National Geographic has an annual “adventurer of the year” people’s choice award. This year includes a guy who is, I gather, a bigtime adventurer, only he recently stopped spending all that money jetsetting around the globe to scare himself and instead explored around his home town — and had a great time doing it. So he then started promoting the idea of everyone doing this. He’s calling these outings “microadventures.” Sounds cool. But, of course…isn’t this what regular people do all the time anyway? It’s certainly what I’ve been promoting here for 20 years. Well, more local seems more good to me! Sustainable, low overhead, enlightening. It’s harder to find the exotic in what you already know…but actually that’s not the point. We’re not looking for rollercoaster thrills, are we? Is novelty and thrill all that it’s cracked up to be? Aren’t these just tools for ad sales, mostly? It all wears off so quickly that it’s pretty obvious no basis for life so why try fool yourself. Maybe a simple question like plain old “Is it worth doing?” is the better one to ask about a project, rather than “Is it fun, hard, scary and thrilling?”
https://adventure.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/adventurers-of-the-year/2012/alastair-humphreys/
Adventure Prize Candidate Promotes “Microadventures”
