Days Of Adventure 2023: 83
🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢⭕⭕⭕⭕⭕⭕⭕⭕⭕⭕⭕⭕⭕⭕⭕⭕⭕ What is this?
Every year since 2021, I’ve tried to fill my days with at least a hundred adventures.
‘Adventure’ for me has a pretty low bar compared to the sorts of things that some people do. I’m not sailing across the Atlantic, like my friend Jess (and 200 other skippers) will be very soon.
My kind of adventure is the kind that you can do around your day-to-day: it need be nothing more than a bike ride to a woodland for sale or a morning spent getting in the English grape harvest.
Having said that…
The bulk of my summer, 43 days’ worth, were spent cycling from Glasgow to Athens with Thighs of Steel. So there is definitely big-ticket adventure in my life as well.
But now I’m back from Greece, things are about to get small.
I can’t wait.
I’m so excited that I’ve come up with a neologism.
From Outdoorsy To Exploresy
We all know what outdoorsy means:
Associated with or characteristic of the outdoors; fond of an outdoor life.
We often use the word to describe people, like in this example from 1952:
In my attempts to be a truly outdoorsy woman at all times I had a ludicrous crab-hunting misadventure of my own.
Despite spending approximately 94 percent of most days closeted away indoors, I also like to be known as an outdoorsy sort of a person.
I don’t know how to crab-hunt, but I do own a pair of boots and can (just about) light a fire in the woods.
However, there are two limitations to being outdoorsy:
- No one thinks that an urban existence is compatible with being outdoorsy, even though, technically, a traffic island on Oxford Street is entirely outdoors.
- Outdoorsy doesn’t necessarily include the sniff of adventure: novelty, daring, audacity or excitement.
That’s why, humbly, I think we need a new word: exploresy.
Exploresy is used in the same way as outdoorsy, but to describe someone who is fond of exploring — whatever that means to them.
Indoors, outdoors, online, offline, together, alone, in walking boots or fluffy slippers.
The only unifying requirement is that the exploresy person sets out to discover something new (to them).
Now then. There is a school of thought that says that neologisms need justification.
But you know what I say to that:
Even so: why make a new word when an old one will do. Isn’t exploresy the same as being curious?
No. Well, yes, but I can’t copyright the word curious, now can I? Also, it’s a bit insulting to call someone a curious fellow. It just means they’re weird.
(Fun fact: curious used to be a euphemism for porn.)
So, as we crawl head down into winter, I would like to propose an expansion of adventure. It doesn’t have to be outdoorsy, especially if (like me) you find yourself more urban than Alpine.
It can, instead, be exploresy.
Keep your antenna up for moments you could explore. Shelter from the rain in a public museum, slow down to soak up a stone-grey street scene, swivel your lobes for a little light earwigging on the bus.
While the great green outdoors is a wonderful place to explore, it’s beyond okay to invite adventure inside and take it out on the town.