Paradise regained: older adult rock climbers turning space into place in the natural environment

Mark Hickman,Alison Inkster,Colin Beard

doi:10.14712/18023061.502

Abstract

At the time of writing there are over 10 million people aged over 65 living in the UK, and by 2050 the number is predicted to rise to 19 million. This expansion of the ageing population is mirrored worldwide, and over the past ten years has stimulated a growth in age-related studies. However, the idea of a social gerontology of the outdoors is yet to take root. Yet, with the maturing of those born between the years 1946 and 1964, and increased participation in adventurous activities, we suggest that the time is right for scholarship in this specific direction. Accordingly, the aim of this study was to discover how older adult rock climbers perceived their relationship with the natural environment to have changed over the period of their involvement with rock climbing. The investigation used a purposive sample of rock climbers in the north-west of England (n=10) aged between 65 and 74 years (av=69.6) identifying them as ‘young-old’ adults. Oral testimony was collected over two phases, the first with interview-questionnaires, and the second with targeted semi-structured interviews. In order to give a clear voice to participants, manual data handling using was used to establish raw data that were then sorted into themes and verified against internal and external checkers. These were then organized around Peace, Wahl, Mollenkopf and Oswald’s (2014) concept of an ‘environment’ considered within three dimensions: the physical/material, including the natural landscape; the psychological, and the meaning attributed to the place, its evolution across the life course, and how it makes people feel about themselves; and the social/cultural, involving the engagement of people to places, including how the space is used and remembered.

Highlights

Baby boomers’ is a term that has been used to describe the generation born after World War Two and between the years 1946 and 1964 (Cochran, Rothschadl & Rudick, 2009)
By 2011, those at the leading edge of this ‘age-wave’ (Dytchwald & Flower, 1989) had reached 65, the retirement age in the UK, and at the time of writing there are in excess of ten million people aged 65+ in the UK with the number predicted to rise to 19 million by 2050; currently, one-sixth of the UK population falls into this age group a figure expected to be one-quarter by 2050 (Rutherford, 2012)
Many investigations reduce growing older to anonymous data in an attempt to understand the ‘science’ of ageing, such a positivist approach, with its reliance on rationality and objectivity would be ill suited to shaping an awareness of how individuals perceive and understand the natural environment

Summary

Introduction

Baby boomers’ is a term that has been used to describe the generation born after World War Two and between the years 1946 and 1964 (Cochran, Rothschadl & Rudick, 2009) Explanations for this two-decade rise in birth rates are varied and complex, but best understood against a background of soldiers returning from war-zones, married couples looking to have children after putting family life on hold during a period of great uncertainty, an increasingly positive and stable economic climate, and changing social values. There has been little discussion about a gerontology of the outdoors Another major problem is that despite changing contours on the map of ageing, there is no universally recognized age that is considered to be ‘old’, and Levine (2008) points out that any designation by which people are categorized as ‘old’ is dependent on the bias of the classifier. Researchers have added to this debate by developing a molecular ‘ageing test’ that is claimed to accurately determine a person’s biological age which might be younger or older than their actual chronological age (Sood, Gallagher, Lunnon, Rullman, Keohane, Crossland, Phillips, Cederholm, Jensen, van Loon, Lannfelt, Kraus, Atherton, Howard, Gustafsson, Hodges and Timmons, 2015)

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