The Spirit of Adventure

Sunset brings another day to an end, and with it, another adventure. Cow River Beach, PEI.

We spent the weekend in the dark, gathered around the wood stove while outside we had our first blizzard of the New Year. We’ve got a fresh crop of twelve baby chicks waiting to hatch in the incubator, and with the power out they were counting on us to keep them warm.

It was an adventure in its own right (and an all-nighter, at that), and it got me thinking more about the spirit of adventure, and what it means to discover adventure in the most unlikely of places.

Many people often talk about ‘some day’ when it comes to finding adventure, while other people always seem to have a story to tell, as if adventure, or discovery, or experience, just falls into their lap. They’re the never-a-dull-moment sort of friend. But what is it about them? Well, it’s not that adventure somehow finds them; it’s that they find it.

Adventure, to me, is when experience encounters narrative, and is best understood through story. To find adventure, you simply need to seek out experience, and make it into something meaningful. And in this way, adventure is not what happens to you, but how you respond to it.

But to have a spirit of adventure is to seek out new trails, new horizons, and new experiences, purely for the sake of discovery. Many people wonder ‘what’s down that road’, or ‘where does this trail lead’, but adventurers are those who are curious enough to find out. Given this, adventure can take place anywhere, and at any time, because adventure is crafted by our narrative understanding of that experience. It’s only in deconstructing the experience, that we realize the adventure that we’ve had.

This isn't to say that our stories need to be told to be appreciated; it’s not to say that we must seek out the recognition of others for our adventures to matter. On the contrary, an adventure is only worthwhile if it means something to us. Everything else is secondary.

And so, to those of you with resolute dreams of discovering adventure some day, I urge you to ask yourself “why not today?” Because yes, grand things may lie in wait, but sometimes it is the most unexpected of experiences that become the greatest adventures of all, for as we know, life is what happens while we’re busy making other plans, and we hope to be part of those plans someday.

Yours in adventure,

​Nathan