We know and can demonstrate the richness and appropriateness of Hopi, Cheyenne, Eskimo, Japanese, Tibetan and many other ways. By experiencing their modes of imaging and being for ourselves, we may stretch our ordinary horizons and strategies to include aspects of being beyond ordinary Western ways. What constitutes an adventure in my book is any intentional experience that substantially alters our perspective long enough to see things we have never before seen - and to see familiar things in ways we have never before seen them. In times of great transitions such as ours this kind of view is essential for our continued viability as a species. In a Faustian bargain with life's prosaic demands we all too often find ourselves trading our child's innocence and receptivity for hardened stoicism.
Adventure is the antidote.
It is a bucket of cold water thrown over our comfortably slumbering souls. Unlike the Arctic explorer whose objective is to simply travel over vast distances, moving his body like a marker across the empty landscape, the efficient adventurer of the spirit learns to cover the most inner ground in the least physical distance. Traveling around the world, someday we will awaken and poke our heads from the tent in a yak pasture at 12,000 feet only to discover that we have arrived in someone else's backyard - or living room. And that's when it dawns on us that real adventure is an inside job. It is an ironic but timeless truth that we often require a pilgrimage to Patagonia, Pakistan or Papua New Guinea in order to discover the treasure that has long awaited us in our own home, hidden behind our own hearth.