John Dewey said, "Learning is thinking about experience". This dictum accurately reflects the rationale for outdoor activity as experiential education. The term "outdoor learning" refers to a set of activities which have the following characteristics in common: environmental contrast (a sharp environmental change for the participant); physical activity (e.g., hiking, rafting, technical rock climbing, etc.); the intentional use of stress as an intrinsic rather than contrived part of the situation (e.g., rough weather); small group context (focus on collaboration rather than competition); new knowledge and skills (emphasis on the challenge of newness and unfamiliarity). Major outdoor learning goals are: enhancing self concept; understanding the self, with special emphasis on the identification of one's strengths; a reorientation of attitudes toward aesthetic appreciation and environmental awareness; an understanding of leadership and followership and the use of authority; and internalization (insight, comprehension, and awareness that produce behavior changes). A well-designed outdoor learning experience typically follows a thaw-shift-freeze cycle; there is an early phase in which some aspects of conventional wisdom and behavior are called into question by being disconfirmed; a transition phase then offers insight into alternative behavior, or attitudes, or skills; finally, strategies are employed to stabilize the new behavior so that it may be retained over time. (JC)