Yellowknife (Apr 25/03) - Just try it.

Forfeit Friends, pass on Survivor, shut off The Simpsons--get outside and look around, as if you needed another excuse with this sudden spring weather.

It's Earth Week and TV Turn Off Week both great reasons to get out and enjoy Yellowknife's wild spaces.

Whatever your preferred mode--by hiking boot, bike or soon by canoe or kayak, the area around Yellowknife offers some of the best opportunity for outside adventure for any city in the country.

Bob Bromley, who hosts interpretive nature walks for Ecology North, said even the best nature programs on television don't come close to our local version the real thing.

"Simply to watch the melt can be amazing this time of year, you can see all kinds of essentially geological things in action with the water flowing through the rocks."

"I think it's a real renewal of spirit," he said. "We're getting in touch with what's really real."

Every spring the bluebirds, red-tailed hawks, gulls and a host of other species fill the air around the city providing a real-life reality show that beats anything the idiot box has to offer. Bromley said getting out to watch nature in action is a far more satisfying activity and healthy activity than sitting down to watch a nature program.

"We evolved totally embedded in the wilderness and the TV is a very modern invention that doesn't go back in our history at all."

"We didn't evolve to relate to it on any level, except for a useless level."

"We need to get out where our cells can respond and speak to us. We're looking for a very basic level of response that's totally healthy."

Bromley said Yellowknife just has an incredible amount of nature just outside city limits that residents shouldn't take for granted.

"With a few blights upon the land as exceptions we've got great water, great air a diversity of wildlife."

For Bromley, a day spent outside tromping through the mud, clambering over rocks with the birds chirping and the possibility of a special encounter with wildlife is the best way to spend a beautiful spring weekend.

"There's a really intimate connection with the Earth that most of us forget from day to day that can effect our daily lives," he said.