Nature Sport and Environmental History: Adulation or Alteration of Nature?

In a current historical moment of climate change, decarbonization, and overpopulation in the early twenty-first century, what will nature sport bring to our world and a global awakening, if anything?Today, skiers search for snow, runners inhale forest fire smoke, and children play outside fraught by unusual weather, but nature sport continues to be a means of knowing ourselves and our world as being alive and living nature.We are sentient beings.Could nature sport be a lever of change toward a better way of living on the land in ethical relations with the environment?Globalization garners attention but so does the local, especially since Gro Harlem Brundtland's United Nations Commission Report Our Common Future in 1987 called out a "global agenda for change" and asked the world-including citizen groups and nongovernment organizations-to think globally and act locally in efforts for environmental protection, economic growth, and social equality. 1Historically, various actors in nature sport and play were already doing so as embodiment outdoors, or "en plein air," was acting locally to respect nature and awaken stewardship, activating environmental advocacy as part of a movement toward sustainability around the world.The turn toward nature sport and play for human health and well-being, especially in times of strife, urban pollution, and environmental crisis, has been a common historical trajectory in many cultures worldwide in recent centuries, as the articles in this issue reveal.For Indigenous cultures, close relationships with the earth are a central axis of life.A current focus on changing environmental ethics suggests the need to expand our understanding of physical culture and sport history through nature sport.In this special issue, we use the term nature to mean cultural and material essence at the historical intersection of worldviews, biophysical features, and ecological relations.We are more a part of nature than we realize.