Forever on Our Mind: Rethinking Our Relationship With Adventure
A pep talk about what makes an adventure—inspired by the beauty of Scappoose Bay
47. Rethinking Our Relationship With Adventure
May 2019:
A few weeks back, I joined a three-hour kayaking lesson through Next Adventure’s Scappoose Bay Paddling Center.
The lesson took place entirely within Scappoose Bay, a slough that sits surrounded by wetlands alongside the Columbia River—an idyllic parcel for spying wildlife while learning the ins and outs of paddling.
Herons soared above the tree line and dove for lunch in the placid waters. Chinook salmon leapt for bugs buzzing just above the waterline. I got stuck in a mud bog trying to find an osprey rookery, and we spied empty beaver dams in the soggy wetlands.
A mall walker on their second lap would have left me in the dust—and if I ever broke a sweat, it’s only because I forgot to apply sunscreen. My pace could have accurately been described as “bumper-to-bumper, rush-hour traffic,” even if only a few stray paddlers patrolled the waters that afternoon.
To many, this laid-back paddle on a quiet bay off the Columbia River would have hardly counted as “adventure.” The outing didn’t require multiple REI trips, involve connecting flights or passport stamps, demand most of a few paychecks, or come after months of training and dieting. I reached the dock just 30 minutes after departing my Northwest Portland apartment, and it only took that long because I hit a few red lights along the way.
But to me, it was almost spiritual to see ospreys soaring overhead, their 7-foot wingspans casting shadows on the water below; to admire crooked tree trunks crowding the channel and reaching far enough overhead to form a verdant canopy; and to feel lazy waves lapping gently on the sides of my kayak. It wasn’t just an experience; it was an experience that I’d remember for years to come.
Back on land, the experience got me thinking about what “adventure” means—and maybe what it should mean.
Over the past year, I’ve done about 80 hikes totaling 450 miles across every corner of Oregon—traversing grassy meadows, summiting near-vertical crags, and heading deep into our state’s mountain ranges for views that extend to the ends of the Earth. And as I’ve talked with people about my passion and their own hiking experiences, I’ve heard a pretty common refrain: “I’ve done some hikes, but nothing like what you’ve done.”
Inside, I wince whenever I hear that.
On one hand, sure: I’ve probably hiked more than the average person, even in outdoorsy Portland.
Then again: Some of the best hikes I’ve tackled were among the easiest. One was a mostly flat, two-mile stroll atop Mount Howard that afforded wide-open views of the granite Wallowa Mountains; I never broke a sweat or reached for my water bottle on that hike, but that didn’t make the jagged, snow-capped peaks or the Lego brick plots of farmland below any less special or moving. Another gentle ascent took me to the summit of Mosier Plateau, where I peered into the teeth of the 80-mile-long Columbia River Gorge; while admiring that view, I never once thought, “This is great, but it’d be even better if I’d climbed 2,000 feet to get here.”
But that’s not what people imagine when they think about all that adventure; they imagine me climbing mountains, scaling peaks, wrestling with bears, single handedly battling armies of angry mosquitoes with just my wits and a Hydro Flask, and building a three-bedroom emergency shelter with just a space blanket and pine needles.
I’m not always quick to disabuse folks of that notion, but still: What others see in their minds differs from how I usually feel on the trail (awestruck—but tired, so damn tired) and what that experience is usually like (awe-inspiring—but exhausting, so damn exhausting). So the people around me fill in the blanks by instinctively comparing our adventures. And by framing their own outings as less accomplished or less thrilling, by debating the relative merits of our journeys, they inadvertently devalue their experiences and create a comparison that doesn’t hold up for more than a second.
To wit: We (sometimes subtly, almost always subconsciously) compare our dinners to what we see on the Food Network or on TikTok, our travels to what we double tap on Instagram, our living rooms to what we’ve pinned on Pinterest. It’s easy to fall into this same trap when it comes to adventure. Someone might see me hiking 450 miles or ascending thousands of feet and think that’s impressive, but I could find plenty of people who hiked more and climbed higher.
Taking that line of thinking to its logical conclusion, am I any less of a hiker because I didn’t hike 451 miles? Do my 80 hikes in a year invalidate anyone who tackled, say, 73 hikes over that same timespan? Am I any more or less special than the person who, fresh from a knee injury, just did their first hike—a flat, 2-mile stroll—in more than a year?
I think we can all agree the answer to those questions is “no”—and that the person recovering from a knee injury is a certified badass. So where’s the line between “adventure” and “not adventure” or “epic” and “not epic”? (That’s a trick question, because there is no line; it’s all adventure, and it’s all epic.) Adventure is what we make of it, no matter how much we spend or how high we climb, and it’s up to us to find value in whatever that looks like.
I would argue there’s just as much value in walking around a neighborhood park—watching bigleaf maple trees blanket the forest floor in hues of red and yellow each fall, seeing chipmunks scurry up a cinnamon-colored pine tree, and slathering marionberry jelly on a slice of warm bread during a waterside picnic—as hiking 450 miles in a given year. The fact that we get outside at all is what really matters, and we shouldn’t minimize those experiences or see them as “lesser” just because we’re not going harder, better, faster, stronger. What makes one natural space any more or less majestic than another? And why set aside green spaces and turn them into, say, neighborhood parks if they aren’t meant to be enjoyed in whatever way someone sees fit?
All this to say: We’d all be better off finding value in whatever experiences and adventures we do enjoy, rather than thinking we could or should do more. We could technically always do more, so where does that line of thinking ever end? Shouldn’t it end with a cold beer after the hike, a cotton-candy sunset at the coast, belly laughs around the campfire, and a general sense of gratitude we got to enjoy it at all?
If we take adventure on its own terms, we shift the mindset that marginalizes our experience and, in turn, stop comparing ourselves to others. Along the way, we develop a deeper appreciation for our experiences. Because every step on the trail, and every minute in the kayak, is worth celebrating. A day outdoors, whatever that looks like, is almost always better than a day under the bright lights of a cubicle farm.
Whatever we do, it’s more than “doing nothing”—and isn’t that worth something?
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