To adventure. When I was young, guided by my imagination and the books I read, I adventured.
My siblings and I laid planks between tree limbs and called them forts. We pinned blankets over the dome jungle gym and called it a tent. We dropped charcoal briquettes into freshly dug holes to bake potatoes and became frontiersmen. We walked the railroad tracks, our sandwiches tied in bandanas hanging from sticks, and called ourselves hobos. We built toboggan slides and became Olympic athletes. I read Jack London’s Call of the Wild and imagined a life in the far north where snowshoes and dog sleds would take me where I needed to go. I traveled to my grandfather’s cabin in the hills west of Duluth, Minnesota, and decided I must live off the land. I read Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and we built a raft that carried us nowhere on Kinnikinnick Creek. I read the tales of fur traders and voyageurs and learned to paddle a canoe….
To adventure. A simple infinitive suggesting infinite possibilities.
Later in life, sensing that something meaningful was missing, the paleontologist Loren Eiseley wrote—
As adults we are preoccupied with living. As a consequence, we see little…I am not the first man to have lost his way only to find, if not a gate, a mysterious hole in a hedge that a child would know at once led to some other dimension at the world’s end.
To adventure. As an adult, I adventure. I step outside my front door and pull out my bicycle, or fasten on my snowshoes, and head down the road or across the snow-covered field.
I go alone or with my children when they are visiting.
We seek everything and nothing in particular. Shadows and sunlight; the interesting and the unexpected.
As when children, as adults we adventure. We step outside. We begin. We seek the mystery that leads, as Eiseley wrote, to some other dimension at the world’s end.
Eiseley, Loren. “The Innocent Fox.” Collected Essays on Evolution, Nature, and the Cosmos, Vol. 1. Ed. William Cronon, 376. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 2016.
Photography by Tobias Mann, Adventurebent.com.
Pennington Co Sect: 24 
Nice work!
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Thank you!
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Wonderful–thanks for sharing! Important at all stages of our lives to be open to observation, nature’s wonders, possibilities….and adventure!
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Thanks, Wayne! No one adventures like you do!
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We did most of that stuff as kids too…but my parents also were great role models as adventurers. They traveled with us every summer, and then when we were grown they traveled the world. I have a strong sense of wanderlust and now that I’m retired I’m hoping I am able to explore like they did.
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I have also looked back with appreciation at my parents’ involvement in the “play” of our childhood. We built toboggan slides because Dad showed us it was possible…and, of course, my parents purchased the toboggan! My parents gave their Sunday afternoons to car drives to nature conservancies and historic landmarks where they parked and instructed us to investigate. Perhaps they were just ensuring some quiet time for themselves! At the end of the adventure, before heading home, my dad would ask if we understood where we’d played. “Do you know what happened here? Do you know the history of this place?” And then he’d tell us. My parents worked hard. A Sunday afternoon devoted to involvement with their six kids had to have been a sacrifice. I know myself how precious a day off is! Like yours, my parents were great role models. They are the reason I pushed my kids outdoors in the winter, why we involved them in travel and adventure throughout the seasons.
I hope you travel the world in your retirement as your parents did — please document those travels for us to read!
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