Adventure travel

In Death of an Adventure Traveler, Rolf Potts describes his editor telling him that American travel magazine readers

didn't want to read about journeys that were obscure or complicated; they wanted exotic challenges wherein they might test — or, at least, imagine themselves testing — the extremes of human experience.

This testing of extremes apparently is supposed to involve some limited planning, extensive shopping, and a comfortable bed. It turns out that I’ve done far more “adventure travel” myself than I had realized.

Volcano National Park on Hawai‘i is filled with cautionary signs. Park rangers casually mention that the current ranger station is on wheels and that the previous ranger station was completely destroyed by a lava flow. They warn you against breathing in the wrong place, and explain that the steam rising from the ground all around you is rainwater that has seeped down a little ways and hit magma. The large metal “danger” sign at the end of the road that was covered by a lava flow a few years ago has itself been partially destroyed. It is a fascinating and alien landscape, and I definitely recommend a visit.

I’m glad that for a couple of days I overcame my perfectly rational fear of hiking around an active volcano, but it confirmed for me that my own experience of adventure travel is not about the sense of danger or testing the extremes of human experience. I find adventure simply in being somewhere new and different where I don’t know what to expect. Exploring the ruins of a Scottish castle nobody has ever heard of was equally an adventure, partly because I took some random bus into the countryside without a map and wasn’t sure how I’d find my way back. I’ve had the same sense of adventure pulling my car over in the White Mountains of New Hampshire and following a half-marked trail into the woods to see what I’d find. Maybe my adventure palate is insufficiently refined, and I’d understand better if I read more travel magazines. But along with making the exotic destinations seem reachable, travel magazines can make them seem more familiar. And then actually going there won’t feel like an adventure, will it?