I think the outdoor industry is in trouble.
For the bulk of my career, I have worked in the summer camp space which has also been facing a bit of a reckoning over the last few years–a reckoning that started prior to COVID and has continued as we find our way forward.
When I first got hired as a summer camp program director, I dove deep into the catalog of the CampHacker podcast. Episode #50 Camp is Dead has always been a transformative episode to me–an episode that has framed my entire career working in the outdoor industry.
During this episode, released September 10, 2012, the argument was made that the camp industry, as we know it, is dead. One of the points that stuck out to me was about how camp is marketed and how often we focus on the newest, shiniest program we have to offer rather than promoting the benefits of summer camp.
Co-host, Joe Richards, compared the camp industry to the gaming industry. He recalled the battle between Nintendo, Sega, and Sony to get the biggest share of the gamers’ dollars. And then in the early 2000s, Nintendo said, “Hey, what if we make everybody a gamer?” They released the Wii and marketed it not only to traditional gamers–maybe even less so to that population–but to the retirees as a way to stay fit and connect with their grandchildren (and their screens!). They marketed it to families as a way to not separate one another but rather to play together. They turned the idea of gamer on its head. Suddenly, anyone could be a gamer.
This was before we were all so tied to our personal devices. Because of course we are all gamers now. Whether it is Candy Crush, Animal Crossing, Wordle, Connections, or Sasquatch, we all likely have some form of mindless entertainment we click in to when our brains need a break.
Do you remember what we used to do before that? We used to go outside. We used to take a walk. Sit on the porch and drink a tea. Read a book at the beach. Play with our digital camera taking photos of the spring flowers or sweeping landscapes around us.
THIS is what we are competing with in the outdoor industry. There is a constant fight for our attention. Nature and the outdoor industry cannot compete as it is currently with the algorithms, AI and programming of our devices. There are people’s whose job it is to figure out how to write code so that we will keep picking up our devices. Who is doing that same work for the outdoors? Who is hacking our brains’ algorithm to make sure we keep opening the windows, going out the door, and spending our time staring at the greenspaces around us?
We are at a critical moment where we, American culture, need to reckon with our relationship with the outdoors. If we take it for granted, it will not continue to be there.
What happened?
In case you missed it, there was a global pandemic. And suddenly so many folks’ lives changed–the flow of their day, their priorities, and their commutes. Folks flocked to greenspaces and public lands. Truthfully, one of the days that felt quite hopeless during the pandemic was the day I saw my local state forest close because of the pandemic with a ranger standing at the fenced off parking area turning people away. I remember thinking, “This. This isn’t right. This is the last thing we need right now.”
I don’t blame the forest service and local authorities for the choices that we made at the time. We were all making decisions with the best information we had at the time and there were no good choices to be made.
Outdoor retailers and gear manufacturers saw their inventory wiped out throughout the summer of 2020 as more folks spent time in the only place that seemed to be open, the outdoors. This was amidst massive supply chain and workforce interruptions in the outdoor industry. My business essentially went on pause until I started getting phone calls from programs that were planning to run day-programs or pod/cohorted programs and needed lifeguards trained. In fact, that is why the pivot occurred for me to get an instructor trainer certification from the Red Cross because certification classes seemed to be pandemic-proof.
The outdoors really seemed to be the place where we could spend time with loved ones and new friends - even if we had to social distance to do so. The guiding job I had started right before the pandemic–that was paused during the bulk of 2020–returned to operations in October and suddenly we were riding a massive wave of dollars flowing into the outdoor industry.
Asheville, NC saw record tourism numbers. Our guided trips had 60+ people waiting lists. It was unreal. With the return of many summer camps in 2021, there were parents jumping through any hoop possible to ensure their child got their summer camp experience. Decisions were made based on these big enrollments and infrastructure was added to many organizations to respond to this incredible demand for outdoor programming.
And then 2022, as we geared up for another incredible season of outdoor programming, the people didn’t come.
Ok, there were people, but that massive wave that we saw in 2020 and 2021, didn’t continue and now we saw what we thought was new normal, was instead, a pendulum swing.
As a guide and outdoor industry professional, it has felt nothing short of volatile these last few years. Overpromises of work to be had. Underdelivery of actual shifts. Promised work melts away in my outdoor ed job because we simply can’t find enough staff to work a given program. There’s also the wide range of comfort levels that folks have with being in groups, being outdoors, and being uncomfortable that are sometimes too wide to mitigate.
So?
There is no doubt that there has been a response of “righting the ship” within the outdoor industry. We have seen multiple large outdoor industry organizations conduct rounds of layoffs as they recognize that the decision making of late 2020, early 2021 has led to unsustainable practices.
I see how we got here to this moment in the outdoor industry. But I also think we might be missing some pieces of the puzzle that have led us here.
Tolerance for discomfort is low (and lawsuits and one-star reviews are prevalent)
Expert advice is readily available at our fingertips (not curated)
FOMO is an effective marketing tool
The frontline outdoor industry workers are seen as entry-level and not on a career path
The U.S. economy and culture rewards instant gratification rather than long-game plays
Intolerance for Discomfort
We live in a world that is full of discomfort. Have you watched the news lately? It can be hard to see much good when the the dumpster-fire news stories are what sell and what get eyeballs and engagement on screens.
And yet, we turn quite the blind eye when folks talk about the long-and-increasingly-less-subtle effects of climate change. We have, as Ezra Klein once unpacked on a podcast, wicked problems. The problems with easy solutions have been solved and so, here we are, as a species with the next tier of challenges, and they will require some discomfort to solve.
Whether it is asking for personal sacrifices, compromises on personal freedoms, or downright challenges to people’s beliefs, it can feel like there is an almost constant requirement of discomfort in our daily lives. Those of us who work in the outdoors also know discomfort well because, quite frankly, recreating outdoors can be uncomfortable. Whether its pooping in the woods, sitting in a kayak seat for hours at a time, or simply navigating terrain that is unknown, discomfort is pretty much a constant in the outdoors. Nature is unpredictable–some might even say volatile, and you mix in a little human impact and it can be downright powerful in some of the most remarkable ways.
When the choice is would I rather spend my money on a comfortable, relaxing, predictably cushy stay at a hotel with a locking door and a comfortable bed or in a tent, amidst potentially crummy weather, with no guarantee of getting the picture perfect photo because the view may be socked in by clouds when we are there–do you blame folks for not choosing the outdoor adventure?
Why would I pay to be uncomfortable? I believe that is the biggest hurdle we have to overcome as an industry.
We have been navigating this in the summer camp industry for decades. Parents and guardians frequently have buyers remorse when their child writes home saying they are homesick or have another camper in their cabin that is being mean to them. Parents instantly can’t believe they spent so much money to give their child a negative experience. Camp directors combated this by explaining on the front end that not all of camp is going to be positive and part of coming to summer camp is to learn how to navigate what is hard or uncomfortable because that is a life skill you will need again and again in the future.
If the camp industry has been managing this for so long, then why is it still a problem?
To put it simply, we live in a five-star review economy.
Consumers value reviews more than the word of the company.
Companies strive for five-star reviews almost, I would argue, to a fault.
Not everyone who engages with a company is going to have a five-star experience. And the old adage of a happy customer may tell others about their experience but an unhappy customer WILL tell at least nine people about their experience is further amplified by the internet. Remember all that time people are spending on their screens now? Those reviews have the potential to be seen by an exponentially huge number of folks; sometimes even being seen prior to a potential customer having any interaction with the company at all.
Every outdoor professional knows that sometimes the best stories come from the moments with the most discomfort–the type II fun. But culturally, our tolerance for discomfort is so low that we often have folks exiting the experience because they are uncomfortable rather than coping or riding it out. Some customers don’t even come because they see the weather will be less than ideal. “If the weather isn’t perfect, I don’t want to go.” Some customers chew us out because we don’t cancel when there is a chance of thunderstorms. If you recreate in western North Carolina in the summertime, when is there not a 40% chance of storms? If we canceled everytime storms were in the forecast, we would hardly run a program all summer long.
Welcome to a world where climate change very directly affects our day-to-day. Sure we might get more nice days in the shoulder season but if we lose more days in the summer because it is just too hot or the storms are too intense, what have we really gained?
The outdoors can totally give a five-star experience. However, it isn’t guaranteed. That sort of uncertainty does not play well in a review-driven economy.
But I learned it on Youtube
Hand-in-hand with the social-media-made-this-look-easy phenomenon is the fact that it has become harder to market guides as experts to these younger generations because our younger consumers get their information from YouTube and TikTok. We are a culture that is driven by the latest hack that can be learned from a 45 second video. The longer form and process of a multi-day expedition or even a class that takes place over several hours is not designed for the attention spans that have been cultivated by social media curation.
I have seen the shift in focus in participants from where they used to extract meaning and value from all pieces of an experience to now where participants are simply traveling from one social-media-worthy moment to another. Often the longer form progression and transformation is overshadowed by the photos and videos. When presented with a stunning night sky, rather than simply take the time to soak in the view and get lost in the view of the stars, the focus becomes how well you can capture a photo of the stars. We are losing sight of the process and that is being replaced by the cover photo.
With the prevalence of phenomenal cameras on our phones, we have all become artists–but everyone is a photographer. We are losing the inner poets, writers, and philosophers because visual media are what are the most appealing to our brains. It’s what the algorithms have been written to reward and truthfully, it’s the easiest information for our brain to digest.
You know who is still the multimedia artist in the group in the outdoors?
Your guides.
We are storytellers. We are naturalists and ecologists. We craft experiences with an ever-evolving landscape. The art is fleeting–it is made up of moments and it is woven together by our journey. We are organizers, advocates, and facilitators. We cook. We dream. We problem-solve. We struggle. We sing. We walk. We act. We connect. We smile. We feel.
All of these are very human motions. You do all of these things too. And yet, your guide is the guardrails and the train conductor for your experience outdoors. My creativity waxes and wanes and some days it runs wild and other days I feel uninspired. But I am always creating. It is the greatest improvisation I do. I take great pride in my work. It is the best day when it all comes together to create a magical experience. It is my finest piece of artwork and it is exists beyond the experience only through the stories told about it. It is fleeting.
When the experience falls flat or misses, that triggers great reflection and wonderings. Sometimes it triggers instant regret about choices that were made. It always encourages learning. In that way, your guides are mathematicians, always adding to their data set about predictability, irrational numbers, statistics and eventually forming the calculus that leads to facilitating the creation of the next work of art.
I think that is why I get so upset when folks discount the work of a guide. I see it when folks ask “What else do you do?” or “You won’t do this forever. Your body won’t let you.”
While I recognize the very real physicality of the work I do and how there will most certainly be limitations in the future, it doesn’t mean I have to stop creating and crafting. That may look like seeking an administrative role or adjusting my teaching environment to one that is friendlier to physical limitations. But also, shouldn’t we be making the outdoors accessible to folks with differing mobility needs?
This brings me back to some of the sweeping reform we need within the outdoor industry. We are truly a cradle to grave industry. Every single person in the United States could be our customer. We need them to be so that every single person has a connection to an outdoor space. We need every single person to care what happens to their neighborhood nature. We need every single customer we interact with to understand that the climate IS changing and it WILL affect how humans live their day-to-day. We need every single customer to care that not every human currently has access to a greenspace. We need the FOMO that is so often applied to the “don’t miss out on this class! Don’t miss out on this photo for your instagram! Don’t miss out on this deal!” to instead be transferred to this sentiment: If we continue on the path we are on, the future generations will have fewer outdoor opportunities than we do now.
Are we playing the long-game?
Several years ago I ran an outdoor education program that worked closely with public schools. It is THE program that I have worked with in my career that offered the most access to the widest variety of students across the state because we worked closely with public schools and operated on the public lands near the schools.
As our program expanded, we found ourselves spending a lot of time talking with school administrators and parents about the importance of teaching our program participants (who were 10-11 years old) how to use the bathroom in the woods. We handled this topic by teaching about it in a kid-appropriate way on our first day out with the students. We taught Leave No Trace ethics for disposing of waste properly and offered privacy and professionalism when a student needed to use the restroom in the woods. We empowered students to go beyond being tethered to only traveling distances into the forest that were in close proximity to a port-a-potty and established bathrooms (Besides, we can all attest to so often going to the bathroom in the woods is an all around better experience than many pit toilets at trailheads!).
Yet, the fear of lawsuits and allegations of abuse loomed large in what felt like an endless fight. School districts’ insurance companies and lawyers forbade their schools from letting kids go to the bathroom in the woods and forbade us from teaching the skill at all. Instructors lost hours of their instructional time because we accommodated by only using sites with bathroom facilities and taking frequent bathroom breaks throughout the day, sometimes backtracking on trails to return to the bathroom facilities. It was an adjustment and one that was unpopular with instructors who for so many years had taught with no problems about teaching kids to go to the bathroom in the woods.
I remember talking to my sister on the phone about all this–about the countless meetings and conversations and stresses that were arising simply about bathroom use (and mind you this was not long after the bathroom laws had been passed in my state restricting folks to using the bathroom of their assigned-at-birth gender [eyeroll]). As I lamented, she said, “is this really the hill you are going to die on?”
Turns out it is. Turns out all the things that were wrapped up in that fight are essentially the same challenges we are facing as an industry now. People have basic needs. Access to the outdoors should be available to everyone. A little discomfort for a few moments should not overshadow or negate the positive outcomes that can come amidst a longer journey. In-person practice is important to increase confidence and competence in a skill. Not every moment of your life is going to be a five-star moment. In fact finding your way through the low points, makes your capacity for appreciating the high points even greater.
These are all takeaways we can learn from experiences outdoors. And I’d love to walk or paddle alongside you as you navigate these journeys.
So I ask again, are you playing the long-game?