In my talks I always try to emphasise the importance of adventure and endeavour in our placid, padded, 21st Century lives.
Adventure is a loose word, encapsulating a spirit of trying something new, trying something difficult. Going somewhere different, leaving your comfort zone. Above all it is about energy, enthusiasm, ambition, open-mindedness and curiosity.
If all this is true then “adventure” is not only daft things like rowing oceans, climbing mountains, cycling round the world. Adventure is everywhere, every day and it is just up to us to make the effort to seek it out.
You don’t have to have huge adventures all the time: I accept that we all have to pragmatically juggle our “real lives” too. You can have a small adventure, I say. You can have a very, very small adventure. And so the idea of microadventures was born.
They began as provocatively mundane “expeditions” – microadventures documented through microblogging (Twitter). I walked home for Christmas. I walked a lap of the M25 motorway.
I genuinely felt that these little trips gave me many of the same benefits and rewards as proper adventures. I decided to spend a whole year practicing what I preached: a year focussed solely on small, simple microadventures exploring my own country. I would make a video for each one and share it online.
I was worried about this idea. My “job” is writing and speaking about big trips, big plans. What on earth was I doing planning to mess around on overnight jaunts and commuter bicycles? And from a personal point of view, would I find it frustrating, boring and too easy?
How wrong I was! I have had a lot of fun, learned a lot about film making and discovered wonderful new corners of Britain. More rewarding though has been how the idea has been received. People seem to “get” the idea that, even though we are busy we can still find (must still find) small pockets of time to test ourselves and to get away from the noise and clutter of modern life, out into wildness. To sleep under the stars, stand on a hilltop, swim in a river and swap Twitter for birdsong, if only for a short while.
I have received emails from loads of people, from as far afield as North America, Australia and Japan, from people who have been prodded to go and try something like this for the first time, often taking their kids with them too. Someone even stole the spirit of microadventures and quoted it word for word as his own idea in a speech at a conference. I’mve chosen to see that as a compliment!
It was also a year designed to bust some of the wimpish, pessimistic excuses I often hear. Here’s a few of them with links to my responses.
- I’mm not fit enough to go on an adventure.
- I don’t have time for it.
- I don’t live in a beautiful, wild place.
- I don’t have enough money.
- Britain is boring.
- Britain is too crowded. The roads are too dangerous.
- Microadventure is fine for beginners, but I want something difficult and dangerous.
I’mm going to finish with two final things that confirmed for me that this was a year well spent. To my complete surprise I was nominated as one of National Geographic’s Adventurers of the Year (be sure to vote for the two sherpas who I want to win overall).
And I received an email from Mark Twight. I’mve mentioned him often on this blog (here, here and here). Mark is a great climber, he founded Gym Jones, wrote the superb (if uncomfortable) Kiss or Kill and is a self-confessed elitist. Having cheerfully spent the past year encouraging unfit people to wobble off on rusty bicycles to camp for just one night a couple of miles down the road, I opened the message with trepidation. Here are a few excerpts…
“What I fight against is the tendency for human beings to put forth less than our best effort when trying to accomplish an objective we have described as important. I am starting to believe the objective is irrelevant and all that matters is the curiosity, the commitment, the effort and analysis of it because these are the “components” that cause us to grow and change regardless of what we are doing.
Of course, certain objectives force us to overcome ourselves in a very commanding way and these are often held in higher esteem. I could use Hemingway’s big three of car racing, mountain climbing and bullfighting but it could be anything where the physical risk / danger facilitates a limit-shattering effort or performance.
But the activity itself need not be life-threatening to produce growth or change if it is undertaken with requisite commitment, and practiced with the highest level of effort one can muster despite the discomfort and fear it causes. And this is where the microadventure idea plucked a chord. The M25? I looked it up on a map. Are you f-ing mad? Of course you are. But… you conceived the journey and immersed yourself in it, totally. Saw it through, opened your mind to whatever could and did happen along the way. Paid attention. Noticed. And the point was not simply to close the loop so you could say you did it (as so many marathons and triathlons are treated) but to have the experience, to push and pull and participate fully in the process. Apply that ideal to anything and you become something (more) along the way.
“All in, or not at all” is the cure for mediocre performance: headfirst, into the deep end (or the river) and see it through right along the ragged edge of your own, individual potential. Leave the comparisons [with elite expeditions] out of it. If you can look back afterward and truthfully admit to having given everything then the result of any comparison to others does not matter.
Keep doing what you are doing,
Mark
So I will keep doing what I am doing. I’mll keep encouraging people to take their first tiny steps towards starting to live adventurously. And I will keep heading off on microadventures of my own.
Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and thank you for reading my blog this year.
Al
The Year in Video – a selection:
1. Enter a race
8. River Swim
9. Grab a Map. Close your Eyes. Point. Go
11. Evangelise!
Having just read you book Riding into Africa, I did a 6 days solo cycle tour.
http://www.trekkerboy.com/category/tfn2008route/
I didn’t camp but slept in lodges.
I love the microadventure idea. This past summer, we began experimenting with a “smallest adventure” of our own, framed a little differently. Instead of setting out to see how far we could get in a certain unit of time, we decided instead to spend an entire week exploring the territory within 1/8 mile of our house as a family, without leaving that circle, and without succumbing to the temptation of staying inside to work on our computers. It was amazing how many new places we found within such a literal stone’s throw. Smallest Adventure final blog post
This winter, we’re planning to expand the circle to 1/4 mile. Then 1/2. Then… You get the idea.
Another great year full of interesting, inspiring and well written pieces – your blog is a pleasure to follow. Keep up all the good work and the best of luck with your adventures in 2012!
It’s been great following your year of Microadventures and has really inspired me, thanks Al!
So I couldn’t decide who to vote for today… the sherpas were just so crazy that my mind couldn’t wrap itself around what they did… that’s the obvious choice, but what you are doing causes people (at least me) to flip a little switch in their own brain, to feel like they really can be a little bit more alive than they are already. I have a big thing against the idea that if you can’t hike Mt. Everest, then you can’t have a hardcore adventure. I love that you are pushing people to not go for the soft-core walk up a hill, but instead stay overnight and be cold and uncomfortable and gloriously alive, pushing those limits. I love that. Okay, so, you want the sherpas to win, so that’s who I voted for.
My Micro Adventure for this weekend. How many of Johannesburg’s Parks can I run through in 6 hours?
Starting from home at 6am on Sunday and hoping to do the following ‘big’ parks – Zoo Lake, Emmarentia (Johannesburg Botanical Gardens), Mellville Koppies, Delta Park and Alberts Farm. Still finding the best route to get to lots of smaller parks. My normal trail running route of 28km covers 8 parks, I am hoping to at least double that, and am setting myself a goal of 20, total distance of 35-40kms.
Additional rules
– if you cant get into the park, running along the border of the park counts.
– The definition of a park? Either 1. It has a Joburg Parks name board, 2. It has a name in the Map Studio street maps book
Initial planning on mapstudio and google earth give us 32 parks to visit. Next step is to work out a route between them. I will be starting from home (near Delta Park). Currently the planned route stands at 40.5km and includes 32 parks.
How did you get on, William?
Heya Alistair,
William did 44 big and small park in Johannesburg in six hours. It took him a total of 6h25 to get back home and in these extra 25 minutes he got another three parks. A fabulous microadventure.
Lisa
Wow, I can’t believe I’ve only just come across this. My boyfriend and I have been doing “microadventures” every weekend (we call them Something Saturdays) since September 2012! Very cool that you’re encouraging people to explore their own backyards!