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Simple adventures
WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD? At one end of a broad spectrum, there's flying wingsuits. In the middle, there's a catalogue of multi-day adventures. A few years ago, I made a journey from the top of the North Island to the sea – climbing Ruapehu, mountain biking some fun off-road trails to the Whanganui River, four days of kayaking through its gorges, and a final day of quiet road cycling to the coast. I loved the sense of travelling, the variety of the terrain covered and the different types of travel, and I’ve been pondering similar trips. How about climbing Grey Peak, then a ski down to Chancellor Dome, paraglide to Fox Glacier, finish with a kayak down the river to the coast? An idea that’s growing on me is a combined tramping and paragliding journey, carrying everything required to fly and walk in the back country for a week or so. A packraft might allow long journeys in wild valleys where venturing would otherwise be chancy. I have a love for remoteness and commitment, and for those trips the clock is ticking – the ice is disappearing, and the robustness and fitness such trips require won’t be with me forever. But there’s something else I’d like to become more involved with: the simplest of adventures.
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I’ve talked elsewhere about something called ‘flow’, the state of mind that comes when you’re operating right at your limit in a hazardous environment, and I’ve also tried to offer an explanation as to why people are motivated by endeavours that involve risk. Those who are riding the razor’s edge of possibility are getting big rewards in ways that it seems are hard to comprehend by those who are more conservative. However, I do feel very strongly that anyone can step into the outdoors at their own level and find benefits. The goal in all good outdoor pursuits is ultimately a purely emotive one: to feel something new, or at least touch some emotion a little more deeply. It’s not so much to witness a sunset or be in the wind or watch the stars unwind as to become a part of it, to feel our presence in a raw, elemental and bigger world than that of our daily lives. It’s a shift from passive observer to engaged participant, and the single requirement to make it work is this: an open mind.
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So I’d like to encourage us all to have a collective shift in values and a move towards a time where people measure the worth of their days in simple and less tangible ways: some big grins, a little effort made, a minor chance taken, an opportunity grabbed to make a memory. A bike ride along the nearest trail followed by a campfire and sausages, a sunset or moonrise watched while walking on the beach, a swim and a picnic at the local river, a night spent in sleeping bag under the stars on the hills behind the house – easily achieved, simple ventures that anyone can participate in and enjoy, moments that surely have more value than an evening in front of the TV with a beer in hand. Go with friends and make an opportunity to really talk, talk about ‘forbidden’ topics, have the most important conversations possible: ones which make you change your mind. Or go alone, and take the chance to do something rare: be your own company. I believe that sprinkling a life with some five-to-nine microadventures with friends, strangers, family or alone, offers us an opportunity to experience something we would not otherwise touch.
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Stepping out can be difficult. It must have been hard for Hillary to get going from Camp IX, too, facing those appalling risks. What if I fall?
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Ah, but…what if you fly?
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The champions of this world are easily spotted if we don’t confuse reward with award. Instead of making heroes of All Blacks and Olympians and Ed Hillary, we can find role models in ordinary people like us who have taken the step: the father and daughter playing on Quail Island with the sea as a backdrop, the kid who rounds up his mates on a Saturday morning to kick a soccer ball around a park, the teenagers who have put their phones down and ridden bikes to the beach for a splash in the sea, or the elderly couple walking through the bush at dawn to hear the birdsong. We can draw inspiration from these people when they make an effort and reap the rewards of doing so, because they remind us that we have potential for the same pleasures and little achievements, and that we can be our own heroes.