How To Be a Modern Day Explorer
Image: Unsplash
Have you ever dreamed of becoming a twenty-first-century explorer but have absolutely no idea where to start? Do you fantasise about marching around in a khaki shirt and fedora hat, like you’re auditioning for a role in Indiana Jones? Or maybe you're more into the Michelin-man look—the full-body puffy climbing suit that makes you resemble a walking marshmallow?
Perhaps you’ve always wanted to lecture exhausted corporate drones on how they, too, can conquer their own personal Everest—metaphorically, of course, because actual Everest climbing might interfere with their 60-hour workweeks.
If this sounds like you, it’s time to stop daydreaming and start working toward your explorer goals. These tips will have you climbing the ranks of exploration faster than you can say, "rebrand your LinkedIn as a ‘visionary explorer and thought leader.’"
Plant Your Flag Online
The first thing you absolutely must do as a modern explorer is create an online presence that stands out. Forget actual expeditions—nobody’s going to care about them if you don’t have a website and social media account to prove you’re a serious explorer. So, march right over to GoDaddy and snag the most ridiculously bold domain you can find, like *www.ExtremeWildernessExplorer.com*—because nothing says world-class explorer like a URL that screams, “I’ve never used a compass bearing in my life.”
Next, invest in a cosplay outfit—think fur-lined hood, large down mitts, and a strategically placed pair of skis—and get some professional headshots. Make sure to craft a heartwarming backstory on your new site about how a weekend hike in the local national park changed your life forever. Bonus points if you mention how you now feel "more connected to the wilderness" after two whole weeks of outdoor experience.
The hero headshot. Me posing in a Leicestershire field. Photo: Nirwin Images
Dream Big
This is where you absolutely must go big or go home. At the very least, you should be planning a world-first expedition or attempting something that’s never been done before—at least in some vague, barely distinguishable way. Don’t worry, it’s easier than it sounds. For example, you could decide to be the first person to kayak down the Rio Grande entirely at night. It’s surely never been done this way—obviously a world record. Bonus points if you can conjure up a catchy expedition tagline, something like “The Impossible Kayak: Rio Grande With the Lights Off.”
If you can’t find an angle to break a record, just do it "for science." Never mind that you couldn’t be bothered to get a PhD or that you think “methodology” is the preparation of cocktails. You can always collect some snow or water samples and throw together a few pie charts. After all, no one’s going to peer-review your analysis anyway.
Do the Thing
By this point, you’ll probably find blue-chip companies tripping over themselves to sponsor your expedition. If not, it’s likely that you’re a Trustafarian (a wealthy young person who adopts an alternative lifestyle) or a child of an Earl or Baronet, so funding your adventure won’t be an issue. The only thing left is to actually go and do the thing. But it doesn’t matter if you actually complete your record-setting expedition— a failed journey can always be spun into a narrative of hardship and epic suffering (never mind that said suffering was self-imposed). Even better if you were vague about the details of the journey itself. Bonus points if you tell everyone back home, “I learned so much about myself.” Don’t worry that David Roberts, that great figure of adventure writing and mountaineering, once said he learned more from therapy than he ever did from climbing.
Start Writing
You must start writing, you need an epic book to sell. Image: Unsplash
The penultimate thing you absolutely must do is start writing. Doesn’t matter if you’ve never put pen to paper before—your fans will now be begging for another formulaic first-person-against-the-wild book. After all, surely there is so much more to be said about plodding to the poles or being dragged up Everest by a local peasant. If you kept a copy of your grizzled-looking headshot, that will work nicely for the front cover, which will be completed with a hard-hitting title like “No Way Out of the Rio Grande.”
Now that you have the book, you can peddle it to the overworked wheat merchants you’ll be lecturing to at their annual farming conventions, assuming you want to go down the inspirational speaker route.
Stick or Twist
At this point, you’ve made it to the big time, and you could spend the rest of your days on the rubber-chicken speaking circuit talking about that time you climbed Everest twenty-seven years ago. Or, if you really want to keep things fresh, you can pivot to another adventure sport. For example, you could ditch mountaineering for ocean rowing, or trade polar plodding for kayaking. The last thing you want to be doing is to keep going out cragging or paddling—remember, the journey is just the commodity and identity that you're selling; it’s not meant to be fun..
Hyping up a convention of wheat merchants. Image: Unsplash
Disclaimer: This tongue-in-cheek article was inspired by this blogpost from Tom Allen, as well as the work of Brendan Leonard, otherwise known as ‘Semi-Rad’, and other adventure writers I have spoken to over the years. I’ve even done some of these things myself, such as creating my own self-promotional website and social media, the cosplay, over egging my own trips, and talking about them to school children. Now I hopefully know a little better. Well, maybe. If you paid me enough I’d happily hype up a convention of wheat merchants. Note that I don’t get into the semantics of labels such as ‘adventurer’ and ‘explorer’.
