Having grown up in upstate New York, hunting and fishing have been omnipresent in my life for as long as I can remember. My family lived 2 miles back on a dirt road, with no neighbors except for the animals in the unbroken forest, complete with a native brook trout stream. When other kids went to the mall or watched TV, my brother and I were outside — often with a fly rod or shotgun in our hands.

Even as our lives progressed — college, jobs in the city, marriage, kids — those early years continued to guide us. My brother and I both got jobs in conservation: I started working in the federal policy arena, and Jamie helped implement conservation projects on the ground for the National Park Service. These days, our one-week deer-hunting camp in the Adirondacks lets us get together and honor the traditions that have been carried on for more than a century. And summer fishing expeditions are a time when our extended family all come together. We’ve both traveled to places across the country where there is certainly better hunting and fishing, but we always return to the Adirondacks, America’s first great wilderness preserve.

It is no accident that hunters and anglers have always been the driving force behind conservation in America, or that Theodore Roosevelt is generally remembered as the father of conservation in our country. He credited wild places and wildlife for his development as a man, and he feared that the rugged individualism the wilderness taught him would be lost if he didn’t succeed in making conservation the nation’s highest priority.

Those who do not hunt or fish will probably never understand the draw. Unless you’ve done it, it’s impossible to know the pride and sense of accomplishment that comes with catching a rising trout on a dry fly, or serving your own venison on Christmas Eve. You become part of the woods or the river, able to sense subtle changes all around and feel incredible empathy for the game you pursue — and that’s not always easy to explain. But as an outdoorsman, I was raised to appreciate the natural world that functions in an amazing, often brutal harmony, in spite of man’s alterations.

It is no accident that hunters and anglers have always been the driving force behind conservation in America, or that Theodore Roosevelt is generally remembered as the father of conservation in our country. He credited wild places and wildlife for his development as a man, and he feared that the rugged individualism the wilderness taught him would be lost if he didn’t succeed in making conservation the nation’s highest priority. During his tenure as president, Roosevelt protected more than 240 million acres for national parks, forests, monuments, and wildlife refuges. He and his colleagues ended market hunting and ushered in a system of principles now known as the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation. Subsequent generations have expanded Roosevelt’s legacy by creating funding mechanisms, primarily through excise taxes and license fees, to pay for the professional management and acquisition of millions of acres for the public to enjoy.

Today we all have a duty to understand this uniquely American privilege and to preserve it for future generations. Lamar Alexander, the senior senator from Tennessee, is fond of saying, “Egypt has its pyramids, Italy has its arts, and America has its national parks.” Too often we take for granted what Roosevelt and generations of conservation-minded leaders have left us: a public-lands network that is unparalleled in all the world. The best-managed fish and wildlife populations of any nation. And the ability for all Americans to hunt and fish, regardless of class or economic status. It is a system that benefits everyone, from the sportsman to the hiker to those who simply want to drink clean water or experience wide open spaces.

But Roosevelt’s legacy is under attack. For more than three decades, budgets for agencies that manage our public lands have been squeezed and shrunk. In the 1970s, conservation spending made up more than 2% of the federal budget; today it is only about 1%. Recreation facilities across the country are being closed or lie in disrepair. The U.S. Forest Service now spends more than half its annual budget fighting wildfires, up from less than 20% two decades ago. The financial crisis this creates for the agency hamstrings it from meeting the expectations of the public.

Now, there is a chorus of voices calling for our federal public lands to be turned over to the states. In fact, a resolution introduced in the U.S. Senate this spring stated that it should be the policy of the U.S. to “sell, or transfer to, or exchange with, a state or local government any Federal land that is not within the boundaries of a National Park, National Preserve, or National Monument….” It passed 51 to 49. In the House of Representatives, a special committee is currently looking into public-land divestment strategies.

Our public lands are fundamental to maintaining the $646 billion annual contribution that outdoor recreation makes to our economy, especially when you consider that 72% of Westerners depend on America’s 640 million acres of federal public lands for hunting. But you may be asking yourself why you should care if these acres are held by the states or the feds. First, hunting, camping, biking, off-road-vehicle riding, and many other outdoor activities are often not allowed on state lands. Second, Western states had far more public lands at statehood than they do today; most of those lands have been sold off, and nothing would prevent that from happening if those states received more federal lands. Finally, most Western states are constitutionally mandated to maximize profits from lands in the state trust. Federal public lands are managed for multiple uses, including outdoor recreation, and belong to every American.

None of us can afford to sit back and assume that what we have been given will be here forever. Thankfully, sportsmen and other outdoor recreation enthusiasts across the country are starting to fight back.

Those of us who spend a lot of time in the Northeast cherish our public lands, in part because we have so few of them. Perhaps because of the connection that I feel to the land where I hunt and fish, I have made it my vocation, as well as my avocation, to make sure that we honor the work of our forefathers and pass on America’s unique outdoor legacy to future generations. Conservation groups and companies that depend upon the outdoor market are doing the same.

But, in a world with so many challenges and pressures on our public lands, our outdoor legacy won’t be secure until all users unite.

Protecting America’s Outdoor Legacy was originally published in Opt Outside on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In an ideal world, everyone would live within a ten-minute walk of a park or open green space where they could connect with nature and one another. This is both my personal belief and the guiding philosophy of The Trust for Public Land, which it has been my privilege to lead for nearly 20 years.

We all have different and important connections with the natural world.

My own relationship with nature was forged in outdoor play as a child, hiking, camping and family trips to national parks. I grew up with a big love of the outdoors. As a young man, a swarm of bees landed in my backyard. And I thought, gee, if I could find a way to put those bees into a hive I could have my own honey! I caught the swarm and that led to several years working as a commercial beekeeper and honey producer. It gave me a whole new slant on nature and it really let me exercise my sense of wonder. In the life of bees, I came to appreciate the intricacies of the natural world.

Later, I worked as an urban developer in Chicago and the San Francisco Bay area. That led to my quarter-century career as a professional conservationist. (I now think of myself as an “undeveloper.”) I still keep a few hives of bees in my backyard as a hobby. That along with hiking, biking, cross-country skiing, and simply exploring outdoors with my family, has helped me maintain that essential personal connection to nature and the outdoors — a connection I believe everyone should have the opportunity to enjoy.

At The Trust for Public Land, our work is to help connect people to nature across the broad geography of the American landscape. We work with partners to create city parks and greenways, while also protecting mountain trails, wilderness, and land for national parks. But though our projects may seem very different on their face, the reason we do them is always the same: so people can get outdoors and experience the joys and benefits of nature near and far.

Access to nature is of vital importance, especially in a time when our kids are spending so much time indoors, suffering from what author Richard Louv calls “nature-deficit” disorder.” Scientific research is confirming what many of us understand by instinct: people are happier and healthier when they are able to get outdoors, exercise, and experience the natural world. Diseases from diabetes to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder have been shown to improve with outdoor exercise. And now doctors are writing “parkscriptions” for people of all ages to get outside and move their muscles.

Cities are also getting smarter about how parks can serve people by protecting them from environmental threats like climate change. We now have a working group devoted entirely to helping cities create parks where people can connect with nature — but which can also help address climate impacts: soaking up climate-caused flooding, cooling hot urban neighborhoods, and reducing the release of climate-warming CO2.

The results of this work are enormously varied. In New York City, asphalt school yards are being replaced with green community parks and playgrounds — planned by the students and community members — serving tens of thousands of residents, and designed and built like sponge to absorb water that would otherwise pollute rivers and streams.

In Chicago, we recently celebrated the opening of The 606, a nearly three-mile greenway on a formerly abandoned elevated rail line. Running past schools, businesses, and homes in four park-poor neighborhoods, The 606 is now serving 80,000 families, including almost 25,000 children, within a ten-minute walk — while also supporting carbon-free commuting for a cooler climate.

In national parks and along popular trails, a lot of conservation these days is to protect trailheads and access points so people can get to and use the wonderful public lands the nation has invested in over the years. This means buying a Utah ranch that controls access to the popular Zion Narrows Trail an iconic National Park or conserving islands of private land along the Pacific Crest National Scenic Trail in California and Washington.

Whether it’s a park down the block or a campsite deep in the woods, people need outdoor places for recreation, inspiration, and health. They need parks within a ten-minute-walk. And everyone needs to know there are wild open spaces where they can unplug, unwind, and escape the bustle of daily life — the kind of places many of us will be enjoying as we #optoutside this holiday season.

All of this conservation — from neighborhood parks to national parks — depends on a mix of public funding with private support from foundations and individuals. As the Trust for Public Land’s LandVote website catalog, the public has voted for parks and conservation repeatedly over the years, approving more than $72 billion in state and local funding since 1998. We’re proud to have helped pass many of these funding measures. In the process, we’ve learned that people want parks. They understand their benefits, and more often than not they will vote to fund them.

The federal government has also been a major contributor to parks and conservation — that is, until Congress let the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) lapse in September. Since the 1960s, a minuscule fraction of the federal budget — not tax money, but money from offshore oil and gas revenues — has gone to build parks and conserve land where everyone can experience nature and the outdoors. A significant portion of these funds created parks in cities and suburbs, where most of us live.

Congress has been slow to reauthorize LWCF, or it has proposed diverting LWCF funds from parks to other, non-conservation, uses. These diversions would be a theft from our future and frustrate the efforts of communities nationwide to connect residents to the outdoors. LWCF should receive full and permanent funding if we are to provide all Americans with the benefits of parks and a chance to connect to nature close to home. To follow along with the status of the LWCF program, I recommend visiting the coalition website: http://lwcfcoalition.org.

Whether we’re protecting special places in the path of growth or recycling urban lands to create new parks in the neighborhoods that need them, it’s all about that connection from Main Street to mountaintop and what it does for us as individuals and as a nation. Creative place making, as we call it, is our opportunity to reignite a sense of wonder in all of our communities.

From Neighborhood Parks to National Parks was originally published in Opt Outside on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

John Muir has a reputation, not entirely undeserved, as a bit of an ascetic — someone who would plunge into the wilderness with little more than a crust of bread and a small packet of tea. But that doesn’t mean Muir would turn up his nose at a turkey dinner like the one he enjoyed in 1877.

That year, a trail-weary, 39-year-old John Muir celebrated Thanksgiving at the Martinez, California, home of his good friend Dr. John Strentzel. Muir later wrote to his sister that the Strentzel family stuffed him with “turkey, chicken, beef, fruits, jellies, in the most extravagant manner imaginable.” Perhaps a man’s stomach really is the trail to his heart, because Muir began courting and eventually married Dr. and Mrs. Strentzel’s daughter, Louisa.

But getting back to dinner — what did Muir do after all the feasting was done? He walked to Oakland so that he could catch a ferry to San Francisco. And, being John Muir, he chose to make the walk more interesting by detouring over the top of 3,849-foot Mt. Diablo. Presumably, he managed to work off all the turkey, chicken, beef, and fruit — along with most of the jellies.

What Muir didn’t do was go to a shopping mall. Admittedly, the first modern enclosed mall wouldn’t be built for another 77 years (less than 100 miles from where Muir grew up in Wisconsin). Still, I’m pretty sure that, had he lived long enough to see it, one visit to that shopping mall would have done John Muir in.

All his life, John Muir preached the gospel of getting outdoors. “Nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees,” he wrote. “The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.”

Flowery stuff. But today we know that Muir was exactly right. Humans did not evolve to thrive in enclosed spaces or to flourish with our faces glued to a glowing screen. And while you could argue that clawing one’s way through a mob of Black Friday shoppers is paying homage to our hunter/gatherer past, surely no one believes that it’s healthy for body, mind, or spirit to prevail in the elemental struggle for a discounted video game console. Time spent in nature is as important to us as any other essential vitamin or mineral. That’s why the lack of it is called “nature deficit syndrome.” Have you ever heard of “shopping deficit syndrome”?

Of course, shopping isn’t going away (although the sun does seem at last to be setting on the empire of the indoor mall). People are going to shop this holiday season. But that doesn’t mean we can’t also push back and reclaim some of the energy of the storms, the freshness of the winds, and the flow of nature’s peace that John Muir described. It’s not hard. You don’t need to drop everything and climb the nearest mountain or hike the Appalachian Trail. You can do it one day. And I can’t think of a better one than the day after Thanksgiving. Which brings me to REI’s brilliant idea to ask people to #OptOutside.

The Sierra Club and REI have often worked together on initiatives over the years. Our collaboration is rooted in a mutual belief in the importance — and profound benefit — of getting outdoors. So REI’s #OptOutside campaign encouraging people to spend the day after Thanksgiving the way John Muir would is right up our alley. If we can get more than a million people to swap Black Friday for all the colors of nature, it’ll be the best present those folks could have given themselves that day. And you know what? Somehow, I think the rest of the holiday season will still roll out on schedule.

So if you haven’t already, visit REI’s #OptOutside website and stake your claim to a little fresh air and peace of mind. I promise: On the day after, you’ll be thankful all over again.

All the Colors of Nature was originally published in Opt Outside on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

If the past few weeks are any indication, people really want to change the holiday tradition that has morphed into too many employees forced to walk away from the Thanksgiving table so they can lure consumers into a buying frenzy on Black Friday. We at REI would rather think about how to celebrate the holiday with our friends and families in the outdoors.

I have the privilege of being the CEO of REI, the nation’s largest outdoor co-op. REI is focused on living life outside. We have more than 5.5 million members and 12,000 employees. We share a common value that a life outside is a life well-lived; that life is richer, more connected, and more complete when you can choose to make the outdoors a part of it.

It’s a privilege and an honor to be part of an organization that is about something more than the bottom line.

This year, we decided to do something about the encroaching trend of consumerism. We announced that we are closing our doors on Black Friday, paying our employees — all of them — to spend the day with the people who matter most and making it easier to #OptOutside. We hoped to spark a conversation about the healing, inspiring power of getting outside. What better time than the Thanksgiving holiday?

As I write this, 14 states have stepped up to get people into parks (several of which have waived fees). Close to 1 million individuals (982,420, to be exact) and more than 150 organizations have expressed their intention to #OptOutside — see a list of them on the REI blog. Hundreds of Meetup groups are organizing #OptOutside activities, and a dam in Massachusetts is releasing water to enable paddling. Fort Collins Brewery in Colorado is offering REI employees a free growler of beer or root beer on Black Friday. The response has been humbling and inspiring.

For me, the outdoors has been a lifelong journey, and I have been asked many times what it means.

As a child on my grandfather’s farm, it meant freedom, exploration, and imagination.

Growing up, taking trips to the Colorado mountains, the outdoors meant majesty, climbing, camping, and family memories.

As a college student, trips to the mountains represented adventure, challenge, expanding horizons, joy, snow, questionable judgment, and fellowship with those touched by the lure of an outside life.

As a young adult, the outside experience evolved to include going off-trail, solitude, dark skies, bright stars, and survival.

As a parent, the outside took a different dimension: seeing the wonder of the outside through the eyes of my child and creating memories of adventure that will last a lifetime.

And as a professional, the outside became a necessity: for escape, replenishment, peace, reflection, silence, long walks, moving water, and context for life.

Eventually the outside became the home that I had to seek out.

So becoming a part of the REI co-op has felt like coming home. Working alongside so many women and men who are passionate about life lived outside has been the pinnacle of my professional career.

The co-op is a different kind of a company: It is owned by the members and its sole purpose is to foster and support people’s passion for the outdoors. We return the vast majority (75%) of any profit earned by the co-op to our members as an annual dividend. We invest millions of dollars annually in nonprofits that build and steward hundreds of trails that allow us to access the outdoors that we love. We also introduce hundreds of thousands of people to the outdoors and teach them how to ride, camp, paddle, or even survive a zombie apocalypse.

It’s a privilege and an honor to be part of an organization that is about something more than the bottom line.

The idea of choosing to #OptOutside on Black Friday might seem radical to those who do not know the heart of the co-op, but I believe it is an ideal way to make a statement about our values. It’s also an invitation to share those values and I am deeply grateful to all the people at REI who keep the co-op a lively, happy, and welcoming place each day.

I hope you’ll join us this Black Friday and that together we can start a Thanksgiving tradition that helps people go on their own journey to a life spent outdoors. Because surely the time that we spend with the people we love — in the places we love most — is what we should all be investing in.

#OptOutside: Stepping Off The Trail was originally published in Opt Outside on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We won’t make it to majestic mountains or spectacular seasides. Instead we will stick to the creation found in our neighborhood and nearby parks. We will still have amazing discoveries — like uncovering seed pods that look just like pumpkins or rocks shaped like superheros. I will make sure to carry a backpack loaded with water bottles and snacks for the trail. But, most importantly we will take time together to relish the beauty and bounty of God’s created world.

What better way to appreciate all that we have been given than by getting outside? This is in line with religious teachings that not only advocate for a posture of gratitude but also call for us to experience the sacred in the outdoors.

I was heartened to see organizations such as REI close for Black Friday and encourage employees and would be customers to instead #optoutside. What better way to appreciate the bounty of the natural world and connect with the creator?

To prepare for my new Black Friday tradition, I decided to take my two small children on a practice hike. I donned my backpack stocked with snacks and we headed to a nearby nature area along the Chesapeake Bay. Once outside they ran up the trail in spurts — at once thrilled by the adventure and freedom and mesmerized by the variety of natural treasures they found along the way. It was a reminder to me of the sheer wonder of the natural world found in nearby places with its variety and abundance of creatures and plants.

It is this tapestry of diversity that we are not only called to protect, but to enjoy. In scripture, we learn that God put us in the garden to “till it and keep it” and this is the basis for our call to be responsible stewards of the gifts that God has given us. In one of my favorite parts of the Bible, Noah is instructed by God to save two of each kind of creature and place them on an ark to protect them from a great flood. God’s instructions are clear: one of each kind, not just the ones Noah fancied or found useful.

We must ensure that we take care of the whole creation so that we honor God but also preserve natural spaces for respite and communion with God. We are not the only creatures that depend on the natural world. Our animal neighbors rely on a clean and healthy environment to survive and we have been gifted with the capabilities to influence protection of habitat and species.

We should protect valuable policy tools like the Endangered Species Act and the Land and Water Conservation Fund that enable us to be good stewards of God’s creation. We have these laws to thank for our populations of bald eagles and peregrine falcons and other recovered species.

Christians across the nation champion the conservation of habitat and species and many look for regular times to connect with the sacred outside. We have been given the capabilities to protect or destroy, and by preserving the habitats of our fellow creatures we are being the stewards God calls us to be.

We need leaders today that understand the importance of species preservation and land protection. When one of God’s creations becomes extinct it, is gone forever.

On my practice hike with the kids, we stopped halfway through when we reached a fork in the trail. “Let’s pray,” I said. My four year old daughter dove right in, “Thank you God for the sticks and bugs and flowers.” Amen.

On the day after Thanksgiving we should all stop and appreciate the wonderful creation that God has provided and work hard to protect it. As a Christian, this is the best preparation one can have for the upcoming Christmas season. One of gratitude that focuses on relationship and the gifts of creation.

I look forward to my new Creation Friday tradition as I #optoutside.

Recreating Black Friday was originally published in Opt Outside on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I am a strong believer that a love for nature must be passed on.

There’s no doubt I received that love from my own parents. I remember spending a lot of early mornings on weekends sitting in a duck blind with my father, hiking the land with my brothers, or watching a sunset over breathtaking Oklahoma landscapes with my mother. I spent a lot of time outdoors early on, but my love for nature really took hold when I hit the mountains out west. I fell in love with the Rockies.

At the Wilderness Society, where I am currently president, we believe that our love for nature stems from how we as humans have evolved. We are all from and of the wild. The passage of the Wilderness Act, in 1964, the strongest protective designation that the government can prescribe to America’s natural lands, recognized that the wilderness is an essential part of who we are as a species and as a country. The wild is a core human need. I’ve learned that from my parents and work hard to pass it on to my own kids.

I have a 14-year-old son and a 12-year-old daughter. It’s really been fun to see them take to hiking. Yes, it’s hard to get them to unplug from their earphones and their electronic devices. But as soon as they get out the door and on the trail, their innate sense of adventure and wonder completely take over.

The simple act of being outdoors transforms children into their truer selves. That’s one of the reasons I love the outdoors so much. It turns us all into trailblazers, backpackers, and mountain climbers, and it empowers us to become who we want to be. But adolescents stand at a uniquely important juncture for forging their identities and their neurons; in fact, their brains are just awaiting these opportunities for growth, opportunities that for most of human history took place in wild country.

I owe my own love for wilderness to an Outward Bound course in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains the summer after ninth grade. It was there that I found my own path, that I gained a confidence I hadn’t had before. Those mountains gave me a profound sense of possibility, that I could think big, follow my dreams, and if I worked hard enough, could make those dreams happen.

Part of that was because I felt so at home in the mountains.

The experience of climbing mountains, being on an expedition, and working as a team gave me a sense of camaraderie and self-reliance that I never had before.

It ignited my curiosity in a new way and taught me the power of what can be achieved when a group works well together. And those are skills that I’ve taken with me throughout my life.

My family and I take wilderness river trips every year. Of all outdoor activities (and I appreciate them all), I love river-running the most. There is nothing like the magic of being on a river, the thrill of running rapids, the beauty of canyons, and the “just keep moving forward” metaphor for life one gains on the water. And it’s fun to pass that joy on to my children.

The simple act of being outdoors transforms children into their truer selves. That’s one of the reasons I love the outdoors so much. It turns us all into trailblazers, backpackers, and mountain climbers, and it empowers us to become who we want to be.

A love for nature needs to be handed down by trusted elders; it doesn’t just happen on its own. When we provide this to young people, a passion for the outdoors leads to a passion for protecting it.

At the Wilderness Society, we strive to be advocates for natural, wild places that are in danger. A common misconception is that people often think public land is already protected. Unfortunately, most of it is not. Unless designated as a park, wilderness, or conservation area, the vast majority of our public lands are open for all kinds of development, from constructing roadways and buildings to drilling and mining. Take Glacier National Park and the Bob Marshall Wilderness area, for instance. They are both really important protected places, but the grizzly bears who live there use a much bigger area around those lands. And they need the whole larger ecosystem to sustain themselves. If we don’t safeguard those surrounding lands — both public and private — we’ll lose the integrity of the very things the parks were intended to protect.

The Wilderness Act prohibits all development in designated wilderness areas and requires that these undeveloped places be managed in their natural condition. It’s the most powerful of all the conservation designations we have. As we continue to protect these natural places, they will continue to fill us and subsequent generations with awe, wonder, and identity.

The wild is not only part of our national character, but it also helps us discover who we are individually. While the outdoors, and the wilderness in particular, may mean something different to each of us, the common thread is that experiences in the wilderness are deeply personal and often life-changing.

Last summer, I embarked on a three-day backpacking trip with my son in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. A few hours into our journey, he asked me why I like the wilderness so much. You could tell he had been thinking about it a lot. So I gave him all my usual reasons, but then I asked what it meant to him.

He said, “I think a lot better when I’m outdoors. It helps me figure out who I am.”

This piece was written by The Wilderness Society President Jamie Williams

Instilling a Love of the Wild was originally published in Opt Outside on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

When I was 19 years old I spent 50 days traveling around California in a bus. It was that experience that really helped shaped who I am as a photographer.

See, I used to think that creating a life based around the outdoors was some unapproachable dream — something that took crazy amounts of money or some amazing stroke of luck.

But the reality was it didn’t take either of those things, it actually required me to live with less…. money, food, clothes and camera gear to name a few things. By going with less I feel like it made me experience more.

I try to live my life with quality as opposed to quantity, and that goal has driven my passion to experience nature and share those experiences with others. With you and, most importantly, my family.

It’s incredibly important to me that I teach my kids how to find their passion and interest in experiences instead of things.

So, if you are feeling the call to #OptOutside remember it doesn’t have to start with an expensive plan or an exotic location. It can be as simple as exploring your own backyard. — @ChrisBurkard

In partnership with REI #Sponsored

Less stuff, more life was originally published in Opt Outside on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Friday the 27th kicks off the holiday shopping season so what better time to ask ourselves the question, what should we buy?

• Stuff, or time with loved ones?!
• Presents, or presence?!
• More junk to clutter our home, or a local junket to nature?

We get sucked into our phones, the ads, endless work, and the feeling of being more connected digitally, but less connected in real life.

There’s a crisis of connection — a lack of real community. And as world population grows more urban and more screen-obsessed, recent research confirms that loneliness may be one the next big public health issues.

And while you’ve got family or friends in for Thanksgiving, Black Friday promos push us to opt-in and buy more stuff.

The Holiday-Industrial-Complex says opt-in to the stores. Opt-in to the mall. Opt-in to stay in front of your screens and shop.

That’s why I was so impressed with REI’s call to #OptOutside. REI — one of the largest retailers of outdoor gear and clothing — is a co-op (a community!) — and they did the brave, bold, hopeful, joyful act of telling their customers to get outside instead of to their stores. They are the first major retailer to close stores on Black Friday.

…which is fascinating because I’ve come to see the power of Outdoors Meetups. The warmth & welcomingness is profound. Knowing that millions of people have joined Meetups to get outside, we asked REI: “How can Meetup opt-in to support #OptOutside?”

Together, we decided the best thing to do was invite our Meetup Organizers to do what they do best — lead their communities to meetup.

So last week, we reached out to our Outdoor Meetup Organizers across the United States — who represent 4 million members — and suggested they host an #OptOutside Meetup on Black Friday. And now hundreds of #OptOutside Meetups are scheduled across the US!

Join them!

Scott Heiferman is Co-founder and CEO of Meetup. Meetup connects people around common interests in thousands of towns, spreading community among 23 million members. In the United States alone, nearly 4 million of these members belong to Outdoors Meetups making it one of Meetup’s largest and most active categories — and making it one of the world’s largest networks of local outdoors communities.

Get Meetup for iOS or Android or find us on the web to find a Meetup near you.

How we got thousands of people to #OptOutside on Black Friday was originally published in Opt Outside on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The path, for me, has not been a straight one. Sometimes it hasn’t even been well thought out. There was no map for a career in the outdoor industry for women when I started. When I took a position as the marketing specialist at a local specialty retailer for $10 an hour after graduating from law school and passing the bar, I did not know that would be the smartest career move of my life. Not only did I reconnect with my North Star — something I had lost sight of in law school — but I unknowingly stepped into the storied legacy of industry leaders who got their start on the shop floor.

Growing up in Grand Island, Nebraska, in the 1970s and ’80s, a life outdoors was not about majestic mountains, never-ending running trails, wilderness boundaries, and wild rivers. It wasn’t the life I live today, but I’ve always found a reason to be outdoors.

In the summertime, as the humidity rose and the air stilled, the screen door would slam as my sisters and I ran down the lawn to the irrigation-fed sandpit lake behind our childhood home. Neighborhood kids came and went throughout the day. We grabbed our fishing poles and inner tubes. Made up stories, hopped on our bikes, and joined games of keep-away, kick-the-can, and baseball. The biggest interrupters of my life outside were lunch, dinner, and the Wednesday excursion to Skate Island.

Mornings were my favorite time of day. I would wake myself up to be at the pool’s edge by first light. At just 6 years old, when I started swimming, I had tapped into a passion, strength, and determination for something greater than myself.

(1979) I look down to see my 10-year-old toes wrapped around the edge of the starting platform. The hot and humid Nebraska air warms my skin and cools my nerves. My main competition, besides myself, is in the next lane. I shake my arms to keep the muscles relaxed or, more likely, to provide some release for my nerves. This is the last swim meet of the summer and of my age group. I have to drop a second off my best time to qualify for AAAA, the fastest recognized division in swimming. Mentally, I know what needs to be done: relax the body, poise the mind, and stay focused for 100 meters. The gun sounds and I break the water’s surface with my hands, my head, my shoulders, and finally my toes. In the water is home. No fear, just a drive and a passion.

As I moved into awkward “big hair” (remember: Midwest) teenage years, which in retrospect lasted way too long to call a fad, the lake and languidness of life were replaced by organized volleyball and tennis, dirt bikes, Jet Skis, and snowmobiles. Living on the rural side of town, surrounded by acres of cornfields and never- ending horizons, my bicycle — what is now referred to as “human-powered recreation” — became my ticket to friends and freedom.

I won’t go into detail on the following years when I was figuring out that everyone else in the world didn’t think I was as great as my mom did. Suffice it to say, these were transition years filled with five universities, an eating disorder, moving away, then moving back to my hometown. I was lost and I wandered. My wandering led me from walking to running to climbing to Southern California and wild rivers and Joshua Tree, Yosemite, and the Pinnacles. Very soon after, my passion for climbing, love for the outdoors, and sense of purpose served as my North Star for major (and not-so-major) life decisions. By the time I turned 30, I was living in Boulder, Colorado, had just graduated from law school, and was climbing more than I was working.

I had been climbing for six years before I really owned up to what climbing meant to me. I followed boyfriends around from climbing place to climbing place, occasionally setting up an anchor or leading a pitch. One day I woke up single and without any climbing gear. I had to decide how important climbing was for me. Without a second thought, I spent more than $600 on equipment, called my friend Isabel, and headed to Joshua Tree.

(2003) I plugged the #3 Camelot in the rock a foot or so above my head. I resisted the urge to inch it back further into the crack. Wedging in gear after a good placement was a habit I picked up climbing the insecure walls of Eldorado Canyon outside Boulder, Colorado.. It usually spelled a long, grueling struggle for my climbing partner, who had to remove it (and a not great exchange at the belay), because I would push it to the point of no give.

A good placement I could tell. Why, then, could I not commit to the next three moves that were the crux of my part of the climb on The Diamond face of Long’s Peak in Rocky Mountain National Park? Was it because I was 60 feet out from my belay partner — and diagonally at that? Was it because I was more than 1,000 feet above the scree field that led to Chasm Lake below the wall face? Was it because I was tired from climbing six pitches at 13,000 feet? Probably all of those reasons and a few thousand more — like no caffeine that morning, setting my alarm for a 1 a.m. wake-up rouse, the pack on my back, hurting feet, pounding head, crusties in my nose, and I am pretty sure I had a hangnail. Most days, I am able to tip the scale of motivation with just one good reason. On that day, the most logical motivation was that I really couldn’t back down.

This is where my current life story leads me. We are all setting our own summits every day, both professionally and personally. On that day when I was climbing the Diamond on Longs Peak, my summit was swapping lead climbs at 12,000-plus feet. Three years earlier in Joshua Tree, when I was teaching myself to climb traditionally — by placing protection gear that my climbing partner removes as she follows me — my summit was topping out on a 5.1 climb that I led. As a 13 year old, my summits were not quite so ambitious, but equally important.

Today my summits include taking my dog for a walk, getting to the climbing gym, or squeezing in a run at lunch. Sometimes, though, it is a 14- mile run along the base of the Flatirons or a full-day at the crag.

Your summit could be getting in your first day on the slope, walking on the beach, going to the park, or dusting off your hiking boots. They can, and probably should, change daily.

The people, specifically women, who embrace a life in the outdoors are the ones we in the active outdoor industry want within our walls to call colleagues, to share passion. As evident with the popularity of REI’s #OptOutside initiative, we are not willing to settle for the status quo. Not only are we not willing, but we will actively change and challenge the status quo. We know that to make the best decisions — whether for our families or for an expedition — many voices need to be at the table. The same holds true for companies. It is not enough to dismiss or critique what is the madness of Black Friday. We must instead focus on the possibilities and opportunities that come from tapping into our innate sense of purpose and exploration. #OptOutside is a call for a new paradigm for which the organization I am privileged to lead, the Outdoor Industries Women’s Coalition, is a willing participant and advocate.

In January, the OIWC launched the CEO pledge to elevate and showcase the collective identity of an industry that values women’s leadership and women’s voices. Research and our own experience show that more women in decision-making positions drive faster, proactive, and inspired innovation and design — meeting the needs and desires of a diverse participant demographic necessary for a healthy and sustainable outdoor industry.

One of the biggest challenges facing outdoor companies in the next 10 years will be competition for employees with specialized skills who understand the consumer’s needs. Because of the active outdoor industry’s reliance on technology and engineering for innovation, we are in direct competition with Fortune 500 companies in the energy, automobile, and high-tech sectors for employees. But the industry has a distinct advantage: We love being outside and being active, and we treasure the places in which we play. This is what connects us. It is a culture that no money can create.

Whether you grew up in small-town U.S.A. in the middle of a cornfield, or in the city where green space is a one-block designation, or at the base of a mountain with trails and rivers as your backyard, the active outdoor industry welcomes you.

Set Your Own Summit was originally published in Opt Outside on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Until then, here’s a bit of the backstory of why I felt compelled to pursue my childhood dream of becoming a professional skier.

For much of my childhood, I felt like I was trapped in a prison. I distinctly remember the day the reality of school sunk in. It was in the first week of being in the first grade. I remember looking at the clock, the seconds slowly ticking, and realizing I was going to be stuck in a room like this every Monday to Friday from 9–3 for the next decade and a half of my life. I felt like someone locked me up and threw away the key. For a kid like me, the structure of school didn’t fit my kinesthetic learning style. I am a person who learns by doing. I am a child of nature, who learns best on an adventure. My imagination took me on day dream adventures, exploring the Amazon or climbing the highest peaks.

Scrambling my way up Mt Whitney, the highest peak in California.

For me, the modern, industrialized world, with its sedentary lifestyle, didn’t fill my human needs. That day in first grade, I started to worry about how I would ever be able to adapt and function in the world. My mind always longed for more. I always wanted to color outside the lines, to jump out of my little desk and run outside, where I could be free instead of confined.

Photo: climbing to ski King’s Peak, the highest peak in Utah, captured by Rob Lea

As an adult, I chose to focus on the pursuit of outdoor adventure and a life as a professional snowsports athletes. I found a tribe of people like me. I found a powerful sense of belonging.

Fresh snow always brings a smile to my face. Photo: Rob Lea

I see REI’s #OptOutside campaign as a new awakening of the future we can create. It’s the MockingJay of a new generation. It’s possible to make brave choices that benefit humankind over the bottom line. It’s OK to do things a little differently, to color outside the lines, think outside the box, to consider alternatively schooling our children. It’s ok if to scrape our knees when we trip and fall along the way, the bruises and scratches reveal our humanness. We can rinse the mud on our skin off in a river bath. We can make counterculture mainstream.

Navigating the knife edge ridge of the Matthes Crest.

So this Black Friday, rain or shine, make a commitment to mobilize your friends and family and #OptOutside. Go ice climb, rock climb, ridge scramble, hike, surf, ski, snowboard, trail run, camp, road trip, hot spring or have a leftover Thanksgiving picnic. Choose to be an adventurer instead of a consumer. Create lasting memories rather than consumer chaos. Make a new tradition of getting outside for Black Friday and then extend that to all Holidays. We chose what we consume. Consume adventure rather than chaos at the checkout line.

I’ll be outside, nurturing my inner child in the great outdoors.

Created in partnership with REI. #sponsored

Why I Devoted My Life to Opting Outside was originally published in Opt Outside on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.