Rewilding Your Life: Why our Outdoor Stories Matter

Our outdoor stories matter. Whether we're climbers, riders, kayakers, walkers...what we have always loved, or come to love, tells us something about what fulfills us and keeps us sane in a hectic modern world. But not everyone knows their own outdoor story, or why it's important. In this talk I'll be exploring a little about my own small-time adventure story and how it helped me find what I wanted to do with my life. I'll be considering the role of the outdoors on mental health and wellbeing, why we need to strive to make outdoor pursuits more inclusive, the importance of helping others understand their outdoor story, the reciprocal benefits of a better relationship with nature and 'the outdoors' and why this might all amount to the call to Rewild Our Lives.

As a one-time Geologist, the mountains have always been a defining part of my life. In this talk I'll be sharing an entirely arbitrary collection of mountain photos to highlight my own passion for the outdoors, complementing the theme of outdoor story-telling as a way of making meaning of our outdoor lives.