Way back last fall I started writing this weekly column for ENWorld. The topic of my very first column was “Are you an Adventurer?” It was all about how we emulate the spirit of adventures contained in the games we play, and sometimes even a version of the activities our characters participate in.
It’s been on my mind recently because I’ve watched a couple shows on NetFlix that have fascinated me. I’m talking about the pair of documentaries Long Way Round and Long Way Down, depicting the actors Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman riding their motorcycles around the world. In the first, Long Way Round, they ride from London east across Europe and the entire width of Asia, mostly through Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and Russia. They then fly across the northern Pacific to Alaska and complete the trip by riding through Canada and the northern US to New York, their final destination.
Long Way Down was a similar trip but this time they start in John o’Groats, the absolute northern tip of Scotland, south across Europe through France, Italy, and Sicily. They cross over to northern Africa and make their way all the way south to Cape Town. Each of these trips have been full of incredible scenery, looks into the cultures of these various countries, occasional danger and minor injury, and lots and lots of miles covered, some of them with great difficulty and tedium. These are unquestionably “adventures of a lifetime” that all of the participants acknowledge as such.
This stuff grabs me bigtime. I’ve always been a fan of “adventure racing” like the Eco Challenge and the Iditarod. I love nature and places off the beaten path. They offer a chance for solitude and quiet as well as a time to spend with good friends or family. There is often little to do except hike, enjoy the views, and focus on the relationships around you. That’s good stuff.
In such places I also find myself identifying with some of the travails I gloss over for the characters I portray in RPGs or the challenges I set for others in the games I run. Doing a dozen mile hike while carrying a full pack of gear on your back is something we might narrate in thirty seconds while running a game. But doing it in real life is quite another experience.
I’ve got a couple hiking/camping trips planned within the next month. Schlepping around the woods carrying a complete campsite, as well as food and entertainment, on your back is a lot of work. It is exhausting and plainly more difficult than enjoying the comforts of home. Why do I want to go do such a thing?
My answer is much the same as the reason I play many of the games I do: I enjoy challenging myself. I like the feeling of making it to the top of a mountain. Or the feeling of taking my pack off in camp after hiking all morning. I like putting my feet up by the fire and chatting with my companions about the sights we saw and miles we covered that day. Those achievements or moments of accomplishment can’t come without having come through some amount of difficulty, challenge, or hardship.
There is a moment in Long Way Round when they are slogging their way through western Mongolia and the “roads” are simply horrible. In fact, the surfaces they are traveling upon cannot, by any reasonable definition, be called roads. They’re just squishy ruts between mudholes. Ewan McGregor pulls out a map and starts looking at how close they are to the Russian border, where the roads have proper tarmac on them. It is tantalizingly close, and would be vastly easier than the way they had planned.
Ultimately he decides the “easy way” is not what he wants from the trip. He even berates himself a bit for considering the option and wanting to deviate from their planned course at the first sign of adversity. I think he was being a bit hard on himself. They had already proven by that point that they were willing to endure hardship and plenty of adversity. Regardless, I felt a swell of respect for these guys for being willing to press on. It proved to be a really good decision in terms of how they felt about it in retrospect.
I think it is easy to see a show like this and think about how well and good it is for those guys, but such adventures are not for the likes of common folk. However, I found myself inspired not just by the idea, but by some of the encounters they had along the way. In remote places they encountered lots of other folks who were engaged in their own adventures. One guy they met was riding around the world on only pedal-powered means of transport!
I’m not sure exactly when or how, but I’m determined to have some kind of adventure like that before I’m done here on Earth. Tell me about the adventures you’ve had. Where have you been that required great effort or determination? Where are you planning to go next?
It’s been on my mind recently because I’ve watched a couple shows on NetFlix that have fascinated me. I’m talking about the pair of documentaries Long Way Round and Long Way Down, depicting the actors Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman riding their motorcycles around the world. In the first, Long Way Round, they ride from London east across Europe and the entire width of Asia, mostly through Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and Russia. They then fly across the northern Pacific to Alaska and complete the trip by riding through Canada and the northern US to New York, their final destination.
Long Way Down was a similar trip but this time they start in John o’Groats, the absolute northern tip of Scotland, south across Europe through France, Italy, and Sicily. They cross over to northern Africa and make their way all the way south to Cape Town. Each of these trips have been full of incredible scenery, looks into the cultures of these various countries, occasional danger and minor injury, and lots and lots of miles covered, some of them with great difficulty and tedium. These are unquestionably “adventures of a lifetime” that all of the participants acknowledge as such.
This stuff grabs me bigtime. I’ve always been a fan of “adventure racing” like the Eco Challenge and the Iditarod. I love nature and places off the beaten path. They offer a chance for solitude and quiet as well as a time to spend with good friends or family. There is often little to do except hike, enjoy the views, and focus on the relationships around you. That’s good stuff.
In such places I also find myself identifying with some of the travails I gloss over for the characters I portray in RPGs or the challenges I set for others in the games I run. Doing a dozen mile hike while carrying a full pack of gear on your back is something we might narrate in thirty seconds while running a game. But doing it in real life is quite another experience.
I’ve got a couple hiking/camping trips planned within the next month. Schlepping around the woods carrying a complete campsite, as well as food and entertainment, on your back is a lot of work. It is exhausting and plainly more difficult than enjoying the comforts of home. Why do I want to go do such a thing?
My answer is much the same as the reason I play many of the games I do: I enjoy challenging myself. I like the feeling of making it to the top of a mountain. Or the feeling of taking my pack off in camp after hiking all morning. I like putting my feet up by the fire and chatting with my companions about the sights we saw and miles we covered that day. Those achievements or moments of accomplishment can’t come without having come through some amount of difficulty, challenge, or hardship.
There is a moment in Long Way Round when they are slogging their way through western Mongolia and the “roads” are simply horrible. In fact, the surfaces they are traveling upon cannot, by any reasonable definition, be called roads. They’re just squishy ruts between mudholes. Ewan McGregor pulls out a map and starts looking at how close they are to the Russian border, where the roads have proper tarmac on them. It is tantalizingly close, and would be vastly easier than the way they had planned.
Ultimately he decides the “easy way” is not what he wants from the trip. He even berates himself a bit for considering the option and wanting to deviate from their planned course at the first sign of adversity. I think he was being a bit hard on himself. They had already proven by that point that they were willing to endure hardship and plenty of adversity. Regardless, I felt a swell of respect for these guys for being willing to press on. It proved to be a really good decision in terms of how they felt about it in retrospect.
I think it is easy to see a show like this and think about how well and good it is for those guys, but such adventures are not for the likes of common folk. However, I found myself inspired not just by the idea, but by some of the encounters they had along the way. In remote places they encountered lots of other folks who were engaged in their own adventures. One guy they met was riding around the world on only pedal-powered means of transport!
I’m not sure exactly when or how, but I’m determined to have some kind of adventure like that before I’m done here on Earth. Tell me about the adventures you’ve had. Where have you been that required great effort or determination? Where are you planning to go next?
