I love exploring. I’m not picky on what, either; when my husband and I were kids, we explored the alleys and streets in East Vancouver, taking a different route home each time. Sometimes we would pick a random place to go to and walk there. And of course, we did a lot of hiking in all the places you could bus to, but that goes without saying.
Knowing this has been 
very helpful in narrowing down my priorities, now that we are older and possess the car/money (within reason) to go places further than our neighbourhood. Travel is a big thing, right now; it seems like everyone wants to travel and go to exotic places. Which is great, don’t get me wrong…but over the past few years all of our travel plans have been relegated to the back corner, because my husband and I learned that we *still* prefer exploring our backyard. To us, the adventure is not in the miles flown or how different the culture is, or the fad; it is in every step taken, in the little surprises that greet us along the way, in the silence of wild places (away from all the tourists), and knowing that if we fuck up, we only have ourselves to blame (which is actually true for everyone most of the time–but most people would just rather pretend otherwise).
Our latest adventure had us going up a mountain to sleep there. I can’t even begin to describe how exhilirating it all felt. People have made comments that our vacations sound like a lot of work–indeed, on a 3-day weekend, we spend most of it planning or en-route and of course, quite a few hours walking. But work can be relaxing, too. The hike up was 9 km on the way up (the trail wasn’t, but we got lost and meandered about) and we made a few hiccups along the way, but the view at the top and our base camp was well worth it. The next day, we were blanketed by fog, which added another layer of adventure on our way down.
I love what we do. I’m sure at some point we’ll go do a real vacation and gain some weight instead of losing, but we’re not running out of mountains and sub-alpine lakes and meadows to explore anytime soon. And they look so *different* depending on what season you go up. We’ve been doing this for a few years now and I still get really excited every time we go. Bloody terrified, too, but that’s a story for another day (or maybe I’ve already done one. Hmmm.)
