of what our eyes don’t see. But too often, fear is irrational, based on false assumptions and an over-active imagination. A raccoon checking out a campfire for scraps might sound like a grizzly bear, but it isn’t. A hooting owl or a calling loon sounds like a blood-thirsty ghost at 3 a.m., but it isn’t. Wolves? In the past 100 years no Canadian has been confirmed killed by a wolf in the wild. In captivity yes, but not in the wild. Wolves and bears are terrified of humans – the real predators of the planet – and keep far away. Why are people comfortable with the real risks of driving on two-lane highways at 110 kilometres an hour? Other cars close in at 220 kph, the two pass a mere two metres apart, and no one knows whether the stranger at the other wheel was texting, on the phone, or falling asleep. We’re comfortable with these dangerous everyday risks, but intolerant of less familiar ones. Now that’s scary! Yes a wilderness canoe trip might hold dangers like getting lost, but the most dangerous part of the adventure is driving to the put- in. The moment the canoe is on the water, real risk nose-dives. So next time you start to worry in the forest or on the water, ask yourself whether it makes sense. Is there a real danger that’s invisible? Or is this an irrational fear to be ignored.
cross North America, people are using parks and the outdoors less and less. It’s an accelerating trend that began at least 20 years ago. Many reasons exist. We all have busy lives, and user fees in provincial parks and
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