If you spent your real-life days surfing waves or boating or fishing or hiking or horseback riding, they would call you "outdoorsy."
If for fun, you sail a boat through some new waters or ride your bicycle through some new streets you haven't travelled before, if you like to fly a plane or hot air balloon, they would call you "adventurous."
What if you do those things on a computer?
In your pixel life, you can hang out in a world that looks like Tron or The Matrix and many of us do, but we can also sit next to a river or under a tree in a beautiful park. I like both scenes, but I spend most of my SL time in "natural" settings.
I've been in Second Life since 2005. If you're a veteran SLer then you know that that's a million years in SL time and that it went by in what seemed like a few hours. Obviously, I spent most of that time not in Bellisseria, as that's just a toddler in SL years.
But then I moved to Belli and discovered the joys of boating and flying without banlines and also exploring, finding the lil easter eggs planted for us by the Moles. It really is entirely different than the Second Life I experienced from 2005-2020, which is when my friends wouldn't let me rock the old school Linden Home A-Frame any longer and dragged me kicking and screaming into Bellisseria.
All of this adds up to why I am super excited to be part of NatureCon 2022, (Website)
Seriously, this is a celebration of positive energy and it is exactly what we need as our RL planet melts down, water sources deplete, our ocean acidifies, coral reefs collapse and all those other awful realities we escape to here in virtual worlds.
So what is NatureCon? They can explain it themselves far better over here on their website, but basically it is a celebration of getting out and doing things in Second Life, things that we all do like boating and swimming and fishing and hiking and just generally looking around this amazing place we call Second Life.
Exploring the "outdoors" on our computers is not new or exclusive to Bellisseria. Sailing has inspired passionate fans and been incredibly popular in Second Life nearly as far back as I can remember. There have been and are countless, gorgeous places created by people on the mainland through the years, and one of my fondest early memories in Second Life was watching particle snow fall out of the night sky on the little 512 patch of "First Land" they gave us back in the day.
Nature, even when it's made of pixels, heals and calms us, says I.
Ok, back to NatureCon, this was a blog post about NatureCon.
Here it is, from their website:
NatureCon 2022 is a two-week virtual conference seeking to unite and inspire collaboration between Bellisseria and Mainland organizations under the shared goal of promoting exploration across the grid.
Want to learn about some great mainland and Bellisseria places to explore? Want to come to parties with people that like to explore? Want to see demonstrations and go on excursions? If you answered "YES!" or even "mebbeh" to any of those, or to any of the gazillion other questions about cool things happening I could ask, come check it out. Or, if you are interested in supporting the effort in some way, contact info is on their website!I met Yukiko Yeshto back when I had the Riverbridge Cafe and she ran a bus tour that was honestly one of the most fun things I have done in SL. Driving around in that bus with a whole group of awesome friends is really, really fun, especially when things go wrong. So when she asked me to be a part of this I JUMPED at the chance.
Ironically, I had just met the other founder of NatureCon, Soull Starlight, at a party thrown by a mutual friend! I remembered her name and when I saw it on the NatureCon website I laughed. SL really is a small town. She is super nice and if you look at the Second Life resumes of these two, you see that they give their own time to others, they help build community and I'm all about supporting that.
NatureCon 2022, Aug 18-30 on two regions. Exhibits and events all based around community and getting out and exploring this awesome grid. You'll read more about it here because I'm very excited for this!