Postcards: Microadventures

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Jessica Surber loves being in the mountains, working with plants and exploring all that lies beyond her comfort zone. She divides her time between Peru and the Yukon.

YUKON MICROADVENTURES

The summer days here in the Yukon are wonderfully long, and the midnight sun is perfect for going on adventures, for going out and trying something new, something exciting and slightly outside of one’s comfort zone.

Equally long is a Yukoner’s summer to-do list, which seems to grow proportionately with the amount of snow accumulating outside during the winter, but unlike the snow, the list doesn’t disappear in the spring. It’s that list we all have of the things we need and want to do during the precious snow-free months. It’s the house projects, the yard projects, the canoe trips, the garden plans, the music festivals, the camping trips and all of the other things that we dream of, all winter long.

Of course, our normal day-today responsibilities and duties don’t take a summer vacation, so all those aforementioned things have to get done in the time we can set aside within our normal schedule. And so, inevitably, by the time the leaves start to change colour and the first snowflakes begin to blanket this generous and special land, many of those things will not have been completed, especially the trips and adventures we wanted to go on. It’s hard to find big chunks of time to take a trip into the backcountry or to go somewhere new and explore. And now, with soaring fuel prices, for many it isn’t feasible in the same way as it was before. Adventure often entails a significant commitment of time and money—and often some expensive new gear. What if it didn’t have to be like that? What if there was a way to scatter mini adventures throughout your Yukon summer and fit them into the little pockets of time we can all find in our lives?

Alastair Humphreys, a British author and adventurer, is well versed in big adventures after having cycled around the world for four years. However, he’s also a big proponent of microadventures. Microadventures, as he explains in his book Microadventures: Local Discoveries, Great Escapes, are “close to home, cheap, simple, short and 100 per cent guaranteed to refresh your life,” and all you need is “an open mind, bags of enthusiasm and bundles of curiosity.”

Remember, as a child, how everything had the potential of becoming an adventure? Pitching a tent in the backyard was just as fun as doing it at a campground, a six-hour drive away. A bike ride around the neighbourhood was thrilling when done with your best friends, no matter if you had cruised around those streets thousands of times before. We’ve gotten so caught up in wanting bigger and better, needing more gear and trying to keep up with trends so much so that we’ve gotten disconnected from that sense of adventure we had as children. Maybe it’s time to change that.

Here are Five Ideas to Get You Going, in the hopes that you’ll add your own microadventure ideas to the list. Adventures don’t have to be long and far away to shift something within us and to reconnect us with a sense of awe in our lives. PHOTOS: Jessica Surber

New perspectives in familiar places

1. Get a new perspective

It’s incredibly easy to slide into a routine or a rut and never stray from it. Take an afternoon and turn your routine on its head. If you always walk the same trails around your neighbourhood, dust off your bike and see what it feels like to see them from two wheels. Better yet, invite a friend to join you who’s never been there before. If you usually hike or bike along Miles Canyon and the Yukon River, borrow a canoe or a kayak and experience it from the water (you might be surprised by the new things you’ll see).

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