This will be another essay entry, one that I should have blogged during the severe winter I just went through. It should still have some interest.

There are rare movies that entertain and enlighten. Up is certainly one of them. It opens with the brief sketch of the life of Carl Fergussan, and his wife Ellie. As children the two had vowed to visit Paradise Falls, an almost mythical place located in the Land of the Lost somewhere in South America. Unfortunately, life intervenes as the youngsters grow up, marry, are unable to have their own offspring, and Ellie passes away, leaving Carl to grow into a old man living in his multicolored house while massive construction projects go on around him. Carl’s hero from youth was C.F. Muntz, a man who had explored Paradise Falls in his dirigible, the Spirit of Adventure, and Carl still longs to complete his promise to Ellie to visit Paradise Falls.
The real adventure begins when Carl is about to be forced into a retirement home, but instead he takes off, house and all, by inflating thousands of colorful helium balloons. Of course he eventually makes it to Paradise Falls, aided by a young stowaway named Russell.
It is clear that on one level, the trip to Paradise Falls is the adventure of Carl’s life, and when he finally lands his house above the falls, after encountering Kevin (a huge and quirky female bird) and a talking dog named Doug, there is genuine relief in the audience.
But the movie takes an interesting turn when Kevin is captured by Muntz—who needs it to prove that he didn’t lie about its existence to the civilized world. Carl just wants to live out his life at Paradise Falls, and refuses to help Russell rescue Kevin. As Carl sits in his favorite chair he looks once again at Ellie’s adventure book, which had an empty section in it titled What I am going to do. For years Carl felt the disappointment of that blank section but now he sees that Ellie has filled in the rest of the book with loving scenes from their life together. With this revelation Carl is now free to go help Russell rescue Kevin and return her to her babies.
The question then is which of Carl’s experiences is the real “adventure.” Obviously in a traditional sense, the adventure begins when he takes off in his house, but in a different and perhaps deeper sense, his adventure begins when he first meets Ellie and their ensuing relationship.
The dictionary definition of adventure is broad enough to include almost anything with risk but to me the key words are hazardous and excitement. Focusing on these parts of the definition, Carl’s adventure is his journey to Paradise Falls and his rescue of Kevin. Marriage doesn’t really fit the definition of adventure, and in life I think that is also true.
I have never climbed Mt. Everest or kayaked the Grand Canyon, but in the past I have done some exciting and dangerous things. I have kayaked Freighttrain rapids on the Coontookcook, I have almost been swept away by the ocean when I miscalculated the tides on the West Coast Trail of Vancouver Island, and I have climbed Mount Rundle in the Canadian Rockies three times. I think my fourth attempt at Rundle most clearly defines what an adventure is rather that something more mundane.
People have died climbing Rundle and the recommendation is to go with several people and to bring ropes. My first attempt was solo, the next two with a friend, and the fourth with my partner Tracy. I wanted to show her the remarkable views and to feel the sense of achievement in reaching the summit. For the first three miles or so, the route is a meandering trail through lodgepole pine forest. But after that the path ascends quickly and there are points you have to pull yourself up. A few years before, in my early forties, I had torn a calf playing touch football, and when we got to the more challenging section and I had to put a lot of pressure on the calf, I got worried. The calf felt like it was about to pop and after a few minutes, I told Tracy I couldn’t continue. I was upset and a little embarrassed, but if I were to tear my calf up on Rundle, it would be a real mess, surely involving rescue personnel. What Tracy and I had had was a hike, not an adventure. Certainly there is nothing wrong with a hike, but to call it an adventure is a misuse of the word.
The first time I ran Freighttrain Rapids on the Contoocook was also an adventure. This class 4 plus rapid was heralded as one of the best in New England, and it proved so. I went with three other people, split into two small yellow rafts, and as we approached I told my friends to let our raft go first. Having done very well on the earlier class 2-3 section, they decided to lead and immediately were flipped over and had to swim a good chunk of a very difficult river. Donald and I were a little more fortunate as the first hole didn’t flip us, it simply swallowed us. Our raft was completely underwater with Donald in front and me in the back, the turbulent water cascading over my head. After a few seconds, Donald turned to me and asked what we should do. I said that one of us had to get out and he responded, “Not me.” I had no choice but to flip over the side and get sucked into the hydraulic. It spun me around and around and I knew I would drown if I didn’t act quickly. I pushed off the bottom, freeing myself from the hole and swam down to Donald who was not far ahead. He pulled me in, and I paddled to shore. Though Donald had lost his paddle, we decided to finish the rapid, which we did successfully. That was an adventure, at least for both of us. Perhaps for others, only class 10 rapids on the Colorado are adventuresome, but Freighttrain was enough for me.
So to me an adventure has to have some threat to life, but that by itself doesn’t make it an adventure. The scariest and most life threatening event I have experienced started in late October of 2007, when I was diagnosed with colon cancer, had major surgery, then five months of chemotherapy. I still worry that the cancer will come back, and I get tested regularly, but not one moment of the experience was an adventure.
The idea of doing something for money is also worth considering. When I worked for a ship repair firm in Port Newark, New Jersey, I once had to be hoisted 40 feet up on the hook of a large crane to make the final cut on the top of a control tower which was held by another crane. The danger was that once I made my cut, the tower would swing toward me and knock me off my precarious perch. Holding on with one hand and using the oxyacetylene torch with the other, I made the cut and watched as the tower swung toward me and stopped a few inches away. What I did was genuinely dangerous but I was being paid to do the work (even though I volunteered for that specific task) so I am not sure that was an adventure. I’d imagine that even the guides on Mount Everest don’t consider the 40th climb with some tourist who has forked out a hundred thousand dollars to be particularly adventuresome. It is absolutely difficult and dangerous but it is still simply a job.
Many people I have spoken with disagree with my thinking. They believe like Ellie that all of life is an adventure. I understand their thinking but I still can’t buy it. My friend Jeff told me of going out sailing on his friend’s boat and getting caught in a fierce storm. Jeff’s friend was too scared to try to turn the boat around, fearing it would capsize, so the two of them kept heading out to sea with no idea of the outcome. That was an adventure and I am not so sure vacuuming a rug is equal to it.
I live in a log house a mile from the nearest neighbor deep in an isolated hollow. We have solar power and our water comes from a spring piped into the house. Bears come visit and coyotes call many evenings from not far away. For some, living in this house would be an adventure, but for Tracy and me it is simply residing in a quiet and lovely spot.
Before we built the house five years ago, I lived for eight years in a small cabin without running water and with an outhouse. Even that was rarely an adventure—hiking in almost a half mile on an inch of ice at eleven at night occasionally was--since I almost always felt entirely safe and comfortable.
Even the year preceding the cabin which I spent off and on in a tipi was not particularly an adventure. The only time it truly fit the definition was the day I backpacked in after a severe ice storm. I fell at least a dozen times getting out there, and that night when the temperature dropped to eleven degrees and my wet wood kept me from spending more than a few minutes inside was definitely an adventure.
The things I have done that were dangerous and exciting have substantially defined me. Without them I would have never written my first book, In Search of the Wild, nor would I be the teacher I presently am. One of the things that my students appreciate is that I intersperse the literature we study with personal anecdotes. This is particularly effective when I have taught courses in environmental writing. I guess living every day as an adventure has its benefits, but I’ll stick with the handful I have had. Those still resonate deep within me, reminding me of the richness of my experience and inspiring me to test myself again.