Fun Challenges in the Great Outdoors

Tree
Opphavsmann: Le Snoop

Covering close to 10 000 km², the USA offers a wide variety of scenery. More than 80 % of all Americans live in urban areas, so that leaves plenty of room for wilderness. Forests stretch endlessly in the Northwest and Northeast with thousands of miles of hiking trails.  Oceans provide long stretches of deserted coastline with rugged cliffs or sandy beaches. The Rocky Mountains stretch majestically from south to north, with the highest point Mount McKinley reaching an impressive 6,198 m. Great rivers like the Colorado provide rafters and paddlers with the thrills of a lifetime and California's Death Valley, the lowest point in America, offers conditions that are ideal for various extreme sports including motoring sports.

Many Americans still have a lot of the frontier spirit and for them hiking in the woods, hunting and fishing are important activities. The settler managing on his own is still very much alive. Millions visit the many national parks spread all over the USA each year to set up camp. For many kids and teens experiencing the great outdoors is a summer ritual. From the east coast to the west, summer outdoor camps are as popular as ever.

There are many challenging and fun outdoor activities in the USA, such as stock car racing, hiking, water-skiing, snowboarding and kite boarding. They bear evidence of American inventiveness and the search for excitement. However, many of the activities are not very environmentally friendly. Also, critics of American life style claim that the majority of visitors to national parks barely leave their cars. Closeness to parking lots seems to be the most important requirement of any outdoor attraction.

We need to remember that even though many Americans in general love the challenges of the great outdoors there are huge variations between inner city populations and the rest of the urban and rural population in this respect. Large population groups in the cities have little contact with the wilderness.

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Writing

Watch the videos below and do one of the following writing tasks. One of the videos is from Canada, the two others from the USA.

Creative Writing

After having watched the three videos, choose the one which you found the most interesting and complete the corresponding task.

Kiteboarding Video: Write an informative text which will appear in a sports magazine geared toward teenagers, explaining Kiteboarding. Describe the sport and using comments from the video explain why people find it thrilling.

Visit Alberta Video: Write the text for a travel pamphlet/brochure for Alberta, Canada focusing on these outdoor activities and more. Give the pamphlet/brochure an appropriate and creative title.

Snowboarding Video: Write an audio script to correspond to the video footage. Choose the purpose of the audio script before beginning (advertisement, interview, informative text, personal text to a home video, etc). Be creative.