[ research ] Adventurist 101: What is adventure?
- Thread starter dr1665
- Start date
Perhaps I have a low threshold for adventure but just getting up in morning reveals a new venture. To me, an adventure is multidimensional; it's not just the conventional "new trail," or unencountered challenge.
You can allow yourself to become weary or jaded to elements of life, and we all do to an extent. For some it might be the routine of going to work or ferrying kids to soccer. If you look beyond the task and focus on the unusual or even subtle events surrounding that task, the fertile mind will find adventure.
Call it the "Calvin & Hobbes Effect."
See what I mean...
Just add a Tyrannosaurus Rex flying an F-14 Tomcat... you are welcome.
You can allow yourself to become weary or jaded to elements of life, and we all do to an extent. For some it might be the routine of going to work or ferrying kids to soccer. If you look beyond the task and focus on the unusual or even subtle events surrounding that task, the fertile mind will find adventure.
Call it the "Calvin & Hobbes Effect."
See what I mean...
Just add a Tyrannosaurus Rex flying an F-14 Tomcat... you are welcome.
RoamingTimber
Adventurist
Anything with an uncertain outcome. There's a book on micro adventures by Alastair Humpreys that covers this. He has some ideas in there that I think are supposed to be like how to's for adventures that I could've done without, but the concept that adventures can be small and local has stuck with me since reading it.
RoamingTimber
Adventurist
This is a sweet topic though, Well Done!
jscusmcvet
Adventurist
I believe adventure is what you make it.
Due to life real honest to gosh grown up responsibilities, I will likely never take the "ultimate adventure". I read about guys who cast it all aside and roll for years at a time, living out of their jeep/truck whatever and while I do envy them, I know I will not ever get to that point. A few years back, when Ann and I were less than a decade away from retirement, God blessed us with Joe (I tried to name him retirement, but Ann intervened, thankfully) To put it in perspective when Joe was born our other two kids were 15 and 19. We made a move to liquidate assets and buy land now, rather than waiting. We started 6 years ago with 20 acres and now we are up to 85. Most all wooded, no neighbors within almost a mile. Surrounded by land owned primarily by one other family and the boy scouts. Joe is growing up as an avid outdoorsman, a goat and chicken farmer... he is comfortable in the woods, day or night... what better adventure is there?
My adventure lays outside my back door, as it did this morning when Ann and Joe were asleep and I left at sunrise for a 1.5 hour ramble through the woods, never leaving my property... and Ann has come along far enough to where she wants to pack up and leave for a week at a time or so... as long as beautiful places and good people are involved... hence our involvement in this community.
Due to life real honest to gosh grown up responsibilities, I will likely never take the "ultimate adventure". I read about guys who cast it all aside and roll for years at a time, living out of their jeep/truck whatever and while I do envy them, I know I will not ever get to that point. A few years back, when Ann and I were less than a decade away from retirement, God blessed us with Joe (I tried to name him retirement, but Ann intervened, thankfully) To put it in perspective when Joe was born our other two kids were 15 and 19. We made a move to liquidate assets and buy land now, rather than waiting. We started 6 years ago with 20 acres and now we are up to 85. Most all wooded, no neighbors within almost a mile. Surrounded by land owned primarily by one other family and the boy scouts. Joe is growing up as an avid outdoorsman, a goat and chicken farmer... he is comfortable in the woods, day or night... what better adventure is there?
My adventure lays outside my back door, as it did this morning when Ann and Joe were asleep and I left at sunrise for a 1.5 hour ramble through the woods, never leaving my property... and Ann has come along far enough to where she wants to pack up and leave for a week at a time or so... as long as beautiful places and good people are involved... hence our involvement in this community.
Phoenix
Adventurist
Perhaps I have a low threshold for adventure but just getting up in morning reveals a new venture. To me, an adventure is multidimensional; it's not just the conventional "new trail," or unencountered challenge.
You can allow yourself to become weary or jaded to elements of life, and we all do to an extent. For some it might be the routine of going to work or ferrying kids to soccer. If you look beyond the task and focus on the unusual or even subtle events surrounding that task, the fertile mind will find adventure.
Call it the "Calvin & Hobbes Effect."
See what I mean...
Just add a Tyrannosaurus Rex flying an F-14 Tomcat... you are welcome.
My first Jeep was named Hobbes
I had an art teacher that defined art as a celebration of the ordinary. I would define adventure as a celebration of the unordinary.
Mojoe Outfitters
Adventurist
People you know and people you don't.
Scott
Adventurist
For me, I define an adventure as anything I am doing that is out of my regular routine. Take this week for example... I am in Pennsylvania for training for work. I've been here a few times but it's by something I do regularly so this is my adventure. I've got all day tmorow to explore.. Anny AAV members close by? I'm in the reading area... Let's meet for a beer! Just landed and I'm having dinner at tilted kilt with a $2 yeungling because we cant get it in ca...
Sent from my LG-H810 using Tapatalk
Sent from my LG-H810 using Tapatalk
Scott
Adventurist
I'm here till Saturday morning. I have all day tomorrow free and I'm free after 3 on Friday.. Other than that I'm in training till 5pm every day but free after that.
Sent from my LG-H810 using Tapatalk
Every day in the Marine Corps..... Especially when orders show up that completely relocate you, your spouse and all of your personal belongings to an unknown destination... and the movers are usually excommunicated carnies/gypsies who are about a phone call away from a parole violation.
Ideally, adventure for me will someday again, be driving to a remote area of the desert (in the greater Yuma area) parking the Land Cruiser, setting up camp, venturing out on foot alone into the unknown and finding my way back to my vehicle without going back the way I came from and without the aid of map, compass or GPS. I miss playing that game. I used to call it "find my way back to the Jeep" so I'll have to modify it to Land Cruiser. Easy enough.
Ideally, adventure for me will someday again, be driving to a remote area of the desert (in the greater Yuma area) parking the Land Cruiser, setting up camp, venturing out on foot alone into the unknown and finding my way back to my vehicle without going back the way I came from and without the aid of map, compass or GPS. I miss playing that game. I used to call it "find my way back to the Jeep" so I'll have to modify it to Land Cruiser. Easy enough.
Adventure is in essence anything that breaks the mundane, increases the adrenaline flowing through your blood, and gives you moments of wonder.
It could be involved as taking on a raging river or sublime as hiking out of a forest canopy and witnessing a glorious view. It's the breath of a new child entering the world and the dangerous thrill of suddenly walking up on a bear deep in the woods. It's mad laughter and expletive laced shouts or quiet contemplation and whispered wonder.
But most of all it's fun and that's the way it should be.
It could be involved as taking on a raging river or sublime as hiking out of a forest canopy and witnessing a glorious view. It's the breath of a new child entering the world and the dangerous thrill of suddenly walking up on a bear deep in the woods. It's mad laughter and expletive laced shouts or quiet contemplation and whispered wonder.
But most of all it's fun and that's the way it should be.
jscusmcvet
Adventurist
This puts it in a nutshell to me. Well said.
This.
dr1665
Adventurist
I've heard a variation of this theme in a TED talk somewhere. The act of changing routine, creating and entertaining the smallest of curiosities, can do wonders for our subconscious mental health. Incredible how "taking the next right" can feel in the moment; the wonderment of seeing something for the first time or in a new light.
Solid comments overall, sir, but this one really resonated. Much as I love the idea of living out of a truck and touring the globe--with a liveried Mitsubishi race car behind my Earth Cruiser, no less--the thought of living out of a truck and touring the globe is a bit much for me. I suspect I'm destined to predominately 36-hour adventures. And that's fine by me.
Funny. I never associated the movers who packed our house for a PCS move as being anything like the guys from Richard Pryor's Moving. (Is it Mardi Gras time yet?) First time I had to pack my own stuff and drag it across country by myself was a most unpleasant surprise.
I'm hoping to get a few buddies together for some navigation training so we can play that game of yours, though. That's high on my priority list for this spring.
Those moments when we snap out of our egotistical fog, society's institutional tentacles fall away, and the universe fills us with wonder through our senses. They're far too few and far between, imo.
Thanks for the comments, guys. Inspired. Helpful. I'll have other adventure-related questions for you in the near future.
dr1665
Adventurist
I've heard a variation of this theme in a TED talk somewhere. The act of changing routine, creating and entertaining the smallest of curiosities, can do wonders for our subconscious mental health. Incredible how "taking the next right" can feel in the moment; the wonderment of seeing something for the first time or in a new light.
Solid comments overall, sir, but this one really resonated. Much as I love the idea of living out of a truck and touring the globe--with a liveried Mitsubishi race car behind my Earth Cruiser, no less--the thought of living out of a truck and touring the globe is a bit much for me. I suspect I'm destined to predominately 36-hour adventures. And that's fine by me.
Funny. I never associated the movers who packed our house for a PCS move as being anything like the guys from Richard Pryor's Moving. (Is it Mardi Gras time yet?) First time I had to pack my own stuff and drag it across country by myself was a most unpleasant surprise.
I'm hoping to get a few buddies together for some navigation training so we can play that game of yours, though. That's high on my priority list for this spring.
Those moments when we snap out of our egotistical fog, society's institutional tentacles fall away, and the universe fills us with wonder through our senses. They're far too few and far between, imo.
Thanks for the comments, guys. Inspired. Helpful. I'll have other adventure-related questions for you in the near future.