Legendary magazine editor John Rasmus (who currently helms one of my favorite magazines on the
globe…Nat Geo Adventure) has penned
a thoughtful piece on adventure travel…or
pretty much travel in general. He mentions several of my big-time heroes in the piece: Krakauer, Galen Rowell (who died
in a plane crash with his wife, but whose studio still exists in Bishop, CA), and Richard Bangs (who has a new Web show
on Yahoo).
The world has changed, Rasmus says, from the days when he was a young adventurer. From the days when you could go to a
distant place and see a world completely different than your own, where you could encounter people in their own
culture, a culture free of the effects of globalism, a culture where you would be certain you would NOT run into
Cameron Diaz filming a segment for MTV.
He’s not bashing globalism, he’s just saying that things change, and we need to accept them and move on, to find other
adventures that please us. “The world of adventure travel is still a positive, lively and surprisingly big place,”
he says. “That’s because adventure has never really been about specific destinations or activities. It’s about you —
discovering and exploring new destinations, people and cultures, about seeing the world fresh.” He’s right, you
know. You can spend your whole life bitching about how over-touristed, polluted, LCD things have become. Or you can be
creative and find the places that still inspire and surprise, where you can suck the guts out of life on your own
terms. Maybe that’s some small village in Siberia, or maybe its your back yard. Adventure is partly a state of mind, a
way of living that says I was given but one life, it is mine, the only thing that REALLY belongs to me, and I am going
to live this thing to the fullest.
What a pleasure to awake to find this article this morning. Now it’s time to head into the new week.