Outdoor literature is a literature genre based on outdoors activities such as surfing, exploration, survival, sailing, mountaineering, whitewater boating, kayaking, etc. They provide more than insight into the activity, often challenging the reader to confront a moral dilemma, which exposes our full humanity. For example, in New Moon in G-Land, Monty Webber uses surfing to expose the dialectic in Western culture.
"The danger element seems more intense when you're alone for a moment, standing and thinking back, here on the edge of the reef, to the days when hardly a soul would surf at low tide. Or how, often, people would back off makeable waves. Nowadays, everyone takes everything, even when there is no chance of making it - as if to cement their reputation as a "hell man" in G-Land."
Reminiscing about a less crowded past, the narrator ridicules the greedy, self-centred motives of modern surfing, contrasting it with the more carefree "soul", who would allow waves to be uncorrupted by the ego or by human intervention.
Examples of Outdoor Literature with surfing as the predominant theme:
- Outer Island is a short story, written by Dan Webber, about a year spent on Norfolk Island, in the South Pacific.
- Lakey Peak is a short story, written by Matthew Ellks, about a trip to Lakey Peak, on the island of Sumbawa.
- New Moon in G-Land is a short story, written by Monty Webber, about a trip to G-Land.