An Encouragement to Live Adventurously

In his January Series presentation on Tuesday, Jan. 28, Alastair Humphreys described some of his adventures large and small and encouraged his listeners to live adventurously.

Humphreys began his presentation by expressing his appreciation for and delight with the Calvin University socks that were part of his January Series speaker welcoming package. Other examples of his enthusiasm for life and his joy in its small things were evident throughout his presentation.

Humphreys read a lot in university, he said, but his books of choice were not the required reading for his courses. Rather, he would lose himself in grand stories of epic adventures and journeys of strength and endurance, he said. “[They were] crazy stories of mad men and women going off around the world, doing ridiculous, wild stuff,” he explained. With characteristic English humor, he added, “Being British, they were mostly failing and mostly dying, but that just made the stories even better. And I’d read these and think, ‘This is amazing! I want to go off, do some crazy adventure, and die, and write a fantastic book about it! This is amazing!”

Humphreys added that when he began reading this genre, he wished he were the sort of extraordinary person who could take up such adventures – but as he read more of them, he began to wonder if he might become such a person.

Calculating his resources for taking on a grand adventure, Humphreys joked that he found he had no talents, no great strength or athleticism, no wilderness survival skills, and no money for gear or travel.

As a result, he said, he saw two options: he could continue to dream of adventure but decide that “people like me don’t do adventures” and just keep on reading about it – or he could look for other options for adventures. 

“That got me thinking about the idea of traveling by bicycle,” Humphreys said. “I already had a bike. I could afford to buy a tent to put on the back of it, and I could learn how to put up that tent – and that was it! Passport, whatever cash I had, wave goodbye to my mum and dad . . . and I pedaled away from my front door to see how far I could get.”

Humphreys cycled through France, then further through Europe, and then into the Middle East. “To my surprise, I made it to Africa,” he said, and hadn’t given up yet. “I just found myself thinking, ‘What am I doing? This is ridiculous! I got on my bicycle in England and now I’m in a desert!’ And this started to really fascinate me – the idea that if you just step out of your front door, wherever you live is the road to Africa or to Patagonia or to Alaska. If you just set out [from] your front door and go, you’re on your way. And that is thrilling once you start to get into that idea.”

The next part of his journey took him cycling down to South Africa, then finding passage on a sailing ship to the southern tip of South America. From there he cycled north through the Andes mountains and Bolivia, then through Central America and into the United States and on to Alaska and the Arctic Ocean. In Canada’s Yukon, he said, a forest fire blocked his path, so he packed his bicycle on a borrowed canoe and paddled 500 miles down the Yukon River to bypass the fire.

Humphreys noted that he got fit quickly as he rode his bicycle eight hours each day, and he soon lost interest in the test of endurance he’d expected to face at first. “Much more interesting is the mental side, the social side, the cultural side of adventures, and the mixture of time spent epically alone . . . [like] camping on the salt flats in the middle of Bolivia . . . versus trying to navigate your way through millions of strangers in cities like Cairo or Mexico City.”

He reflected that, having been through so much of the world and having interacted with the people in so many places, watching or reading the news now feels closer to home, and the world feels much smaller and more local. 

After reaching northern Alaska, Humphreys said, he found a boat that would take him across the Pacific Ocean to Siberia, which he reached in winter. “[This] was one of the most stupid ideas I’d ever had in my life,” he said. He continued camping in his tent each night, spending three months at -40℃, which he described as grinding, brutal, and awful. However, he said, “Like all excellent adventures, the ones that are the most miserable are the ones which – when time passes, and now [that] I’m back home again and I’m warm, and I still have all my digits – I can look back at . . . and think, ‘Ah, those were the best days of my life.’ It’s strange how adventuring does this.”

From Russia, he said, he went next through Japan, China, Central Asia, and eventually back toward Europe and home. The whole journey lasted four years as he traveled through 60 countries, over 46,000 miles, for a total cost of about $10,000.

Humphreys noted that he had thought this huge adventure would get the longing for adventure out of his system, and that then he’d settle down. But instead, he said, he realized how much more of the world there is to see, so he started chasing different adventures, such as a long foot race in the desert, walking across southern India, hiking across Iceland and Greenland, and rowing across the Atlantic. Crossing the Atlantic Ocean took 45 days of rowing for two hours on, then two hours off, day after day, which he found miserable at the time – but again, he said, he looks back, going through his pictures from that time, and thinks of those as some of the best days of his life.

When Humphreys realized that he had become so good at big adventures that they no longer felt like adventures, he decided to leave his comfort zone by busking across Spain for a month – that is, playing music in a public place for donations. Terrified by the idea of performing but inspired by a book he’d read in his youth about Laurie Lee , Humphreys went to Spain without any money and only six months of violin training to depend on to see if he could earn his food. He quickly found that his brief violin training had not been enough for him to become good at the lifelong art of violin, he said, but he was able to earn enough during his travels to buy enough food to survive and to finish his journey, which he now thinks of as one of the most joyful excursions of his life.

Reflecting on the nature of adventure, Humphreys said that this trip, in which he faced not vast terrains or oceans but town squares where a few people would hear his underwhelming attempts at performance on the violin, showed him that adventures don’t depend on geography. “It didn’t really matter whether I was having a miserable time in a desert or . . . on an ocean, or . . . on an ice cap,” he joked; he was getting “the same sort of ‘stuff’ – the same sort of internal rewards” – wherever he was. “This started to get me thinking [that] maybe it doesn’t matter where you go for your adventures. Maybe it’s more about the spirit than the geography of where you go to,” he surmised.

So, to test his new theory, Humphreys walked the highway that loops around his home city of London, England, through suburbs and commuter neighborhoods. He realized that the physical challenge, the new sights, and the kinds people he met brought the same feeling of adventure that he’d found on his bigger adventures. “If it feels like an adventure to you, then it is,” he suggested.

Humphreys then described what he calls microadventures, explorations that are closer to home – like cycling, rafting, hiking, camping, learning wilderness skills, and spending time in nature – all in your own proverbial backyard. He acknowledged that a usual nine-to-five workday schedule for many people doesn’t seem to allow a lot of time even for small adventures – but he encouraged his audience to look for opportunities anyway in the 16 hours of each day that they’re not at work.

Humphreys noted that, while children are eager to embrace adventures, adults tend to see mainly the difficulties and expenses. He suggested striving for a more childlike curiosity about the world and scheduling small adventures regularly, such as climbing a tree, or going to the forest and looking around for 20 minutes on a certain day each month, or finding interesting places to drink coffee. The possibilities are endless.

Humphreys described his own experience of exploring one square kilometer per week from a map of his own neighborhood over the course of a year. He wrote about these microadventures, photographed what he saw, and tried to see everything in each square kilometer. He said he reminded himself that “everything is interesting if you’re interested” – and soon found that the more you start to look, the more you start to see.

Pulling out a map of Grand Rapids as he spoke, Humphreys encouraged his listeners at Calvin University to use it to go exploring right in their own area. He pointed out the Grand River and some interesting place names like Forest Hills and East Paris, as well as numerous lakes and industrial zones and cemeteries.

“Wherever you are,” he said, “I challenge you to ask yourself, ‘What does living adventurously mean to me?’ Remind yourself that the most important part of adventure is not the geography of where you go but the attitude with which you approach it. And if you do that, then maybe a single map [can give you] enough adventure for a lifetime.”