IF YOU WANT TO GET PHILOSOPHICAL, you’ll find a dozen definitions for “adventure,” including the famous sentiment that adventure begins when things start going wrong. When you think “things going wrong,” you probably think of avalanches, critical climbing gear getting dropped off a cliff face into oblivion, windstorms destroying tents, boats sinking—stuff like that.
That definition of adventure is a very defensible one, and probably one that best fits what we think of when we think of classic adventure books like Into Thin Air, The Worst Journey in the World, Endurance, Between a Rock and a Hard Place, and Touching the Void. That definition is also not quite what we have in mind for this book—I don’t want anyone to have to fall into a crevasse, see people die on Everest or in Antarctica, or have to amputate their own arm to feel like they’ve had a good time.
I’m thinking more about getting away from your office, your errands, your home improvement tasks; going somewhere with natural beauty; and maybe getting a little dirty, a little cold, and a little tired—but not so miserable that you forget to take a bunch of photos to look at when you get home. I think those criteria are good enough to qualify to be an adventure.
Since we’re not all grizzly mountaineers (or at least not all the time we’re not), my bar for adventure is more along the lines of pushing your comfort zone a little bit by doing something new or with an unknown outcome. Maybe it’s traveling to a country you’ve never been to or where you don’t speak the language, heading out on a trail into the wilderness without knowing what’s out there, or signing up for your first real mountain climb. Because doing something outside your comfort zone is never a sure thing, and that’s why you look forward to it with something like half excited anticipation and half nerves.
Some people like to spend their vacations lying on a beach with a good book, and that’s great—to each his or her own. I’ve never been very good at relaxing, or at least doing things that look like relaxing in the traditional sense. I’m more after the sort of moving relaxation you do while plodding up a snow slope in crampons, falling into the rhythm of pedaling a fully loaded touring bike for the eighth day in a row, or concentrating so hard on balancing to grab the next handhold that you forget about all the e-mails in your inbox.
This book isn’t a list of things you should try to do before you die (although it’s much easier to do them before you die than after). It’s a list of ideas of things you could do, whether you have a weekend free or a month free. And it’s a bunch of ideas on how to convince yourself to do those things, no matter what your definition of adventure is. There are no beach vacations in this book, but there are a hell of a lot of amazing places where you can take a book to read in your downtime. I hope you enjoy it.