Four reflections from Stetind

High in Arctic Norway stands Stetind, a sheer granite Matterhorn of the North that rises out of the fjords. It was here, in the summer of 1966, that Norwegian mountaineer and outdoor educator Nils Faarlund and philosopher Arne Næss, later known as the father of deep ecology, camped together with a small group of climbers. They spent their days on the mountain’s walls, and their nights grappling with the deeper tensions between modern life and the natural world.

Last week, I was in the area, co-hosting something called the Impact High Camp. A ski-touring leadership retreat of sorts, though that word doesn’t quite fit. There were no PowerPoints or name tags. Just skis, packs, slushy spring snow, and long Arctic light. Each day we climbed. Each evening we talked.

Our conversations kept circling back to a deceptively simple document, published in 2008 but born from those original gatherings between Næss and Faarlund almost six decades ago: the Stetind Declaration (reproduced at the end of this article). The two Norwegians and their friends gave shape to a way of thinking that would become known as eco-philosophy: the view that all life has intrinsic value, and that humans are not above nature, but utterly dependent on it.

For Faarlund, this was much more than a philosophy. It is a way of living. He called it friluftsliv: life lived outdoors, in the open, in close, ethical, and respectful relationship with nature.

The Declaration they co-authored is short. It doesn’t set targets or demand pledges. It begins instead with a quiet truth: “Our way of life has fateful consequences—not just technological or economic, but moral.”

In the spirit of Stetind, and of those days shared far up north between fjords and mountains, after many hours of movement, meditation, and conversation, I offer these four reflections.

My first reflection is about dependence. Not the kind we’re taught to avoid, but the kind we’ve forgotten about. The Stetind Declaration puts it plainly: “To live is to be dependent.” It’s a sentence that cuts against much of Western leadership culture, where strength is equated with autonomy and progress with separation. But when you are outdoors in the backcountry, moving through snowfields or forests, it becomes clear how absurd that illusion really is. We depend on oxygen, on sunlight, on water in the streams, on snow that holds. And we depend on warmth from others, on trust, on a companion who waits up above. In nature, independence is a myth. Everything happens in relationship, between species, within systems, across generations. In what Nora Bateson calls the Meadowverse, instead of the Metaverse.

The Stetind Declaration is clear on this: humans and nature form one whole, not two realms. We belong, not by choice or merit, but by origin. Faarlund’s friluftsliv was a lived expression of this truth: being outdoors not to conquer, but to practice humility in the presence of something older and greater than ourselves.

The world of policy and business rarely speaks of dependence. Perhaps the most powerful step leaders can take today is to stop pretending they are self-sufficient. The Earth does not need lone heroes; I remember hearing a voice from the Aleutian Islands outside Alaska, when wisdom keeper Larry “Ilarion” Merculieff of the Unangan people, said “The elders say the time of the lone wolf is over, we all need each other now.” Our time needs people who are willing to re-enter the web of life—with care, curiosity, and a willingness to listen.

My second reflection is about reciprocity, or give-and-take. The Stetind Declaration puts it starkly: “What we do to nature, we do to ourselves.” It’s a line that echoes the oldest moral insight we have, what many cultures call the Golden Rule. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Except here, the “other” is not just your human neighbor, but the river, the forest, the boulder, or the snow grouse.

For most of our lives, we’ve been taught that we can extract without consequence, take without limit, dump and move on. But the feedback loops are closing. What goes into the ocean comes back in the food. What burns in the atmosphere returns as storm, flood, or heatwave. Is there really a boundary between human systems and natural systems? Or is it already gone?

But this is not just about consequences. It’s also about care, and love. In friluftsliv, the relationship with nature is not extractive or transactional, it’s attentive. You don’t leave trash in a place you’ve fallen in love with. You don’t take more than you need from a forest that gives you peace. Our ancestors have known this for millennia.

Reciprocity demands kinship, gifting, belonging. The Stetind Declaration reminds us that, in the words of Swedish Nobel laureate Tomas Tranströmer, “We are the earth’s” (vi är jordens). It’s not about saving nature, it’s about remembering that we are nature. And every gesture, every meal, every choice of material, every vote or policy decision, is either a thread that repairs the web, or one that tears it.

My third reflection is about the path we walk. Not where we’re going, or how fast we’re getting there, but how we move and what guides us. One sentence in the Stetind Declaration has stayed with me: “There is no path to harmony with nature. Harmony with nature is the path.”

It sounds almost like a line from the Tao Te Ching. But it’s also a quiet warning to all those climate roadmaps and sustainability strategies that advocate speed or innovation as the answer. If the path we walk is still built on exploitation, extraction, profit, and growth, we are not getting closer.

To me, this sentence reorients everything. It says: you can’t fix the world and then go back to business as usual. Harmony isn’t a goal, it’s a way of being. A daily discipline. In the mountain traditions of Norway, in the practice of friluftsliv, this insight is already there. You don’t rush in the backcountry. You travel lightly. You move in rhythm with the weather, the snowpack, the others in your group. You leave no trace. You don’t impose. You adapt. Harmony is not a project. It is practice. In times like these, the Declaration reminds us: there is no shortcut. But there is a path. And it’s already beneath our feet.

My fourth reflection is about the power of small declarations. The Stetind Declaration fits on a single page. It was written in quiet, not urgency. It’s not slick corporate speak. But it carries something essential: coherence, integrity, and soul.

Patagonia’s founder (and hero of corporate progressives) Yvon Chouinard made headlines in 2022 when he gave away his company to “protect the source of all wealth.” Rather than selling Patagonia or taking it public, he placed all voting stock into a trust to safeguard the company’s values, and all non-voting stock into a nonprofit dedicated to defending nature. He described this in a letter, written in plain, almost blunt language. It said simply: “Instead of going public, we’re going purpose.” No fanfare, no self-congratulation. It read more like a personal note than a press release. And that clarity is also found in the Stetind Declaration, with its quiet authority and moral weight. Two short texts, both grounded in the recognition that what truly matters cannot be owned, scaled, or sold.

Houdini Sportswear, perhaps Faarlund’s most faithful corporate disciple, has embraced this legacy, not through speed or market share, but through devotion to craft, to place, to principle, to circularity. Nature-based thinking still guides Houdini’s design, their storytelling, their way of being in the world.

So maybe it’s time to stop looking for the most scalable solutions. Not everything needs to scale. Some things just need to be held. And maybe that’s what declarations like these are for: to remind us of where we stand, and of what we’ve already known—in stiller moments. Of the kind of world we belong to.

A few days ago, not far from Stetind, I found myself skinning uphill through heavy spring snow, the fjords far below. Around me: silence, skis, breath, and deep conversations with friends. Just movement, companionship, inner and outer nature. In those moments, the words of the Stetind Declaration didn’t feel like philosophy. We talk so much about transitions and systems change, but maybe what we need is to start again, in places like this, with the simplest of acts: putting one foot in front of the other. Paying attention. Choosing our line with care. Walking not ahead of nature, but with it.

The Stetind Declaration

We have gradually come to realize:

That our way of life has fateful consequences for nature and humankind, and thus for all life on Earth. The challenges we face as individuals and as a community are not merely of an economical and technological nature. They concern our basic values and our fundamental conception of what it means to be human.

We acknowledge that:

Nature and humankind constitute a whole and share a common destiny. Nature is the home of culture. Life is like a woven fabric of relations. To live is to be dependent. The value of nature and human dignity are intrinsically linked. What we do to nature, we do to ourselves. All life is vulnerable and therefore under threat. Concern for nature implies a concern for greater justice: Our way of life affects in particular the poorest among us, indigenous peoples, and future generations.

We will:

Work to promote a renewed understanding of the relationship between nature and humankind. Strive to base our choices, both as individuals and as a community, on this understanding. Discover the joy of living in harmony with nature: There is no path to harmony with nature. Harmony with nature is the path. Humankind possesses great capacity both to create and to destroy. At this crucial point in time we will take responsibility and commit ourselves to thinking and living in a way that promotes life.

(Building on the thinking of Arne Naess, Nils Faarlund and others, the Stetind Declaration was published in 2008, drafted by Børge Dahle, and with the Council for Eco-Philosophy (Råd for øko-filosofi) as its custodian.)