What is Adventure?
And why do we need it in our lives?
(Author’s Note: If you are just joining the conversation and want to know more about The Adventurous Heart, I recommend starting with Post #1. Secondly, an abbreviated version of this essay “What is Adventure” appeared in Alpinist 88, Winter 2025)
“Life never comes to closure, life is process, even mystery. Life is known only by those who have found a way to be comfortable with change and the unknown. Given the nature of life, there may be no security, but only adventure.”
— Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D. Kitchen Table Wisdom
Talkeetna Alaska, 1983
In the Fairview Inn, in the long Alaskan twilight, I try to ease myself back into civilization like a man might lower himself into a hot bath. For a month now I have lived in mountain time, my own term for the state of consciousness I fall into in wilderness, a perspective so removed from anything urban, it’s a shock to even name the days of the week once more.
My companions from the expedition are all scattered. Evelyn spirited away by helicopter into the sunset on Denali. Rick left behind to brood on the mountain. Kelley already jet-bound home to Utah.
Sitting alone in a corner of the bar, I do my best to drink a beer slowly. It’s no use though. After a month of powdered drink mix, the alcohol comes alive on my tongue like heat lightning. The jukebox throbs out Mr. Roboto by Styx. As I sit nursing the incandescent beer, one by one, fragments come back to me.
Once again, I see the ice falls, blue, many-tiered, too complex for the mind to follow, and a sky perpetually in motion, clouds caught in some immense turbulence, wrung out and twisted into wreaths of vapor.
I remember the roar of avalanches falling through the alpenglow of evening, and the sound of skis slicing passage across miles of glacier.
As we flew from Talkeetna to the landing strip on the Kahiltna Glacier our pilot Doug Geeting pointed out Foraker, the mountain the Koyukon called “Solt’annh.”
“Where?” I asked over the headset. All I could see was a wall of mist.
“Not there,” he said. “Up there.”
I strained to look where he pointed through the Cessna’s blue plexiglass, and far up in the clouds, higher than any earthly thing should be, shimmered the ghostly silhouette of a mountain…
Adventure is the world’s oldest topic. Gilgamesh, the Iliad, the Odyssey, and Beowulf are all adventure tales. We all think we know what it is. But what is adventure really, and what purpose does it serve for we digital natives of the 21st Century?
Ironically, much of what we presume to know about adventure we learn in the comfort of our own homes. Movies, television, social media, and video games teach us that adventure is nothing more than an amusement park ride; an exhilarating series of close calls, which never fear, the protagonist will overcome before the final credits roll. And there’s no doubt that it’s satisfying to sit by the fire reading how in 1953, in thin air and bitter cold, Edmund Hilary and Tenzing Norgay staggered the last few steps to the top of the world.
But the result of learning about adventure by reading, watching, or playing, is that what we think we know — is not adventure at all. Its entertainment. And when we conflate adventure and recreation, we also think that when we first experience it ourselves, it will be filled with fun, excitement, and success. We envision ourselves in the role of the shining knight slaying the dragon, winning the prince or princess, and reaping all the rewards such achievements bestow.
Therefore, it’s often a shock when we find ourselves in a real adventure for the first time. Far from help, and it’s getting dark, when we are too hot, too cold, too dirty, sick, hungry, thirsty, exhausted, exasperated, and frightened to go on. That’s when we want to close the book. We want to switch off the screen, turn off the lamp, and go upstairs to bed.
But we can’t. Because a true adventure doesn’t stop when we’re hungry, scared or tired. In fact, that’s when it actually begins — out at that lonely threshold where all plans fail and there’s no guarantee of a happy ending.
For perhaps the first time in our lives, we’re stuck. Stuck in a situation that reveals what the spiritual teacher G.I Gurdjieff called our chief feature. This is our base personality when all the social masks have been stripped away. This is who we truly are, when life breaches our emotional defenses and we have nowhere left to hide.
It’s hard to find a more succinct description of adventure in this, the classic sense, than Ernest Shackleton’s London newspaper advertisement seeking expedition members for his ill-fated 1914 attempt to become the first to cross Antarctica: “Men Wanted: For hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in case of success.”
In three short phrases Shackleton nailed it. Traditional adventure is an epic journey away from the protection of civilization. It is suffering and deprivation writ large. It is little, or no hope of either success or reward; save for the possibility of some kind of recognition should one manage to survive.
But if adventure is such an ordeal, why does it exert such a universal attraction? Why did Shackleton receive more than 5,000 applicants, including several from women, demonstrating that even at the start of the twentieth century, people longed for more adventure in their lives?
The answer, of course, is that they were looking for more… not more suffering, but more meaning. Not more deprivation, but more purpose. Not more hardship, but more opportunities to be united by a great cause. Just like those of us living today, they were longing for those things that a society focused exclusively on money and material comfort struggles to provide.
Because one of the great lessons, adventure has to teach is that true wealth is not running from suffering (which is impossible regardless), it is turning to consciously face it. Success is not avoiding adversity, it is growing through it. And, the result of joining hands with others in order to face overwhelming odds is a sense of kinship impossible to find in common hours.
In Latin the prefix ad means in the direction of — to be drawn toward. Venture is a risky undertaking, a daring journey, or course of action. Therefore, to engage in adventure is to be drawn toward challenge, risk, and the unknown.
The axial word here being risk. Because regardless of the form it takes, adventure always contains some element of risk, either physical, psychological, or both, the possibility of failure and embarrassment, the potential for discomfort, loss, suffering, injury, or death.
And even though civilization hates to admit it, even in the 21st Century, life is filled with risk, because life remains uncertain. If we knew the outcome of every situation in advance, there would be no risk. There would be no adventure. And life would be intolerably dull.
And where there is risk, there is also fear. Pop culture is filled with references to “conquering fear” and “becoming fearless.” All of which are complete nonsense because fear is an essential part of staying alive. All living creatures experience fear, the physiological reactions triggered by the desire to avoid pain and loss. As former special forces soldier Brandon Webb has written, “Fear is no illusion. Fear is real. Convince yourself that it isn’t, and you are already dead.”
In all my years documenting adventure, I’ve never known anyone who didn’t feel fear. This includes Alex Honnold, the climber who famously free soloed Yosemite’s El Capitan. Even though Honnold has an incredible ability to manage his fear, nothing makes him angrier than when people assume he doesn’t feel fear at all.
And despite the perennial references to adventure athletes being “adrenaline junkies,” getting high on fear, no one I’ve ever known enjoys the sensation of being afraid and the flood of neural hormones that accompanies it.
But what is extremely addicting is facing and overcoming one’s fear. In fact, the feeling of mastering fear and transcending limitations, is one of the finest sensations a human being can ever experience.
So, adventure offers novelty, change, excitement (and occasionally fame and fortune) in exchange for confronting our deepest fears and anxieties. Adventure encourages us to try things that we personally — and perhaps no one else in history — have ever tried before. Adventure asks us to forget who we think we are, in order to discover a better, more heroic, version of ourselves. And, while that process might be challenging and frightening — it’s also highly rewarding.
In this way, the relationship we form with adventure determines how we live our lives, because in an uncertain world nothing can be accomplished without risk, and no risk can be taken without learning to work with fear.
When pursued mindfully, modern adventure activities such as climbing, caving, kayaking, backcountry skiing, and hiking (to name a few) teach us how to work with risk and fear in incremental, controlled, and positive ways. They teach confidence and resilience by proving through repeated experience that struggle and challenge are not to be avoided — they are essential steps on the path of personal growth. They teach us that things that once seemed impossible can, with commitment, proper training, and dedication, be attained. And this approach can then be applied to every other aspect of our lives.
For the mythologist Joseph Campbell, the great adventure was finding the courage to leave the safety of what is known and familiar, in order to discover one’s own unique path in life. Campbell believed that all external adventures, and all the myths and legends surrounding them, are merely metaphors for this essential internal quest to find the “Grail” of one’s true purpose, one’s “bliss,” as he called it. And, as he noted, to set out on that journey requires extraordinary strength of will in order to escape society’s constant efforts to shape us in it’s image.
There’s no doubt that sailing to Antarctica in 1914, in a wooden ship in elemental ice, snow, and stinging cold was an adventure. But make no mistake, adventure is also grabbing a guitar and heading out on the road to become an itinerant musician. Adventure is the first day of class. It’s leaving a small town to try to make it in the big city. It’s overcoming physical and emotional handicaps, and taking a stand against ignorance, hatred, prejudice, and injustice. And of course, falling in love is always an adventure, perhaps the most perilous of all.
To be continued…
