Adventure is Learned
Who taught you that walking into the woods was normal?
It’s a simple question, but I don’t think most of us arrived there on our own. Very few people wake up one day and independently decide they’re going to become hikers. Someone invites them. A parent who laces up boots and says come along. A friend who suggests a trail instead of a bar. A partner who wants to see what’s at the end of the path. Over time, that invitation becomes ordinary. And once it feels ordinary, it becomes part of who we are.
I’ve spent plenty of time hiking alone, and I value the solitude. There’s something clarifying about being by yourself in the woods. It creates space to think, to reflect, to notice small things without conversation shaping the moment. When I’m alone, I tend to pay attention to light and texture, to how a place feels when it isn’t being narrated. Solitude has its own rhythm.
But when I look back on my memories of the outdoors, the ones that surface quickest and with the most depth almost always involve someone else.
I was reminded of that when I met Jill and Craig. They’re working toward visiting all the national parks together. On paper, it sounds ambitious. It involves long drives, careful planning, rearranging work schedules, and committing real time and energy. Framed purely as mileage, it can seem excessive.
But when you’re doing it with someone, the effort changes character.
Driving hundreds of miles to hike for a few hours doesn’t feel extreme. It feels expected. It becomes part of the relationship. The planning turns into shared problem solving. The fatigue becomes shared experience. The awe is witnessed at the same time, in the same place.
What struck me wasn’t the checklist of parks. It was the way they talked about those places as something they encountered together. The same views. The same weather. The same long stretch of trail where conversation fades and breathing takes over. There’s something powerful about entering a landscape side by side for the first time, absorbing the uncertainty, the small frustrations, and the quiet moments of delight in parallel.
In Portraits of Adventure, I’ve been paying closer attention to what counts as adventure and why. We often frame adventure as independence and self-reliance, as the ability to go alone and prove something to ourselves. There’s value in that. But most of us were introduced to the outdoors relationally. Someone else made it feel possible. Someone else modeled that it was safe, or interesting, or worth the time. The forest didn’t become meaningful in isolation. It became meaningful in context.
That makes me wonder how much of what we call adventure is actually shared memory.
Years from now, I doubt Jill and Craig will remember every specific trailhead or elevation gain. Details will blur. But I imagine they’ll remember who was standing next to them when they reached a viewpoint, who carried the extra water, who laughed when the weather turned. The landscape matters. Place always matters. But relationship may be what allows place to stay with us longer.
Maybe adventure isn’t only about where we go. Maybe it’s about who taught us that it was normal to go at all.
