FMC Reading List:  ‘Rucksack of Knowledge’

Help us create a ‘rucksack of knowledge’ to guide all those with a passion for enjoying, understanding and advocating for the New Zealand outdoors.

FMC has a broad role to promote outdoor recreation, and ensure the conservation and wise management of New Zealand’s natural wild lands and their better understanding through art, literature and science. That takes some wrapping your head around. Every year new FMC Executive members, volunteers and staff have to build their skills and knowledge to enable them to be the best advocates they can be for the outdoors community.

The FMC Mountain and Forest Trust also has promotion of mountain literature as one of its aims, and the Trust has supported a number of books including Lydia Bradey’s “Going up is Easy”, Brian Wilkins’ “Among Secret Beauties”, Chris Maclean’s “John Pascoe”.

It got us thinking, if you only had a limited time (which we all do), what material are you best to read, watch or listen to if your purpose is to gain understanding of the New Zealand outdoors, and through that FMC’s mission? We’re not sure, but we think such a list will be useful and interesting.

We are asking people to nominate material, based on the categories below.  We will collate nominations, publicise interesting material identified through our newsletter and social media, create a short-list, and convene an expert panel to fill our ‘rucksack of knowledge’. The list will be published in the FMC Bulletin for general perusal and will then be made available on our website for people to work through as they see fit!

Criteria: There are no rules. Written material may be texts, tomes, academic papers, memoirs, pamphlets, propoganda, policy, plans, poems, essays or sashays  into literature, scrawls, letters or whatever else you think may be of worth. Films, shows, documentaries, interviews, clips or fillips are also perfectly acceptable. Material will be judged on its influence, its authoritativeness, its artistic merit and its contribution to our outdoor community

Categories: There are six categories, very open to your interpretation of what may be submitted under each:
  • Stepping into the wild – Outdoor exploration and recreation
  • Understanding our land – Science and observation
  • Living off the land – Environmental history, human settlement, farming and forestry
  • Fighting for nature – The Conservation movement
  • Something to think about – Literature, philosophy, poetry
  • Stewarding Public Conservation Land – The political and administrative process
  • Celebrating Outdoor Culture – Who we are and what we do.
To Submit: Please submit your lists, with indicated categories, by email to administrator@fmc.org.nz by the 30th of March 2016, we are giving those who want plenty of time to think about it plenty of time. Lists need not include 50 items, and explaining your nominations is perfectly acceptable. We will even accept reproduced copies of material not easily available to judge.