Have We Been Defining Adventure Wrong?
What is adventure?
If you’ve spent any time at all in the outdoor community, your hand is probably shooting into the air, ready with answers like ‘bike-packing in Mongolia’ and ‘first ascents in the Andes’.
As with any sports-focussed community, there is a consistent strobe of images projected to us that tell us what it looks like not just to belong, but to reach the pinnacle of success. From free-soloing El Cap to stomping a 200 foot cliff drop on skis, the things that meet this self-created definition of ‘adventure’ get more and more extreme every day. Like a drug, we become inured to ordinary levels of gnarliness, so sponsors and the media demand ever-more extreme feats from athletes, and the athletes deliver, because their careers depend on it.
The end product is an increasingly narrow definition of what it looks like to do adventure. The media we see subconsciously shape our understanding of our own role in this space, and for everyday people in the outdoor community, it becomes harder and harder to see our own activities reflected in the extraordinary accomplishments of the few who have ‘made it’. It can be easy to start questioning whether you truly belong here, or have permission to call yourself adventurous.
This is particularly true for women, who are markedly underrepresented in outdoor media. Studies show that when women are depicted, it’s as engaging in less physically challenging activities, as being followers rather than leaders, and of course as being white, young, slim and beautiful.
We all know the saying, ‘you can’t be what you can’t see’. Women participate in outdoor recreation 20% less than men, and those from non-white and LGBTQ+ backgrounds barely make a statistical blip. It’s not surprising when the outdoor community presents adventure as inaccessibly challenging, available only to those privileged with time or money or both, and as intimidatingly attractive on top of it all. As a result, many women self-select by not identifying as outdoorsy, leading to, as one study observed, “fewer outdoor opportunities for women, and lack of early skill development and confidence in the outdoors.” It becomes a vicious circle.
Not long ago, I was one of those self-selecting women. At one event I attended, a professional big mountain skier asked rhetorically, “well, we’re all outdoorsy, aren’t we?” I remember physically recoiling in my chair, and thinking with certainty, “Oh no. Not me.” Because I wasn’t charging massive lines in Alaska or fat tire biking through Annapurna in Nepal.
But this is a definition of adventure that has been handed to us. It has been crafted since the dawn of time by bold men leaving their rarely-mentioned families behind to explore uncharted seas and pursue glory on the Arctic tundra, and then curated by outdoor magazine publishers, new school indie ski film makers and Instagram influencers.
To accept this definition is to externalize the concept of adventure, to hand over to someone else the responsibility of developing a shared understanding of what this term should mean.
When we do this, we create an ever-smaller community of people who have permission to call themselves adventurous. We miss out on hearing the stories of those who’ve strived against unimaginable odds to become a Saturday hiker; those who show leadership in new and unconventional ways; those who are different, weird, and uniquely human. We miss out on hearing our own stories. And that is a loss for everyone.
What would happen, then, if we co-created a new definition of adventure?
I propose something that goes a little bit like this:
An adventure is any activity that:
Makes you feel vulnerable or pushes you out of your comfort zone;
Presents a challenge or a problem that needs to be overcome;
As a result of doing it you will grow or learn something new, regardless of whether you succeed.
Maybe an adventure for you is leaving your newborn for the first Tim to go mountain biking on a local trail. Maybe it’s asking for the pay rise you deserve. Maybe it’s joining a meetup group so you can make new friends.
For me, right now, adventure looks like committing to being a writer, and putting my work out into the world. It’s terrifying. I feel vulnerable as shit. What if you laugh at me, or think my writing isn’t good enough? What if you think I’m just looking for attention? What if I have nothing interesting to say?
It’s a challenge, because I need to find a way to make this crazy decision work financially, and I want to do that without being inauthentic or trying to sell you shit that you don’t want to buy.
But it’s absolutely something that I’m already growing and learning from, whether I get there in the end or not.
So here I am, being adventurous and sharing my thoughts with you. What’s your next adventure going to be?