Re-Creating Outdoor Recreation: An Exploration of the Wilderness Within and Around

The purpose of this thesis is to reflect on outdoor recreation through the creative process of the author and a collection of theory that explores a range of topics, including de-coloniality, wilderness, and auto-ethnography. The author’s story is intended to demonstrate how our stories can create a map and path to show others how to engage more wholeheartedly, while the theory frames this project in a larger network of work and provides opportunities for application. The motivation behind this project was a desire to create more authentic, organic, and transformative experiences within the outdoors for both the author and future outdoor recreationists. The questions that guided this thesis were focused on whether it is possible for there to be a multitude of experiences represented within outdoor recreation, and if one individual’s experience and story could help facilitate that. This thesis is centered around the author’s own creative writing and landscape paintings which tell her experience within outdoor recreation before moving into theory on auto-ethnography, wilderness as an ideology, empathetic and reciprocal relationships with the land, and de-coloniality.