Canoeing Around the Cairngorms
Outdoor Education section staff member Robbie Nicol undertook a 600-kilometre 40-day solo canoe journey circumnavigating the Cairngorm Mountains in the summer of 2007. The journey began 'uphill' putting on at Inverness and poling and lining an open canoe up the River Ness and on through the Great Glen waterway. The route continued by sea loch past the foot of Ben Nevis and then a portage onto the Blackwater reservoir followed by a descent of the Tummel and Tay water systems. Changing to a sea kayak at Perth the route followed the Eastern seaboard north returning to Inverness.
The specific purpose of the journey was to explore people-nature relationships with a view to critiquing current notions of the term 'sustainability' and then write a book about it. The book will involve a search for meaning amongst the beauty and inspiration of the land and seascape. It is a quest for purpose in a contemporary world characterised by degraded landscapes, reduced biodiversity yet infinite beauty. However, knowledge about sustainability is not in itself a sufficient precondition to acting sustainably. What appears to be missing is an emotional engagement or feeling of connection to nature.
Experiences in the outdoors are particularly suited to exploring people-nature relationships because the encounter with landscape is based on direct experience of it. The touches of a raindrop or sunray are most expressive ways of feeling warmth or cold. It is at this point that people are closest to nature and well placed to begin to understand the systems that make it work. Put another way it is often the lack of sensory immersion that leads people to be unaware of their connection to nature.
What this journey and book aim to explore is the potential of sensory immersion in closing this gap. It is therefore about finding ways of acknowledging that this relationship between people and nature actually exists. The crux of the book is that sensory immersion involving outdoor experiences together with critical reflection of these experiences can provide the basis of a personal and social exploration of what it means to live sustainably. The book will therefore explore the potential of learning in the outdoors to provide transformative experiences where the experience can provide (or lead to) the knowledge and motivation for people to act more sustainably in their everyday lives.
Here's some TV coverage of Robbie's journey. Clip courtesy of The Adventure Show and Triple Echo Productions.
