409 Holly Worton ~ What Does Adventure Mean to You?

Transcript

Holly:  Hello adventurers and welcome to the Into the Woods podcast, episode 409. This is your host Holly Worton, and I am back with another solo episode. Today I am going to talk about adventure, and I am asking the question, what does adventure mean to you? Adventure is such an important part of my life, but I think the way I define adventure is perhaps a bit more broad than some people. So I want to invite you to consider some ways that you can add more adventure to your life, perhaps not in the traditional ways, because I know not everyone is into trail running and hiking and that kind of thing, because I think adventure is so much more than travel, it is so much more than outdoor adventures, there are adventures in consciousness, there are all kinds of things. So that’s what we are going to talk about today.

But before we get into this week’s episode, I wanted to remind you that I have got this ebook promo coming up; so I got together with a bunch of author friends and we are doing a similar ebook promo to what we did last year—almost the same time in May. So, Keith Foskett who you may remember from a couple of weeks ago (episode 407) he has got a book that he is offering for free and Susan Jaganath who has been on the show twice (episode 403 and 391), she has got a book in there and we have got other adventure books as well. So, if you are looking to add more adventure to your life reading about adventure is one way to do it, because it stimulates ideas of things that you can do—and I know that we are still coming out of lockdown in much of the world so armchair adventures are a valid type of adventure. So this episode is going live on Monday 24^th and this ebook promo starts on the 27^th and you can find it at: hollyworton.com/adventure and that is going to take you to a web page with links to get all the books, however that link won’t work before the 27^th, so mark that down and check it out.

So, this is a very timely episode because I think a lot of us need adventures, especially after the last lockdown. If you were in the UK it was a rough one for a lot of us I think. And in other parts of the world, especially in the Southern Hemisphere, a lot of countries are going back into lockdown so now is a perfect time to be reading about adventures and to be considering alternative adventures which perhaps you can do closer to home which don’t involve travelling around the world. I also wanted to mention this book that I am reading—I always have plans to talk to you about the book that I am reading but then I never do—but this book is so good. It was recommended by a couple of women in this Facebook group that I belong to, which is trail running and ultra running (women only), it is a really great, really supportive, Facebook group for women trail runners and ultra runners. And questions always come up about blisters and really blisters are such an important thing to consider if you are doing any type of activity on your feet, such as running or hiking, and I am learning so much from this book.

I think, from now on, whenever anyone asks me about blister prevention [my advice] is going to be just: read this book, because if I have learned anything from this book [it’s]: i) there is no one blister prevention solution that works for everyone; ii) what works for you today may or may not work for you tomorrow because conditions change; and iii) there are so many factors that go into blister prevention, I think there are 13 different factors that he discusses in this book. I am not even halfway through this book, but it is like the bible of blisters and foot care. So, the book is called (and I will link to that in the show notes): Fixing Your Feet: Injury Prevention and Treatments for Athletes, and the author is called John Vonhof and this is the sixth edition of this book. So, it says that it is for people who push the limits of their feet: runners, walkers, hikers, adventure racers, climbers, soldiers, dancers and more. And, it is so good. There is so much information in this book and I am learning so much about socks and shoes and feet and everything feet! So, I highly recommend this book and, as I said, I will link to this in the show notes, it is such a good book! Again, if you do any activity on your feet, and if you have ever had blisters, read this book because it will help give you an idea of how to prevent blisters in the future and what to do when you get them. There are so many products and things that you can buy to help you with blister prevention, and I am learning so much.

I thought I had it sort of solved on my long-distance walks by changing my socks and swapping them back and forth and powdering my feet (that is kind of my new thing this year), and that has been mostly helpful. But, the last couple of long walks I did, both my Wey South Path and my Downs Link walk, where I walked those each of those trails in one day, I got a really big blister on kind of the sole of my left foot, towards the sole and the heel, it kind of goes up the side of the foot but it starts on the edge of the heel and in one case it was a blister on top of a blister, because obviously I kept walking on it. And I know that was because I kept striking my heel much harder than usual because I was walking quite fast, so that is a new thing that I think I am going to be able to fix by taping my feet, but I haven’t gotten to the chapter yet on taping my feet to prevent blisters but I am learning which tapes to get, they are not the tapes that I thought and not the tapes that I saw online, this guy is a guy who is an ultra runner and he volunteers at a lot of races fixing athletes feet when they are doing endurance events. So he has got loads of experience with feet and loads of experience with different people’s feet and not just his own, so again, I am going to stop because this book is so good; if you have blisters or ever get them, or have any problems with your feet, get this book it is called Fixing Your Feet, by John Vonhof. And this is the sixth edition of this book (I will stop talking about it I promise!) but the book was first written in the 1990s, I think in 1996 and he keeps updating it and there is a new chapter on new theories on blister prevention, this concept called ‘shear’, that completely throws all previous theories about blister formation out of the water, it is really fascinating and it is a concept I had never heard of. So Fixing Your Feet, John Vonhof, get it if you need help with your feet.

So, let’s move into the topic of today’s episode (and get that book!), so, adventure, what does adventure mean to you? The definition of adventure, if you look it up online is: an unusual and exciting or daring experience.  A lot of definitions also talk about risky experiences, or risky activities, and I don’t think risk is a necessary factor in adventure. To me, adventure is so much more than travel or endurance sports and to me there are two kinds of main types of adventures: there are outer adventures: physical, outdoor adventures and activities that you partake in physically; but there are also inner adventures: adventures in consciousness, I will talk about both of these types of adventures in a bit.

So why is adventure so important to me? Why do I talk about it so much? Why do I write books about this? Why am I trying to push adventure on everyone?

Adventure makes me feel alive, it lights up my soul, it gives me that feeling of expansive joy that I crave. It changes my perspective and helps me learn new things about myself and others. A lot of what I write about on my blog, and I talk about in this podcast is personal growth through outdoor adventures. So, adventure gives me growth, it provides learning opportunities, I have learned so much about myself through all of my adventures; and adventure piques my curiosity: it gets me curious about new and exciting things. So, adventure is just juicy and delightful, and I love it and I am always seeking new adventures and new ways of having adventures. I am aware that this isn’t as important to everyone and if you are listening to this podcast, I am going to say that it is. So that is why adventure is important to me.

So, as you are listening to this think about: why is adventure important to you? What does it give you? And let’s get back to the question: what does adventure mean to you?

So, what is adventure to me? It is about getting out of my comfort zone and saying yes to opportunities, it is about moving into the unknown, it is about exploration and doing something that I wouldn’t normally do, doing new things, or doing something that I have done before, but in a different way. It is also about opening up to new experiences. So, years ago, like ten years ago, I wrote this blog post called: when was the last time that you did something for the first time? And I wrote this during a period probably when I was training as a coach and I was doing lots of new things, signing up for Toastmasters and doing all these scary things that were outside of my comfort zone, and it was probably one of the first times that I realised just how important adventure, or doing new things, was to my personal growth. I don’t think I thought of it as adventure at the time, but toastmasters is absolutely adventurous; if you are afraid of public speaking that is a great thing to try, it changed my life. So, adventure it is about so much more than just getting outdoors. But I think the important thing when you are reframing what adventure means to you is forget about the risk, there could be risk in your adventure, or it could just be something new or challenging or a new way of doing things. So, I think when you look at adventure from this perspective it really just opens the realm of possibilities for adventure in your life or adding adventure in your life. You don’t have to run an ultra marathon to do something adventurous.

Let’s look at some less common outer or physical adventure ideas, or things that you might not think of when you think of adventure: try a new food, try a new recipe, try a new restaurant, cook something different. You can get your food in a different way: you could forage for it; you can pick fruit or vegetables at one of those farms that let’s you pick your own food. Now, I think this is a really exciting thing because it helps you to look at your food in a different way. Foraging is really exciting, obviously never eat a plant that you are not 100% sure what it is, but there are a lot of plants that are really easy to identify like dandelions, those are edible, you can add those to a salad; there are lots of flowers you can add to a salad and make it really pretty, and picking fruit and veg that is easy because you can go to a place that grows food that look familiar to you.

But for foraging, you can take classes, there are tons of classes on foraging, there are classes on mushrooms, I do not know enough about mushrooms to do that on my own but it is something I look forward to learning: I signed up for a mushroom class last year, but it was cancelled because the mushrooms were not coming up in season on the date of the class, but that is definitely something I would like to learn because I love mushrooms. Growing it yourself: I was very, very, lucky in that I grew up in a household where my parents grow our vegetables when I was a kid. Sadly I didn’t like vegetables as much as I do now! I really liked cooked vegetables when I was a kid but I didn’t like raw ones, my parents every year would grow like ten tomato plants and they would grew these absolutely gorgeous tomatoes and I hated raw tomatoes when I was a kid, I didn’t start eating tomatoes until I was in my early 20s, I really didn’t like the texture. A lot of my problems with vegetables when I was a kid were texture related, which is why I think I liked the cooked ones. I was really, really, lucky to have home grown vegetables which taste completely different from the vegetables that you get in the store, especially tomatoes, tomatoes are a whole different animal when you grow them yourself.

You don’t have to get an allotment or grow all your vegetables just pick a vegetable that you like, or you would like to eat more of, or that you do eat more of, or that you do eat a lot of, and just grow that one thing and experiment with it, that’s an adventure, you will learn a lot along the way. So, get your food in a different way.

Take a new route to work or take a new running or walking trail. And this is something I did a lot when we first moved to the area that we live in now, that I have lived in for the last 10 years. We live in an area that is very rich in trails. I depart from my house in any direction: south, east, north, west, southeast…whatever and those trails need to more trails, there are so many footpaths around my town, we are so lucky. And so I just explored for like a year, I explored the trails and I turned down different paths, and it was so exciting and then I got to the point where I thought: I have been here for ten years and I have pretty much exhausted all the trails but, in the last couple of weeks, I have gone down two new trails near my house that I have never been down before. And it was just a thing of being out running and getting to that fork in the trail and going: I don’t think I have ever taken that one and taking it, and then thinking: woah, I had no idea what went that way. So, it is really exciting. So, take a new route to work or to wherever you go, because you might see new things along the way, even if you are driving in your care, you might find a new shop, or a new museum, something. And as far as taking new trails when you are out running or cycling that’s really exciting, even yesterday, I took this one little trail that I had never been on, that linked up these two trails that I had never been on before but which kind of linked up these trails…really exciting to see where it went.

Read a new book on a wildly different topic. So, I tend to read lots of non-fiction books about outdoor adventures and read a lot of fiction that is kind of fantasy, but every once in a while, I will read something different. I read a lot of marketing and business books—not as much as I used to, because I am trying to narrow it down and follow just certain people—but read something totally different, read someone’s autobiography, or read a non-fiction book about something you have never thought about before, or read a book that presents a political perspective that you disagree with, that will give you a new perspective, even if it doesn’t change your mind, at least you will understand how other people think and why they think the things they think, even if you disagree with them. So, reading a new book on a wildly different topic can give you a new perspective in life, again, it doesn’t have to change your mind, but it opens your mind to other ways of thinking.

Take a train or a bus somewhere random and you can either stay overnight or come back the same day. This is something I have always wanted to do and I think I have mentioned that I have always wanted to, or I diff or a long time, want to take a train really far up north somewhere, maybe Scotland and use it as a workcation, but last time I had to travel up north I went up to Leeds for a television appearance and it was kind of there one day and back the next day. And I was trying to get some work done, because I thought: this is kind of a spontaneous workcation, but it wasn’t, so it didn’t work for me for a workcation, but it could be fun to look out the window and see new scenery or read a book or just do something different. I don’t know, I still want to do the random train thing, but I am still weirded out about public transport, and I don’t like wearing a mask for such a long period of time, so yeah, that won’t happen any time soon, for me at least.

Next, do a usual activity at a different time of day. So, try a sunrise run or walk or a nighttime run or walk. So, I have got this ultra coming up the first week of July and I have not yet trained at night. This is something that I need to do. When I was doing some training walks, I did do some training walks during the winter that ended up the last couple of hours were at night, so that was good, that was good night time walking experience but I really need some night time running experience, so that is something that I plan to do and it will be an adventure because I have never gone running at night before. Obviously, I am going to take a headlamp or a waist-lamp, but we will see, I will report back how it goes. Again, take a new trail or path even if you don’t know where it goes, or especially if you don’t know where it goes. I know this was kind of related to what I was talking about earlier about taking different paths, but it is really exciting to see how different trails link up and to find new paths.

Visit a sacred site, like a stone circle or a hill fort, or something ancient and exciting, or an old church, I love old churches. Play a game, that’s an adventure, buy a new board game or something and play it with your partner or your family, that was something that we did a couple of years ago and it was really fun, we haven’t repeated it, we bought these two games we played one of them and the other one we haven’t played yet, I don’t know why we don’t just block out the time to do it, because it was really fun, not something that we usually do together.

Take a course, take a workshop in something totally new. So, I do a lot of outdoors courses, but I am kind of always taking courses on the same theme, it is either plant stuff or wildlife stuff or outdoor stuff and this weekend I am taking course (or it will be last weekend by the time you hear this) in making a traditional English longbow. So one of the guys that teaches at the woodcraft school where I take a lot of my classes is a traditional bow maker (I think the word is bowyer), he creates traditional English longbows and he teaches how to make them, so by the time you listen to this I will have made a traditional English longbow and I don’t know when I am going to have time to learn how to shoot this thing but there is a local archery club where I live, from the website it looks like a lot of people use longbows, so in my spare time I will now be shooting a longbow {laughing}. This is one of those things that I signed up for, because last year when I did my bushcraft course, we had this one kind of games evening where we did axe throwing and we got to shoot a longbow and it was so much fun and so exciting I was like: oh, I have to sign up to get one of these, this is so great! And then logic hit, my logical side of the brain was like: when are you going to have time to do this, what are you thinking? But it is something that piqued my curiosity and got me really excited and so I am going with that because I don’t know when I am going to have time to learn this thing, but for some reason I am super excited about it, so build a longbow. Or do something totally new and different that you totally never thought you would do.

Kind of related is to go to a random meetup group, so I don’t know if wherever you are living in the world if meetup groups are active again, but it is such a great website to find stuff to do. Another place is AirBNB experiences, so there are a lot of things there and of course you can search by local area, so look at meetup or AirBNB experiences to do something that you have never done before or to do something in a different area, they are both great websites to find new things to do: cooking classes or… I don’t know, new adventures. Geocaching, I occasionally talk about geocaching, I haven’t done a lot of it lately, but I was really into it about, I don’t know, nine years ago. So geocaching, it is this app on your phone where you search for things so people will hide a little plastic container with a notebook and a pen and sometimes little trinkets, or toys and you use a GPS device to find these things and it is really fun! And one of the things that I found when I used to do geocaching a lot is that it kind of helped me find new trails, new places to visit and I ended up going off in new directions that I had never gone off on before, just because I was looking for these caches, and it really helps you to slow down when you are outside because you can’t run around and look for the geocache, you really need to be precise in your efforts to find it. Some are really easy to find and some of them are super challenging, there are some geocaches that I have looked for and never found, so geocaching, get the app and check it out.

So those are some perhaps uncommon or different outer or physical adventure ideas that you might not have considered. Let’s talk about some inner adventure ideas.

Meditation I think is getting more and more common, I don’t do it on a regular basis but when I do it it feels great. So, either get a guided meditation or do it on your own, there are a lot of guided journeys that are really, really, useful, and really feel like an adventure because they help take you down a mental path that perhaps you haven’t been on before and help you to consider new things and see new things. Another inner adventure idea is channeling, so I talk a lot about channeling plant spirits, I used to talk more about channeling spirit guides, that’s something that you can learn how to do and I can share some links in the show notes. My friend Cara Wilde who you remember from various episodes on this podcast has a course on how to channel your guides, there are other books and courses and things that you can do as well. Kind of along the lines is plant spirit communication or tree spirit communication, that is something that I talk about in my book, If Trees Could Talk and I am writing a book now on how to talk to trees and I am going to working (once my life settles down in a couple of weeks) on an online course on how to talk to trees. So that is one thing you can do and that opens you up to a whole new realm of communication. And, of course, there is animal communication and mineral communication, you can learn how to communicate with all kinds of things that don’t necessarily talk out loud like humans do. New healing modalities like, I don’t know, reiki, or Pscyh-K, or other mindset stuff or healing stuff. Get a massage if you have never had one, that can help not only your body but your mind, it can help you to relax. So, all kinds of inner adventure ideas, try something new, try a new healing or transformation modality.

So how can you decide which new adventures you want to try? I would say, probably, some of the things that I have mentioned so far have kind of piqued your interest and some of them you have thought, no way. But ask yourself: when was the last time you did something new and how did that make you feel? It was probably really exciting. So, tap into that feeling that you maybe want to experience again when you are trying to motivate yourself to try something again or try new adventures. And ask yourself what scares you, what makes you uncomfortable? How can you stretch yourself outside of your comfort zone in a new way? And what is outside your comfort zone?

So, my husband and I have signed up to this ultra in September, it is the Thames Path challenge and we both decided we don’t want to do it, so we are going to defer it to next year and change it to a different event, rather than cancelling entirely, because this company has a lot of really good events. But the reason that we signed up for this Thames Path Challenge was for the wrong reasons and we were both new to—I had not even done an ultra before, my husband was just starting to train for them. So, when we signed up for this, we were thinking it is the Thames path, it goes along a tow path, it will be flat, flat is easy. Well, flat is not easy. Flat is really hard because you are using the same muscles in the same way for 100km. So, we are looking for something different and one of the things that we had been looking at is this ultra in Snowdon, I forget what it is called, but I will look and link to it in the show notes, it is called the Snowdonia and it is a 50 mile and a 100 mile. So, he is looking at doing the 100 miler and I am looking at maybe doing the 50, or I might just go up to Wales and accompany him. It is a super challenging ultra, they have a really long cut off time: the 100 miler has a 48-hour cut off time, the 50 miler has a 24-hour cut off time, which is really, really, generous for those distances, which means that it is super challenging to run.

So, part of me wants to go because it is Wales, and Wales is beautiful, and it would be totally new terrain and it would be a great challenge and it would be a great adventure and it is really beautiful…and it is totally outside of my comfort zone, which scares me. So we have been watching some YouTube videos of this event and it is absolutely gorgeous but it has all these kind of mountains and ridge crossings, where you are kind of scrambling on your hands and feet over these boulders at the top of this very pointy mountain and there are a lot of those on the route. And of course it is not just doing this during daytime, it is doing this during nighttime, because you might hit one of these peaks at night and it is dark and you have just got a headlamp and you might be accompanied by other runners or you might be all alone, so this is totally outside of my comfort zone and I am not sure if I am going to do it, but I am thinking about doing it, maybe this year, maybe next year but considering it, I don’t know. So some things that scare you and are outside of your comfort zone make good adventures, because when you stretch that comfort zone in one event or one area of life, it stretches it all areas of your life, or most other areas of your life. So, I know this will be a great thing and I know I would enjoy at least part of it, but some things are too much; so feel into what is a good stretch and what is a terrifying stretch. I’m still not quite sure about Snowdon, it might be good, it might be horrible, we’ll see, I will update you.

As yourself: where would you like to go? I have only been to Wales a couple of times and for outdoors stuff I have only been once, so I would really like to go there. I would also really like to go to Scotland, I would especially like to go to northern Scotland up in the highlands. Where would you like to go? And it is funny because I am mentioning all these places in Britain, and I think it is because I can’t imagine travelling abroad any time soon and I am aware that I was a guest on this podcast, Tripcast 360, and I will link to that in the show notes because it was a really fun, really great, interview, these two guys were an absolute blast. But one of the questions they asked me was, where do you want to travel to next? And I said Scotland. And afterwards I was thinking, that probably sounds boring to people, because it is the same island that I live on, it is not that far from home, but really it is because I just can’t imagine travelling much further afield. So where would you like to go that is maybe outside of your comfort zone or somewhere new, but yet do-able in this weird day and age with Covid.

What would like to learn? Maybe there is something that you have always wanted to learn like a martial art, that’s adventurous. You can sign up for a one-day course or a longer course.

And finally, is there a place that you have always wanted to visit? Either another country or within your country, or within your local area? Is there somewhere new that you have always wanted to visit but haven’t?

So, I hope that has given you some ideas for new adventures and I hope it has helped you think about what does adventure mean to you and perhaps it has helped you to expand your idea of what adventure means to you? So that is all for today. I hope you found this interesting and useful and if you engage in new adventures, please get in touch and let me know. My email is [email protected], drop me a line and let me know what you thought, or you can find me a line and get in touch there.

If you got value from this episode, I would love for you to join me on Patreon, if you head to Patreon.com/HollyWorton, you can join me there—membership starts at just $1 a month and you get exclusive access to stuff that I don’t share anywhere else. I have a Q&A so you can ask me any questions that you have, and I will record those for the group and yeah, so there you go!

Thank you so much fo listening and remember to visit: HollyWorton.com/409 for the show notes on this episode. Happy trails!