Some of us are drawn to adventure while others find contentment in the comfort of what’s familiar. The word adventure is Romantic, as in it derives from Latin, but arrived in the English lexicon thanks to the French conquest of the Middle Ages. As with many delicious words, adventure can be both a noun (an experience that etymologically ranges in meaning from luck or happenstance to perilous undertaking or risk and danger) and a verb. To adventure in 14th century English was tied to risking the loss of something; in time it came to relate to wandering, traveling, and seeking experiences beyond the norm of daily life. Venture stems from the same root and also connotes hazard and risk, possibly even of one’s life. In other words, to adventure (to say yes to adventure) is complex both in act and in definition; it is bold, anticipatory, and risky, but perhaps (one always hopes) it is also bound up with good luck. So when those of us called to adventure take the first step, when we say yes to adventure, what exactly do we do?
There is not a single mold for any adventure, as human stories from time immemorial attest. Some adventures involve a large amount of chance and are largely unplanned (think: Alice falling down the rabbit hole). Others evolve like a slow birthed creation with years of planning, consideration, and logistics. My family of four has always leaned toward adventure. I suppose that is what one should expect when settling down with a Forest Service smokejumper who had already summited most continents’ highest peaks prior to our meeting. My husband and I are two ballasts in our family; he is always planning our next adventure while I cultivate a cozy home with gardens, quilts, and walls brimming with art. He is the planner. I am the processor who is nearly always more than happy to go along for the ride. The balance has always been perfect for us. We can hike the Grand Canyon, rim-to-rim, with our daughters (ages 11 and 8 at the time), for example, then return to our two cats and the comfort of home.
Some adventures, though, are larger and involve substantially more planning. Since we decided to be a family of two, long before our daughters graced the world, my husband and I have talked about taking a long world trip when he retires. Of course, to a late twenty-something, retirement is abstract and far away, even when discussing wild land firefighter retirement (which like military and law enforcement comes much earlier than most career fields). In any case, we sowed the seeds of a grand-scale adventure nearly two decades ago. When it became apparent that he was fully eligible to retire this May, after working for the federal government first as an Army Ranger, then as a wild land firefighter (from engine crew to hot shot to smokejumper and finally training specialist) for over 30 years, we started planning a year-long trip abroad with our daughters in earnest. I say “we” loosely, as I did little planning. I was very busy with my first year teaching secondary English language arts at a local International School, and travel logistics are my hub’s forté, not mine. I did not even commit to “yes” at first; it took time and a lot of deep thinking on my part to do so. Eventually, I got there, and embraced the audacity of this life-shaking experience fully: we would pack up life in Boise, Idaho where we have lived for the last 8+ years, settle our two cats with my in-laws, store or sell all our belongings, and hit the road in search of adventure. At the heart of our adventure lay a flexibility and an acceptance that we know not where the path may lead. In other words, we planned, but we also prepared to trash the plan in favor of something better.
But how does one really prepare for the wild unknown? As a literature lover, I always turn to the wisdom immortalized by poets and writers when asking big questions. Preparing for adventure might take the grand form of James Joyce’s (semi autobiographical) young protagonist, Stephen Dedalus who concludes The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in affirmation: “I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.” Such grand prose makes my heart soar, but I realize it may not for all. Perhaps, instead, setting out on adventure is more spontaneous, less grandiose of term. It might be more aware of the danger wrapped up in leaving the comforts of home behind. Young Bilbo Baggins of Tolkien’s classic high fantasy, The Hobbit, reminds readers: “It’s a dangerous business, walking out one’s front door.” Bilbo’s wise companion, the wizard Gandalf reframes the experience to one of possibility: “Home is now behind you, the world is ahead!” Of course, possibility also comes with danger, as Tolkien’s later series The Lord of the Rings emphasizes. When a second generation of intrepid adventuring Bagginses takes to the road, Tolkien gives readers the clever passage: “It’s a dangerous business [. . .] going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.” Personally, I try to invite the life-affirming energy of Joyce’s Molly Bloom’s closing soliloquy at the end of Ulysses: “I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair [. . .] yes and [. . .] then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and [. . .] yes and [. . .] yes and [. . .] yes I said yes I will Yes” (italics mine). Molly’s stream-of-consciousness repetition concludes Joyce’s epic Ulysses in affirmation of life and love, just as Penelope welcomes back her long lost spouse, Odysseus at the end of The Odyssey. These are just a few literary guideposts. Indeed, literature shows us that “yes” both welcomes and concludes adventure. Either way, to engage with adventure is an affirmation of life itself.
