I was recently asked what a parent could do to help his daughter to grow up confident, kind, motivated and thoughtful. Immediately my brain stalled out - I was barely 20 and still a little drunk from my six-hour layover in Heathrow airport. I had no reason to pretend I could give parenting advice. So after a few seconds of frantically sorting through all the things my parents gave me I blurted out - "Skiing!" "Skiing?" he asked. I think he was expecting something more profound or intellectual, but he still sounded curious so I forged ahead, scrambling for a logical reason for my answer. It felt like the right answer but I had no idea why. "Yea..." I began to ramble, "Skiing! I think… I think doing that kind of outdoorsy stuff just makes you a better person" (poetic right?).

Looking back, Ski racing and eventually other activities like climbing, slacklining, and hiking, helped build my self-confidence and independence more than any other sport or activity. It taught me pure joy as I carved down slopes amidst bright sun and crisp air. In the summers, missing skiing, I would wander around the woods behind my house and I learned to enjoy the quiet and peace of sun on my face and the breeze rustling the leaves above me. Ski racing gave me complete ownership over my successes which I struggled to find in team sports, but it also gave me an appreciation for education, mentorship, and community. Even when we were competing against each other we were a team and we all huddled together at the top of the racecourse when the crisp breeze turned into a breath-stealing howling nightmare.

As I enumerated all the skiing benefited me something slowly shifted into place in my brain. It was like when you find that one specific piece of a puzzle that helps you connect everything, you put it in place and suddenly all the other pieces you have collected start to fit together too. "I guess it's not quite

skiing that they gave me, but they gave me access to outdoor recreation." We continued to talk and through that conversation, I finally made sense of something that I had been struggling to explain to people for years:

Outdoor recreation makes you happier, healthier, nicer, and more successful.

I think one of the best examples of why I say this is a slackline. Originally developed by groups of very bored climbers, a slackline is a piece of flat rope that you tie between two trees and walk across. It is literally that simple. Slacklines are great. They are portable (if heavy) and can be set up anywhere as long as you have something to tie each end around they are relatively safe as you control how high off the ground they are set.

No one is naturally good at slacklining. Even with amazing natural balance, no one will make it across on their first try. You start standing on one side holding onto the tree and you take one step forward and you fall off. You try again and again and you get frustrated and you quit. But eventually, you try again because unlike some other things in life there is only one way to get better at slacklining: to just keep walking across it. You learn to work hard simply because you want to. You learn to be proud of every tiny achievement, even ones as small as letting go of the tree and balancing for longer than you did the day before.

You learn to be patient and to listen to your body and your mind; you have to know when something feels wrong, and you have to remember when something felt right. You learn to focus, to calm your mind and only think about what you need to do to take another step. Most importantly, you learn to fail. When you step up on a slackline, you are either going to stay on or fall off. You have to take the (calculated) risk of falling and go for it otherwise you will never progress. On a larger scale, having hobbies that take you outdoors make you more adaptable, teach you to function independent of other people and give you an appreciation for life.

We have no control over nature, we just learn to adapt to it.

If you get caught in a hailing thunderstorm on your hike you have to adapt, nature doesn't care if you are upset or angry or uncomfortable. You have to learn to take change, discomfort, and disappointment in your stride. The reward is that unexpected bluebird days will turn alongside the unexpected rainstorms. Like in the rest of life, the better you adapt to the negative or disappointing days the more likely you are to be around to catch the happy surprises that come your way.

Nature also has a peaceful vivacity to it. Even though everything in it is aggressively alive and constantly changing and moving, it feels slower and more peaceful than the modern human society. I firmly believe that time outside helps balance your mental health. It gives your brain a break, gives you time to focus on yourself or on the people immediately around you. I have no evidence for this but I believe that people who appreciate the outdoors are nicer and happier. Personally, I think this is because the unpredictability of nature draws us together for support and solidarity and because the separation it provides from the over-stimulation of modern life allows us to truly see and understand the people around us. Because of this, the outdoors community is one of the most supportive I've ever been a part of.

Nature is one of the only places where we can find true solitude. Spending time outside, weather backpacking through extreme wilderness or slacklining between two trees in your backyard teaches us how to be alone. It's hard to learn to process or understand your emotions on your own on a society where your friends or other people are instantly accessible. We live in such close proximity to each other that it can even be hard to feel comfortable in the still almost silence of nature. But learning to be comfortable in that space, alone with only yourself for entertainment is a skill that will make you happier and more relaxed.

So my final advice to the man on the plane was, "Buy your daughter a slackline." Or take her camping! Provide her with time in nature. Go hiking. Go canoeing. Teach her to be at peace on her own. Teach her to work hard, appreciate small gains and not fear failure. Teach her how to appreciate the world around you and by extension learn to value the community of humans you are a part of. And for everyone else; go do these things for yourself. Nature will always be there for you.