Healing the Heart of Adventure.
“Raising Our State” Photo: Ken Wylie collection.
When I think back across thirty years of packing my bag and heading for the hills, or “putting in” on a river I recognize that my love affair with adventure has been a process of learning sensitivity. Sensitivity for what I am feeling in my body, with what others perceive, to the environment and with the “guiding mystery.” (however you wish to define that for yourself.) It is this journey that I have come to love, because through gained sensitivity I have grown. The process has been the toughest adventure of my life, and I now understand the heart of adventure.
Adventure has been my rite of passage. The process of engaging intimately with challenge, the unknown, and joyful/painful consequence, is my most profound teacher. But like any effective learning I need to be openhearted and trust the process, so that I can internalize the lessons from the master. I struggle with this at times because it is fucking scary to put aside who and what I think I am, and step into the unknown mysteries about myself, and allow transformation to occur. I have been terrified to allow my outer shell to die in order to make room to grow. The exoskeleton of unconscious patterns, biases, fears and desires that keep me from making important changes in my life. Afraid of being accountable for the mistakes I have made that have cost lives and profoundly impacted others. But the result of doing this work is a net gain in sensitivity. And sensitivity is a sister to maturity. The rite of passage to being an adult.
It is important to see adventure in this context. Collectively, our narrative has been that adventure is about freedom. The notion of it being an arena for personal growth is often scoffed at, even within professional adventure education circles and definitely in the mountain guiding professional community. Mallory’s quip“because it is there” has been a subtext mantra. Questioning the why of adventure has been made out to be silly. Chiefly because we are afraid. We do not want to take on the responsibility for our growth. Adventure is historically the place where we run away from our responsibilities. The work of transformation through adventure is hard. Really hard. So hard that most take the bypass. I did for decades. But this is terribly dangerous because it is through our own growth that we gain sensitivity and through that achievement, safety.
If there is a truth about Adventure it is that it has the potential to be the single most important arena for humanity right now. In a world filled with fake, the adventure context can be real, and has the potential to teach adventurers to be real too. Real humans, real landscapes, real decisions, real consequence. It is only by being one hundred percent real ourselves, that we are able to traverse through adventure’s perilous situations safely. But being real is not automatic. We can make it all fake, and we do. But truth and honesty is the heart and soul of adventure. Authentic adventure warriors understand that the game is about mastering ourselves, and if we wish to save adventure’s soul it is critical that we live this notion. This is the heart of adventure, and you and I need to heal it, and we will do that by healing ourselves. Together.