Adventure. We all seek it out. We want to feel the thrill of unexplored trails, never before seen vistas and the feeling of something new. The secret is though, we don’t need to travel far from our front door for adventure. Just grab a backpack and go.
Like me, you may often be guilty of thinking that a lot of preparation, hours spent driving and tonnes of gear are needed to call an activity “adventure”. However, I’ve learned that adventure is so much more than that. It’s the ability to throw only the essentials into a daypack like the Deuter Futura 26 SL, leave your expectations at home and open up to the possibilities around you.
Seeing things in a different way can make them feel new again. Perhaps you might even notice an angle or viewpoint that you didn’t even pay attention to before. Walking trails that you have walked dozens of times with the intention to meander, to discover, to shift perspective. To me, that’s what hiking is all about, whether you are deep in the backcountry or a few kilometres from your house.
So when recent rains mixed with copious amounts of sunshine caused an explosion of green in the local forests around my home in Squamish, BC, I couldn’t resist the urge to just open my front door, grab my Futura 26 SL pack and start walking.
Winding through the rain forest felt like being transported back in time; back to the mindset of a child. Wandering, wondering and moving for the sake of moving. Nothing more and nothing less. Feeling curious is the first step to a great adventure. Taking the left instead of the right at the fork in the trail. Stopping to smell the flowers that you’ve never spotted on that trail before or just looking up into the forest canopy and taking the biggest, deepest breath you can.
Hiking gives us the ability to slow down, to choose where we want to be at any given moment instead of having to be somewhere. It lets us interact with the environment, to really stop and take in the views. Rather than rushing, we are given the opportunity to soak in our surroundings. We give ourselves permission to explore, to be uncertain of the outcome and to let the adventure unfold.
The key is to never let the idea that adventures need to be complicated or far away get to in the way of actually having an adventure. Next time you’re feeling a little overwhelmed trying to come up with a plan or an idea, try grabbing your daypack, putting on your shoes and just walk out the front door. Adventure is only steps away.
Share on
