Walking with change: a first-person inquiry into the development of a post-human “frilufts”-life

This thesis explores how walking in nature can support change in people and organisations. Being a pragmatic, action-oriented person, I experience that my walking practice was valuable in the change processes that I facilitate. Wondering why these walks in the ‘friluft’ were so valuable, I engaged in a first-person inquiry to explore my main question: “How does my practice of walking facilitate understanding change in me and others”?

I walked hundreds of kilometres, alone and with others, through astonishing, wild, rugged Norwegian landscapes. While using an extended epistemology of embodied knowing
(Barbour, 2004; Seeley & Thornhill, 2014), I engaged in several series of first-person action research cycles (Reason & Bradbury, 2013), collecting data through journaling, visual methods, and story writing. I used them in reflective processes to make sense of my developing practice. Based on these reflected experiences, I propose to widen the purpose of action research to the flourishing of all living beings on our planet.

Theories of Deep Ecology (Næss, 1995, 2008), Eco-psychology (Abram, 1997; Fisher, 2013; Roszak, 1995), Friluftsliv pedagogy (Tordsson, 2014), and movement (Sheets-Johnstone, 2011) are finely woven together and position this work it in the field of ecological post-humanism (Morton, 2018). Based on an ‘ethico-onto-epistem-ological’ integration, that assumes an intertwining of ethics, knowing and being (Barad, 2007), this research explores how a practice of walking while ‘ethical mattering’, and intra-acting in embodied entangled relationships, helps the people and organisations that participate in these walks, change in their differential becoming.

While walking with grief, pondering upon death, I became aware of the countless distinct living beings that participated in this research. I experienced inextricable entanglements with the more than human world in affectionate, earth motherly relationships. This brought me insights about my ontology of joy, that values all life on earth.

In the last part of this thesis, I share how I started applying this developed practice with my clients in interventions of organisational change. I present an argument and hope for leaders and teams to spend more time walking in friluftsliv, finding inspirational pathways for change. My developed walking practice celebrates the entanglement of all living beings on a moving and ever-changing earth into an ecological post-human future.