[ research ] Why do you seek adventure?

dr1665

dr1665

Adventurist
One of the topics I'm most curious about exploring with Adventurist Life is adventure itself. I'd like your take on it!

If adventure is a sliding scale of "looking for trouble/challenges/obstacles," why do you seek it out? In other words, if the journey is the destination, why would you set a course for such a challenging destination?

Thanks!
 
I work in international bribery and corruption. My day job is dry, my family life is fairly active, but not too many surprises. I realize I should thank God and my wife for the lack of surprises in this category. I live in a 21st century Mayberry, yes we actually have annual block parties. If I don't put some challenges in my life, I'm not challenged. Who wants to live a life that doesn't involve learning new things, having experiences outside the norm, or stretching your capabilities? All of these things help to make my life fuller, and better prepared to handle surprises.
 
In a word, escape. I get plenty of interaction everyday with a wide variety of people but many are self-centered jackholes. I look for adventure for relaxation and to escape the jackholes. Think of the obstacles as barriers for those people. The more obstacles, whether physical barrier or something as simple as cellular service, the more likely I am to find peace. It also appears much of the good stuff to see takes some effort to get to it. As a result, when I encounter people, they tend to be like-minded reasonable people seeking the same thing as I and appreciating the same things as I. Thus, whether I am alone or at an organized event of like-minded individuals, I can escape nonetheless.
 
Custodians of trust
Holders of hope
Rise, Rise!
Voyage the noble quest
To arms,
To strength,
Persevere!
Darkness wins failing triumph
Live, Live!
Rejoice the victors
Our sons, our daughters
Gaze to world wroth

-Dave Lund, 2015
 
For the same reasons one plays a board game.
There is self-satisfaction in confronting the obstacle, analyzing the alternatives and finding one that allows you to get to the next piece of the adventure with the knowledge of the latest challenge overcome. Unlike a RPG, you're dealing with real life-sized playing pieces and characters.
 
For the sake of the new. Exploring new places. Seeing new things. Accumulating new experiences. Meeting new people. Developing new skills. None of those things can happen from the safety of home.

With that in mind, three quotes from Lord of the Rings have inspired me to seek out the new.

“It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.”​

Many people fear uncertainty. I am not one of them. I look forward to the unexpected as a way to break me free of complacency and stagnation so that I may be a better person tomorrow than I was today.

“All that is gold does not glitter
Not all those who wander are lost.”​

We live in a commercially driven consumeristic society that is hell bent on the accumulation of monetary wealth. Maybe it's the philosopher or the poet inside me, but I think there's more to life than stuff and that the measure of a man has nothing to do with the size of his bank account. Consequently too many people become rooted in their location and question the sanity of those without roots. I've lived in a lot of places, that variety has added to the breadth and depth of my experiences and knowledge. It's shaped me into who I am. The more I travel the more I grow. I'm not lost, I'm exploring. I'm discovering. I'm discovering just as much about myself as I am the world around me.

“Still round the corner there may wait
A new road or a secret gate,
And though I oft have passed them by
A day will come at last when I
Shall take the hidden paths that run
West of the Moon, East of the Sun.”
​
Far too often we sit and wonder 'what if?' I got tired of that. I realized I was growing more uncomfortable with my complacency (see above) than I was fearing the unknown. I decided that I wanted to seek out those 'what if' moments and answer them. What lies down that dusty old road? Let's find out. What if I take a month long trip down the coast? Let's find out. What lies just over that horizon...
 
RoamingRobertsons said:
In a word, escape. I get plenty of interaction everyday with a wide variety of people but many are self-centered jackholes. I look for adventure for relaxation and to escape the jackholes. Think of the obstacles as barriers for those people. The more obstacles, whether physical barrier or something as simple as cellular service, the more likely I am to find peace. It also appears much of the good stuff to see takes some effort to get to it. As a result, when I encounter people, they tend to be like-minded reasonable people seeking the same thing as I and appreciating the same things as I. Thus, whether I am alone or at an organized event of like-minded individuals, I can escape nonetheless.
Click to expand...

THIS
 
dr1665 said:
One of the topics I'm most curious about exploring with Adventurist Life is adventure itself. I'd like your take on it!

If adventure is a sliding scale of "looking for trouble/challenges/obstacles," why do you seek it out? In other words, if the journey is the destination, why would you set a course for such a challenging destination?

Thanks!
Click to expand...

I think adventure means different things to different people. It's personal.

For me, I love extremes of terrain and climate and weather. I love a physical challenge (thus my military career) as well as an intellectual challenge. I flog my truck across vast landscapes challenging it and myself as I search out new places - and revisit old ones again and again because they speak to me. And when it sucks because the terrain is rough or there is weather, I feel alive.

Adventure is sharing these challenges with friends and seeing the light in their eyes as they see these places for the first time, when I see that they too feel the passion, the mania, that I have for these extremes of clime and place.

Adventure is many things to me. A new trail, a new vista, a hidden oasis. Something as improbable as finding Koi fish in a hidden pond near Death Valley where they should not be, or millions of flowers in a barren desert.

Adventure is a feeling. It's an addiction. It's when you zig when you should have zagged only to find out that you've just stumbled upon the perfect campsite or viewpoint and now your entire schedule and the weekend's priorities have been rearranged because this new place requires it. It requires you to stay, to grok all that it is, to linger and drink it in. To abide.

Adventure is getting hammered by an unexpected storm and saying to yourself in a panic "oh shit, we're not prepared" and then jury rigging a way to get through it with a smile, looking back on the hilarity of your predicament and the way everyone came together with pride.

Adventure happens. Seek it. Embrace it. Because when you're not having any adventures, life has no flavor. The ensuing ennui is unbearable, driving us up and out there once more to get our fix.

That's what Adventure means to me.
 
There was a time when life was an adventure every day. Early man lived a serious adventure just in order to survive. For me, that adrenalin rush has been an important part of my life. When undertaking a risk my senses peak, my attention heightens, my brain fires. I can feel the blood in my veins, the call on my body. A big part of adventure is fear and all that entails. Facing and overcoming fear is an absolute blast. Very little in life compares.
 
There are so many reasons.
Both Debbie and I grew up in the small logging town of Colville,WA. Her father ran a logging company and she would often go out with him on jobs while growing up, spending a lot of time exploring the outdoors. My father on the other hand was a forester working for the state in the same town, then in his retirement as an interpretive guide for several National Parks over the years. While I didn't go out with him on the job, we did spend a lot of time outdoors hiking and camping. Through our fathers we both learned a love of the outdoors and adventure.

Fast forward 30 years after leaving town, we both work in the tech industry and spend our weekdays driving desks, our kids have all moved out, and we live in suburbia. So now we spend our weekends and vacations seeking both the outdoor adventures we had as kids and at the same time seeing the places we've always dreamed of. Not only outdoors, but most of it.

Growing up, I would often mention how I wanted to go somewhere or do something. My father would simply respond with "So, why don't you?" With that question, the unobtainable became plans, then became attainable, then became action, then became reality.

I guess it all boils down to escape, adventure, exploration, inspiration, and curiosity.

--Jesse
 
Hmm, some good thoughts already. For some, its hard to say why, it just seems a compulsion at times, a natural draw. For others, they don't understand why some seek adventure. I don't know if I can really describe the why part for me.

Somehow a few things keep coming to mind when the adventure idea comes up.

By Robert Service,

The Rhyme of the Remittance Man

There's a four-pronged buck a-swinging
in the shadow of my cabin,
And it roamed the velvet valley till to-day;
But I tracked it by the river,
and I trailed it in the cover,
And I killed it on the mountain miles away.

Now I've had my lazy supper,
and the level sun is gleaming
On the water where the silver salmon play;
And I light my little corn-cob,
and I linger, softly dreaming,
In the twilight, of a land that's far away.

Far away, so faint and far,
is flaming London, fevered Paris,
That I fancy I have gained another star;
Far away the din and hurry,
far away the sin and worry,
Far away -- God knows they cannot be too far.

Gilded galley-slaves of Mammon --
how my purse-proud brothers taunt me!
I might have been as well-to-do as they
Had I clutched like them my chances,
learned their wisdom, crushed my fancies,
Starved my soul and gone to business every day.

Well, the cherry bends with blossom
and the vivid grass is springing,
And the star-like lily nestles in the green;
And the frogs their joys are singing,
and my heart in tune is ringing,
And it doesn't matter what I might have been.

While above the scented pine-gloom,
piling heights of golden glory,
The sun-god paints his canvas in the west,
I can couch me deep in clover,
I can listen to the story
Of the lazy, lapping water -- it is best.

While the trout leaps in the river,
and the blue grouse thrills the cover,
And the frozen snow betrays the panther's track,
And the robin greets the dayspring
with the rapture of a lover,
I am happy, and I'll nevermore go back.

For I know I'd just be longing for
the little old log cabin,
With the morning-glory clinging to the door,
Till I loathed the city places,
cursed the care on all the faces,
Turned my back on lazar London evermore.

So send me far from Lombard Street,
and write me down a failure;
Put a little in my purse and leave me free.
Say: "He turned from Fortune's offering
to follow up a pale lure,
He is one of us no longer -- let him be."

I am one of you no longer;
by the trails my feet have broken,
The dizzy peaks I've scaled, the camp-fire's glow;
By the lonely seas I've sailed in --
yea, the final word is spoken,
I am signed and sealed to nature. Be it so.

bill3.jpg
 
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The Call of the Wild

Have you gazed on naked grandeur
where there's nothing else to gaze on,
Set pieces and drop-curtain scenes galore,
Big mountains heaved to heaven,
which the blinding sunsets blazon,

Black canyons where the rapids rip and roar?
Have you swept the visioned valley
with the green stream streaking through it,
Searched the Vastness for a something you have lost?
Have you strung your soul to silence? Then for God's sake go and do it;

Hear the challenge, learn the lesson, pay the cost.
Have you wandered in the wilderness,
the sagebrush desolation, The bunch-grass levels where the cattle graze?
Have you whistled bits of rag-time at the end of all creation,
And learned to know the desert's little ways?

Have you camped upon the foothills,
have you galloped o'er the ranges,
Have you roamed the arid sun-lands through and through?
Have you chummed up with the mesa?
Do you know its moods and changes?

Then listen to the Wild -- it's calling you.
Have you known the Great White Silence,
not a snow-gemmed twig aquiver?
(Eternal truths that shame our soothing lies).
Have you broken trail on snowshoes? Mushed your huskies up the river,

Dared the unknown, led the way, and clutched the prize?
Have you marked the map's void spaces, mingled with the mongrel races,
Felt the savage strength of brute in every thew?
And though grim as hell the worst is, can you round it off with curses?
Then hearken to the Wild -- it's wanting you.

Have you suffered, starved and triumphed,
groveled down, yet grasped at glory,
Grown bigger in the bigness of the whole?
Done things just for the doing,
letting babblers tell the story,

Seeing through the nice veneer
the naked soul?
Have you seen God in His splendors,
heard the text that nature renders?
(You'll never hear it in the family pew).

The simple things, the true things, the silent men who do things --
Then listen to the Wild -- it's calling you.
They have cradled you in custom,
they have primed you with their preaching,
They have soaked you in convention through and through;

They have put you in a showcase;
you're a credit to their teaching --
But can't you hear the Wild? -- it's calling you.
Let us probe the silent places,
let us seek what luck betide us;

Let us journey to a lonely land I know.
There's a whisper on the night-wind,
there's a star agleam to guide us,
And the Wild is calling,
calling. . .let us go.

IMG_0553.jpg
 
I remember the first time I jumped from a slick, took fire, buried my face as far as it would go in the mud. Prayed that if I got out of this alive I would--- maybe you know the drill. The pure sense of living, of breathing, of surviving made my life exciting. Lived it for 5 tours in C.A. Chased that feeling ever since. Found it on big walls in Yosemite, waves on the north shore, cliff jumping at Squaw Valley. Hang gliding the face at Heavenly Valley, diving out of airplanes, driving most every trail in the Sierra with some of the best folks ever. Wheels under and one in front of you, friends and family along, adventure shared, what's not to love?
 
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To escape, to run for the horizon, to see the vast expanses, the open spaces, the places where the earth still rules man, where survival rests on my own skills, where life exists in each moment as it happens, where the air is pure, the water cold and clear, to live.

"what we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life. We do not live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to enjoy life. That is what life means and what life is for."

George Mallory 1922
 
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