📘 Part 3: Outdoor activities

This episode's vocabulary

To diverge (verb.) - to follow a different direction, or to be or become different.

Spectrum (noun) - a range of different positions, opinions, etc. between two extreme points.

Sedate (adj.) - avoiding excitement or great activity and usually calm and relaxed.

To decompress (verb) - to relax.

Detrimental (adj.) - causing harm or damage.

Connectedness (noun) - the state of being connected and having a close relationship with other things or people.

Hindsight (noun) - the ability to understand an event or situation only after it has happened.

Salient (adj.) - the salient facts about something or qualities of something are the most important things about them.

Deployable (adj.) - (of soldiers or equipment) able to be moved to a place where they can be used when they are needed.

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Questions and Answers

M: What outdoor activities do people do in their leisure time?

R: Well, I think they just walk, really. I mean, many local areas are pretty much literally built for this and why not use it if your taxes are paying for it? I'm not an expert. But if I have to give an answer, then that's the one I'm going to stick with.

M: How have the activities changed in your country compared to the past?

R: Well, I suppose they probably have more of a purpose now. For example, it's not just about fun. So going to the gym is energizing and interesting. But it's also about improving your performance. And I don't think people did that so much in the past.

M: Do women have more leisure time than men?

R: Well, how on earth would I know? I'm not an expert. But if I were to guess I imagined it's about equal, though it's likely spent in slightly different ways since men and women, well, have diverging interests often.

M: And could you give an example like what do men do in their leisure time? And what do women do, usually?

R: If we talk about outdoors, then I suppose men are more likely to go, well, they're probably more likely to go swimming in lakes, because there's a greater risk involved in that. Whereas women tend to avoid risky sports, so they would probably be more likely to go for a walk. However, that's at the extreme ends of the spectrum. There's no reason why women couldn't enjoy doing something risky and why a man would want to do something more sedate.

M: Is leisure time important to everyone?

R: Absolutely. It's crucial to have time to decompress and relax. Otherwise, you run the risk of burning out mentally and or physically.

M: What are the differences between children's outdoor activities in the past and now?

R: Like I was saying earlier, they usually have a concrete purpose behind them now. So we understand that coddling them and keeping them away from the outdoors in risky situations is detrimental to their development. You can see that in the damage done to the, well, upcoming generation, I suppose is the best way to describe it. So there's a greater focus on developing the risk-taking skills and nature connectedness. That would also have been the case in the past, but people just weren't aware of it, though, in hindsight, they probably should have been.

M: And what are the differences between people's outdoor activities in the past and now? Like older people.

R: I suppose the most salient ones are like the range of activities available and, well, their extension to more groups in society. For example, hill walking was something considered to be quite upper middle class, but increasingly, more and more working-class people are doing it, which is excellent, since they face greater difficulties with their health in the long term.

M: And what about in the future? What kind of outdoor activities will people have in the future?

R: That's a really good question. And to be honest, I have no idea. However, if I were to guess, I would say they'd probably integrate technology into the experience more.

M: Like in what ways?

R: Well in similar ways to how they do already. So by tracking performance, they could also do it to increase the range of activities available. So with lighter materials comes the opportunity to use more readily deployable frames like more people could go parasailing or paragliding, if they are able to just take something with them, as opposed to dragging something with them.

M: Thank you Rory for your answers!

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