New Year Adventure Challenge: Return to Your Roots On the eve of the new year, I look at the Christmas tree tipping slightly in the corner of my apartment. It took this crooked stance on the 26th, and — after trying to right it for a couple of days — I gave up. The holiday was passed; I barely remembered to turn on its lights at dusk anymore. A few cheap ornaments were scattered around its base. Sad. New Year’s Eve is kinda like that for me. I think back to all I hoped to accomplish outdoors that year: the trips, the gear, the strides I hoped to make in performance, and settle into thinking, “Well, this new year, then.” And so, I approach the dawn of the next 365 with shining optimism. “This is my year,” I think. “This year, I won’t let injury/finances/lack of companions/whatever-my-excuse-might-be hold me back.” I always feel this conviction coursing through every vessel in my body. It will happen. Then life happens. Time passes, and my bright, sparkling conviction, much like the Christmas tree in the corner of my home that once stood proud and bright, begins to lean under the pressure of life, and my convictions drop like the ornaments that now sit forlornly around the perimeter of my tree. At the end of the year, I see another 365 that passed, with little — I feel — to showcase.
There’s got to be a stop to this madness.
We’ve (I write collectively because I assume there are others out there who see this cycle happening in their lives) got to stop beating ourselves up about our outdoor imperfections. We fell in love with the lifestyle because of the freedom it offered us, not because it enslaved us to ideals. It made us happy, wild, and gave us confidence. It didn’t tear us down because we didn’t reach the climbing grade we thought would made us a “good climber” or because we didn’t knock off each of the 48 “4ks” of the White Mountains or thru-hike the PCT. We did that to ourselves. The further entrenched we got in the culture, the more us “self-competitive types” started thinking being core to the sports we loved meant pushing our limits and gaining grounds. And in a way, it can. But it doesn’t mean we need to get down on ourselves if we don’t cover the grounds we hoped to attain. Generally, I’ve found that even thinking in the optimistic light at the beginning of the year, having high hopes and lofty goals, can set in motion wheels that help us achieve more than we would have had we not been so exuberant in our outdoor dreams. That’s something, right? If that’s what happened for you, be satisfied. But even then: what if we stripped it all back to the true essence of why we fell in love with adventure? What if we became “new” to the outdoors again, allowing ourselves to simply discover and see our sports with fresh eyes?
