Being alive to the present: perceiving meaning on a wilderness river journey

In an earlier paper I identified two key forms of 'meaningful experience' for participants on a wilderness river rafting journey, namely a feeling of humility and being alive to the present. However, space considerations led me to describe only the first of these forms in any detail. In this paper I identify and describe the qualities of the second key form of meaningful experience via a phenomenological approach that moves between individual and collective experience. This approach reveals a structure of experience that provides a framework for reinterrogating original participant descriptions. The findings of this study highlight the importance of the way in which participants were able to pay attention to the surrounding environment-substantiating the importance of pre-reflective and embodied components of experience. In this paper I argue for a broad understanding of experience that includes and celebrates the pre-reflective realm of experience in river environments.