Intro to Microadventures

Alastair Humphries is probably the father of microadventures and his website is a great source of information and inspiration. If reading through that doesn’t make you want to go out and do one then probably nothing will. His book is fantastic as well.

A microadventure is just a small adventure that you fit into the rest of your normal life. It’s a way of doing something exciting and adventurous without having to quit your job and fly to another continent to do some sort of epic quest. It’s about not planning the perfect trip, just starting and doing something.  (In that sense I suppose it has parallels in agile development and startup culture – just ship something and iterate.)

I am going to try and go on a microadventure every month in 2015 and will report back on them here. Hopefully I can give a realistic view of what it takes to do one of these. I find that AH can be a little over-enthusiastic about going on a microadventure which makes me at least suspicious about whether it is as good and easy as he says (although it doesn’t have to be fun to be fun…). I’ll also go more into some of the practicalities of fitting them around an office job, convincing other people to go with you and other difficulties that are maybe not faced to the same extent by Alastair Humphries.

Microadventure basics

  • What is it? A small adventure, usually including a wild camp
  • Why do you do it? Because it’s fun. Because it’s a reminder that there’s more than just working and watching TV. Because living in towns and sleeping indoors is a relatively recent human development
  • Should I do it? Almost certainly

 

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