por Luis Villa

As we begin the home stretch of this hike we call 2019, many of us are starting to turn our attention to the flurry of year-end holidays that annually announces its arrival in the form of candy and mask-stocked store shelves and goes out with a literal bang on the last day of the year. Shoe-horned in between is a notorious Friday that has been Frankensteined into an unofficial shopping holiday, serving as a gaudy example of the rampant consumerism that seems to take center stage during the last several weeks of each year. It is precisely during this time that we have the opportunity to become more cognizant of the forces that pressure us towards a way of life that puts a premium on having more material possessions, prioritizes quantity over quality, and defines “bigger” as being synonymous with “better.”

We owe it to ourselves to question this. I am trying hard to check my own consumptive habits and behaviors, and I admit there is plenty of room for improvement. I buy things that are unnecessary and do not add to the quality of my life, likely even detracting from it. I eat more meat than is necessary and healthy. I often miss opportunities to reduce or reutilize, mistakenly thinking that recycling is enough. I don’t always vote for a sustainable economy with my dollars.

Still, I try to be better each day. I begin by asking myself a simple question: Do I really need this? Then, I do my best to answer honestly, without being influenced by the barrage of media messaging insisting that I cannot do without this or that product or service.

“I begin by asking myself a simple question: Do I really need this? Then, I do my best to answer honestly, without being influenced by the barrage of media messaging insisting that I cannot do without this or that product or service.”

Luis Villa

Still, I try to be better each day. I begin by asking myself a simple question: Do I really need this? Then, I do my best to answer honestly, without being influenced by the barrage of media messaging insisting that I cannot do without this or that product or service.

Besides trying to distinguish between necessity and frivolous desire, I also reflect on how a consumptive act on my part, no matter how seemingly small, comes with a corresponding effect on the natural environment. At the beginning of (and elsewhere along) the supply chain leading to a particular good or service, we will find extractive actions exerted upon the planet’s stock of natural resources. Rivers were diverted, trees were felled, metals and coal were mined, oil and natural gas were drilled for (and subsequently burned). A measure of natural capital was somehow converted to manufactured capital. Something was taken from the Earth so that I could have my stuff. For me, one of the starkest examples of this comes from Costa Rica, a country in Central America that I was fortunate enough to call home for 12 years, doing conservation and ecological restoration work there with Nectandra Institute and the rural communities of the Balsa River watershed. In the 1940s, around 80 percent of this tropical country was covered in old-growth forests. During the following decades, that number plummeted to approximately 25 percent, as rain forests and other native woodlands were cut down to make room for grazing lands for the production of beef. Much of that beef was exported to the United States. Forests were cleared from Costa Rica so that some people could have hamburgers.

Finally, I try harder by redefining the idea of “quality of life” and paying attention to how having more material possessions rarely makes me happier in any meaningful way. At Latino Outdoors we are expanding the definition of “outdoor engagement” to be more culturally relevant and representative of the different ways in which Latinxs connect with the outside world, often emphasizing familia y comunidad over individualistic pursuit. In similar fashion and as a global society, we should reimagine the notion of “happiness.” We should better leverage the potential for achieving fulfillment through experiences, not purchases. Madre Naturaleza offers us a wonderful outdoor setting in which to enjoy such experiences, whether individually or together with friends and family.

In a world of ever growing socio-environmental challenges, it’s time we all moved away from the unsustainable idea that bigger is better. Instead, let’s improve the quality of our lives through an approach that emphasizes that actually, less is more.

Let’s choose the outdoors over stores.