Cabin Fever: Exploring the Possibility of a Wilderness Experience

<p>New Zealand’s backcountry huts do not stimulate a meaningful connection between the occupant and their surrounding natural environment. Generic solutions provided by the Department of Conservation are dictated by a nostalgic frame of mind, rather than evolving from the intrinsic qualities of nature. This exploration is for those who seek to find and feel a sense of wilderness in our modern times. Despite our inherent desires to be amongst nature, our architecture does not facilitate our fascination. The intimate scale of interiors provides an insight that is detailed and intuitive, allowing for the emotive experience of the occupant to be the primary concern of the design intent. This thesis investigates the potential for a new wilderness experience by exploring and critiquing past and present backcountry huts. By focusing on the necessities needed for survival in a manner that dissolves the physical and mental barriers that these factors can implement, the outcome provides a vison for alternative habitation in the wild.</p>

Cabin Fever: Exploring the Possibility of a Wilderness Experience

<p>New Zealand’s backcountry huts do not stimulate a meaningful connection between the occupant and their surrounding natural environment. Generic solutions provided by the Department of Conservation are dictated by a nostalgic frame of mind, rather than evolving from the intrinsic qualities of nature. This exploration is for those who seek to find and feel a sense of wilderness in our modern times. Despite our inherent desires to be amongst nature, our architecture does not facilitate our fascination. The intimate scale of interiors provides an insight that is detailed and intuitive, allowing for the emotive experience of the occupant to be the primary concern of the design intent. This thesis investigates the potential for a new wilderness experience by exploring and critiquing past and present backcountry huts. By focusing on the necessities needed for survival in a manner that dissolves the physical and mental barriers that these factors can implement, the outcome provides a vison for alternative habitation in the wild.</p>

Towards peak experience - exploring the influence of wilderness on conscious awareness

AimsThis study examines what effect wilderness has on our conscious awareness, and by extension of that meta-cognition; our physical, mental and spiritual health. It reviews available scientific and artistic literature and integrates this with interviews in order to generate original grounded theory. It was found that intensity of wilderness experience varied proportionally with four mediators; Challenge, Immersion, Beauty and Time. With these maximised, experiences broadly within four themes occurred; Increased Awareness, Confidence, Perspective and Connectedness. When sufficiently intense, these four experiences amalgamated to elicit what Maslow described as 'Peak Experience'. As such, this thesis unexpectedly provides a pragmatic recipie towards peak experience, and a map of one's potential psychological journey, in the context of wilderness.

Exploring the influence of wilderness on conscious awareness

AimsThis study examined what effect wilderness has on our conscious awareness, and by extension of that meta-cognition; our physical, mental and spiritual health.BackgroundMethodIt reviews available scientific and artistic literature and integrates this with interviews in order to generate original grounded theory.ResultIt was found that intensity of wilderness experience varied proportionally with four mediators; Challenge, Immersion, Beauty and Time. With these maximised, experiences broadly within four themes occurred; Increased Awareness, Confidence, Perspective and Connectedness. When sufficiently intense, these four experiences amalgamated to elicit what Maslow described as 'Peak Experience'.ConclusionAs such, this thesis unexpectedly provides a pragmatic recipie towards peak experience, and a map of one's potential psychological journey, in the context of wilderness.

Leveraging Wildlife Tourism for Employment Generation and Sustainable Livelihoods: The Case of the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, Southern Africa

This study examined the contribution of wildlife tourism and conservation to employment generation and sustainable livelihoods of a community residing adjacent to the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, Southern Africa. Adopting a qualitative approach, semi-structured interviews were conducted with tourism stakeholders and focus group discussions with members of the community. The findings reveal wildlife tourism to have positively contributed towards providing diverse employment opportunities for the community. Additionally, the livelihood diversification strategies largely involved integrating the cultural and natural resources with the wilderness experience of the region. However, a major concern is the significant lack of linkages between wildlife tourism and the local economy of the community. While the study concludes wildlife tourism to be an important economic sector for the community, it recommends further integration of micro and small local businesses into wildlife tourism so as to enhance the contribution of the Park and wildlife tourism to community livelihoods.

Russia’s Forgotten Parks and the Crisis of Environmental Protection in the Russian Federation

Since Vladimir Putin came to power, the Russian Federation has continued to establish national parks. However, although there are some exceptions, most of Russian national parks exist in a state of neglect and are mired in conflicts with local populations, unequipped for large numbers of tourists, and frequently unable to clean up litter that has accumulated within their boundaries. At the same time, some remote parks with little tourist traffic still provide the sort of wilderness experience that an infrastructurally-developed park could not. While American environmental historians have suggested that particular cultural traditions in the United States have encouraged Americans to seek out wild places, during the late twentieth century, Russians seemed no less interest in such experiences than Americans. This suggests, perhaps, that seeking out such experience is better explained by the general impulse for people in urban areas to deliberately escape to wild places than by particular cultural traditions.

Renewable Energy in Wilderness Landscapes: Visitors’ Perspectives

Increasing the share of renewable energy in the energy mix is of crucial importance for climate change mitigation. However, as renewable energy development often changes the visual appearance of landscapes and might affect other industries relying on them, such as nature-based tourism, it therefore requires careful planning. This is especially true in Iceland, a country rich in renewable energy resources and a popular nature-based tourism destination. The present study investigated the potential impacts on tourism of the proposed Hverfisfljót hydropower plant by identifying the main attractions of the area as well as by analyzing visitors’ perceptions, preferences and attitudes, and the place meanings they assign to the landscape of the area. The data for the study were collected using onsite questionnaire surveys, interviews with visitors to the area, open-ended diaries, and participant observation. The results reveal that the area of the proposed power plant is perceived as wilderness by its visitors, who seek environmental settings related to the components of a wilderness experience. Visitors were highly satisfied with the present settings and preferred to protect the area from development to ensure the provision of currently available recreational opportunities. The results further show that the proposed Hverfisfljót hydropower plant would reduce the attractiveness of the area to its visitors, degrade their wilderness experience, and therefore strongly reduce their interest in visiting the area. Moreover, the participants perceived the already developed lowlands of the country as more suitable for renewable energy development than the undeveloped highland areas, which is in line with the principles of smart practices for renewable energy development.

“The Mass on the World” on a Winter Afternoon: Contemporary Wilderness Religious Experience and Ultimacy

Contemporary studies of wilderness spirituality are based primarily in quantitative social science, and disagree over the relative influence of shared stories and religious traditions. In a study of visitors to California’s national parks and trails, Kerry Mitchell found that backpackers reported heightened perceptions, fueled by such dichotomies as the encounter with the spectacular rather than the mundane, and with divine organization rather than human organization in wilderness. I argue wilderness experience informed only by natural scenery falls short in encountering ultimacy. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s “The Mass on the World” offers a unified rather than a fragmented vision of divine relationship to the natural and the human. Multiple readings can inform the wilderness sojourner, including a basic, open reading as a prayer shared with all nature; an environmental reading considering suffering and the act of Eucharistic offering; and a constructive reading to address dichotomies and fuse humanity and nature into an integrated cosmic future