Days Of Adventure 2023: 94
🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢⭕⭕⭕⭕⭕⭕ What is this?
We’re in the last month of 2023 — no, really, here we are. At times it’s all been a bit much, hasn’t it, this 2023 what we’ve done here?
But the times when it hasn’t felt all a bit much are represented by those 94 little green circle emojis; these are the days when I have put myself outside in nature for a neat slab of what I call adventure.
I’ve been counting my Days of Adventure every year since 2021 and this year I’ve been a little stricter on what counts, with a greater emphasis on time spent in nature, rather than simply adventuring.
I’m lucky that my whole summer was spent travelling, from Glasgow to Athens and back, but simply being elsewhere doesn’t necessarily give me what I’m looking for in an adventure.
What I’m looking for is restoration: a place of balance, connection and purpose.
At last week’s Adventure Mind conference, academic Susan Houge Mackenzie drew our attention to two species of ‘happiness’: hedonic and eudaimonic.
Hedonic wellbeing is characterised by the dopamine buzz of achievement. It’s all about what you’ve done: you climbed that mountain, cycled those miles, swam that ocean. And, once you’ve done that, it’s all about what’s next — higher, further, tougher.
The adventure industry, led by elite adventurers and their awe-inspiring stories and images, is OBSESSED with hedonic wellbeing. But, actually, chasing the dopamine dragon gets quite boring after a while. Boring or flat-out unsustainable physically, emotionally and existentially.
Eudaimonic wellbeing, on the other hand, is all about the human search for The Good Life. Eudaimonic adventure is not about what you’ve done; it’s about why you (really) did it. Who are you? What are your values? What does adventure mean to you?
Eudaimonic adventure is where we find restoration and the good news is that it works, and will continue to work, in small doses. Eudaimonic adventure can be found in the little wood round the corner from your house; a place where you could sit on a log for ten minutes during your lunch break.
That little wood (or riverbank, heathland or field hedgerow) isn’t striving with you for higher, further or tougher. The wood is not doing; the wood is being.
When we step away from the straight-edges of modernity and enter the magic circle of organic growth, our doing becomes being too and, here, under the leafy canopy with the beetles and the fungi, we can restore our sense of ourselves, our values and our intentions, in symbiotic relation to everything else.
As naturalist John Muir wrote, ‘Between every two pine trees there is a door leading to a new way of life.’
That might sound ambitious, but I don’t think he’d mind a wee edit: ‘Between every two pine trees there is a door leading to a new way of lunch.’
See you out there; bring sandwiches.
~
Related:
- Adventures in the millionaire’s jungle ravine! (12 February 2021)
- The Men Who Stare At Trees (31 January 2020)
- 34 trees, 2 magpies, and me (18 January 2019)