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My personal paradigm is partly evident within the framing of the research questions (Mason, 2005), however there remains a need to make transparent my background and view of the world: “paradigms represent a distillation of what we think about the world (but cannot prove). Our actions in the world, including actions as inquirers, cannot occur without reference to those paradigms: ‘As we think, so do we act.’” (Lincoln and Guba, 1985, p. 13; see also Creswell, 2003). The following sections will consider my background, river experiences and pedagogical approach.

3.3.1 My Background

My own background in relation to wilderness journeys is threefold; recreational, commercial and educational. While it was recreational and commercial guiding that initially drew me to the area of wilderness journeys, it is the educational component of my outdoor experience that has most strongly influenced my desire to conduct this research project. It is as an outdoor educator that I feel the most responsibility to facilitate worthwhile meaningful experiences.

My recreational and commercial guiding experiences extend over a 20 year period. The professional guiding component has taken place in diverse regions and countries

around the world and are characterised by the common thread of extended journeys, usually up to two weeks in length, often in wild landscapes. Though occasionally in another capacity, I have mostly worked as a rafting guide on these extended river journeys.

While my initial attraction to work as a rafting guide on extended journeys was centred on the expectation of adventure, increasingly it was the experiences of the clients themselves that attracted my interest. For most clients, to raft on a river for a week or more is to be out of their comfort zone, often in an unknown landscape, and with people they do not know. Clients often observed that it had been an outstanding holiday, but also ‘so much more’, and I became intrigued by all that might be implied by ‘so much more’.

My recreational experiences have also been based around extended wilderness river journeys, with like minded people. I have joined expeditions and first descents on remote rivers around the world with small groups of paddlers, and while the experience of being on these trips often involves a high degree of adventure, there appears so much more to these experiences than the adventurous activity.

I have also worked as an outdoor educator in schools over the last decade. Compared to my commercial and recreational experiences, trips undertaken in this context are rarely as long, daunting or wild, with school programs often dictated to by

parameters such as perceived safety, available time slots, or a desired set of

measurable outcomes. While I have heard many moving descriptions of experiences from students on such trips, they have been, for the most part, less frequently or intensely expressed than those by clients on commercial trips. Whilst there may be many reasons for this, such as the focus of the trip and willingness, or ability, to articulate personally meaningful experiences, I have a deeply felt desire to better understand what is possible within outdoor education programs, particularly as it relates to wilderness journeys. (These observations reflect my own teaching

experiences in educational institutions, and are not intended as a reflection of outdoor education in general.)

My own experience of guiding and outdoor education has left me with two main questions. Firstly, what forms of meaningful experiences occur for participants on wilderness journeys and how might these be facilitated? Secondly, are similar experiences described by adults potentially shared by students on extended outdoor education trips? Whilst the second question holds considerable interest for me, the journey towards answering that second question appears, for me, through the first. Without being able to articulate, understand and describe the range of meaningful experiences that might occur on a wilderness journey, it is difficult to know what we might look for in alternative contexts: “in phenomenological research, the question grows out of an intense interest in a particular problem or topic. The researcher’s excitement and curiosity inspire the search. Personal history brings the core of the problem into focus” (Moustakas 1994, p. 104). My own background has inspired this research, and there is a need to make explicit the meaning of such experiences for me.

3.3.2 The Meaning of my River Experiences

I have a deep desire for extended wilderness journeys. I am drawn to them. Exactly why, I have difficulty describing. For the most part, my wilderness journeys have met with success, been exciting, been socially interesting and have helped define who I am. But there is something more to them, something to do with a relationship to the landscape, to others, to myself, that I find hard to define. But I do feel they are good for me. They provide me with something which is otherwise difficult to

achieve. It is as if the landscape requires me to account for myself, to see how I have changed, and how I might need to change in the future. As Lopez suggests: “the land urges us to come around to an understanding of ourselves” (1986, p. 247).

3.3.3 My Pedagogical Approach

As an outdoor educator and outdoor guide for over twenty years, I have developed an interest in travelling with people on extended river journeys. In particular, my focus of attention has been upon how individuals experience a river journey and construct

meaning through those experiences. I am particularly interested in how wilderness landscapes might have an impact on the construction of experiences.

I approach this research from the viewpoint of an educator, not only in the sense of school-based education, but also in the context of guiding adults, and with inputs from my own recreational experiences. I believe the purpose of education is to provide opportunities for development and growth, by gaining life capacities and knowledge of the world in which we live. How do we know the world? We come to know the world in which we live at least partly through experience, and that direct experience not only reflects the nature of the particular world in which we live but provides the best opportunity for people to come to know themselves and that world. Our past experiences provide the building blocks with which we make meaning of our present and future experiences: such experiential continuity and interaction are central to Dewey’s (1938b) theory of experience. My own pedagogical approach is informed by constructivism, which emphasises the accumulation of knowledge and the construction of meaning through experience.

3.3.4 The Pedagogical Dilemma

There is an important question implicit within the research. Is there part of an

experience of a wilderness journey that occurs as an underlying ‘truth’ or response to the wilderness for people today? This question does not imply that people necessarily reflect on, or conceive of, the experience in the same way, but asks ‘is there a

commonality within pre-reflective experience?’ To state the question in a different way, is there a common pre-reflective aspect to experience that can be described in order to better understand the opportunities that are present within meaningful experiences on a wilderness journey? It is, I believe, incumbent upon outdoor educators and commercial guides to understand the pedagogical possibilities within such a question, and to be able to make the best use of possible surrounding

environments in order to facilitate potentially meaningful experiences. As Dewey has written:

A primary responsibility of educators is that they not only be aware of the general principle of the shaping of actual experience by environing condition, but that they also recognize in the concrete what surroundings are conducive to having experiences that lead to growth. Above all, they should know how to utilize the surroundings, physical and social, that exist so as to extract from them all that they have to contribute to building up experiences that are worthwhile (1938b, p. 40).