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I'm looking for a good adjective to describe a person who loves experiencing nature, as in a person who has been in the Boy Scouts for most of his life, loves fishing, hiking, mountain climbing, sleeping under an open sky, ice fishing, canoeing, crosscountry skiing and other things along those lines. A true-born “nature freak.”

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    Lots of people call such behavior "crazy" nowadays :/ Mar 22, 2012 at 7:43
  • Hahaha! Yes, I guess they do ^^
    – leifericf
    Apr 16, 2012 at 21:58
  • Watch out. The term "naturist" means something else.
    – GEdgar
    Sep 2, 2012 at 21:04

5 Answers 5

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I'd call that person an outdoorsman

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    Man, why didn't I think of that!? It seems so obvious now. Thanks a million for unblocking me, Jim! :)
    – leifericf
    Mar 22, 2012 at 1:56
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    You do have to watch the environment in which you use that particular term, though, because some may perceive the term as gender-loaded. If you're worried about this, you could describe the person as being outdoorsy: it's a different part of speech, so it's not really a drop-in replacement, but it covers pretty much the same situations. Oct 18, 2013 at 13:23
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    Pssh, I hereby declare outdoorsperson to be a word.
    – ithisa
    Oct 18, 2013 at 13:56
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There are a lot of adjectives which describe the physical activeness of somebody:

brisk, alacritous, yary, jaunty, evelié, exilient, sprack

And to modify these words, you can use adjectives which relate to natural wilderness, such as:

bucolic, fielden, agrest, rural, predial

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  • Thanks for the good suggestions, Jamie! They weren't quite the right fit for what I needed, but I learned some new words there!
    – leifericf
    Mar 22, 2012 at 1:57
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A biophilic is a person driven by curiosity, never wasting an opportunity to know something more about creatures in his neighbourhood.

The Biophilia Hypothesis is an area of research that pertains to such people and systems.

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  • Can you please provide some substantiation & reference for this? The word is not in the 3 dictionaries I checked: Chambers, Oxford Online & M-W.
    – TrevorD
    Oct 18, 2013 at 12:36
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A nemophilist. Maybe it relates to what you need.

One who is fond of forest or forest scenery; a haunter of the woods.

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  • +1 from me. A word I had never heard of before. Thank you for your contribution, I took the liberty of doing the search myself and including the definition in your post.
    – Mari-Lou A
    Oct 9, 2014 at 3:20
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Nature enthusiast

Outdoors enthusiast

Enthusiast: someone who is very interested in and involved with a particular subject or activity: a computer-games enthusiast

(Cambridge Dictionary)

Motivation for my answer: the outdoorsman that was proposed does have a feminine version, outdoorswoman. I've seen it used in the hunting and fishing column in my local newspaper. But having the two versions makes things awkward.

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