Pedalling into discovery: leisure as an ongoing dialogue with nature

Rather than asking what leisure allows people to do, this paper asks what leisure allows the relationship between self and nature to become. Drawing on Heidegger’s notion of being-in-the-world, leisure is understood not as an activity, but as a mode of dwelling through which the self encounters the conditions of existence. Using an autoethnographic account of a cycling journey around Taiwan, the study examines how leisure unfolds through disruption, sensory immersion, and reflection. The analysis shows that leisure reveals the self as contingent, situated, and in formation within environmental conditions. The paper contributes by reframing leisure as a mode of dwelling that challenges anthropocentric assumptions and highlights its ethical dimension. It is not in life’s pauses, but in leisure, that its contours begin to emerge.