Читать книгу Grand Adventures - Alastair Humphreys, Alastair Humphreys - Страница 9

If you are in the fortunate position of even being able to dream of undertaking a big adventure, getting hold of £1,000 may not be the biggest hurdle. After all, it’s less money than many holidays, kitchen upgrades, wedding dresses or TVs cost. But not many people have both plenty of money and plenty of time (at least not whilst they are still young enough to climb Rum Doodle without their knees hurting).

For many, the scarcest resource in life is time. That is why I wrote Microadventures, a book about squeezing local adventures into the confines of real life. Microadventures challenge you to look at how you spend the 24 hours you have each day and to try to re-prioritise things a little bit.

But grand adventures require more than 24 hours. If you’re yearning to cross a continent, chasing the days west until the sun sets into the ocean before you, you’ll need to find a bigger chunk of time. There is never an easy time to find that time. Too many people are willing to settle for waiting until they retire, and this always makes me sad. The actor Brandon Lee’s grave is inscribed with these words:

‘Because we don’t know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. And yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, an afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four, or five times more? Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless …’

Have a look at www.deathclock.com; it’s one of my favourite websites! You add various parameters about your life (age, weight, gender, whether you smoke) and it will calculate the date you are likely to die. A big, unstoppable clock begins counting down the remaining seconds of your life.

I have the date of my predicted death scheduled into my diary. Morbid, perhaps, but it takes deadlines to spur most of us into action, and that non-extendable deadline scares the hell out of me. I have so much I want to get done before 8 September 2050!

Life, they say, is what happens while you’re busy making plans. Time is ticking, life is short. These days everyone is busy. We’re racing time, always chasing time. Bragging about how busy we are is one of our era’s favourite things to do. But, as the pithy viral Tweet said, ‘We all have the same 24 hours that Beyoncé has.’ It’s up to us to carve out time to make bootylicious stuff happen. When I was younger I would simply think of a trip, then go and do it. Now that I’m older and busier it’s more often a case of making a chunk of time available and then coming up with a plan that fits into that time slot.

There is no simple solution. This book will not solve the lack-of-time conundrum. I’d be rich if it did. But it might get you excited enough to resolve to solve it yourself: to begin the conversations with the people in your life – your family, your boss, yourself – about how it might be possible to pause the racing rhythm of daily life for long enough to do something different and really memorable. After all, each hour that passes, each dreary commute, each bleary Monday morning – these are hours on the hamster wheel that you have spent and will never be able to recoup or spend again. So spend them wisely.

One of my favourite feelings on expeditions is how much time I have. I don’t have more time, of course, I’ve just freed it up to do stuff that feels important to me. I wake at dawn, the diary is empty and the day stretches long before me. I drink tea and watch the sun rise. All I need to do today is make some miles. And then I will sit again, weary but satisfied, in some place I have never been before, and watch the sun set. The days are not busy, but they are full and fulfilling. I cherish spending that time. At home my days feel short and hurried. Yet at the end of most of them I’ve accomplished nothing memorable. What a waste!

I hope that this book persuades you to find a way to find time to fill your days with what feels important and worthwhile to you, not with the stuff that conventional society deems you ought to be doing.

‘The sooner you begin to get into this mind-set, the sooner you will have that big juicy chunk of time inked into your diary and the adventure can begin’

The first task is to think carefully about how you use your time now, and how you might be able to make some time for adventure. This isn’t about stirring your porridge into your coffee, sleeping in your work suit or other handy tips like that. For a big adventure you’ll need to clear a swathe of time – weeks at least, months, maybe even a year or two.

Begin by asking yourself these questions. I know they are hard, but try to answer them as positively as you can rather than instantly dismissing them as impossible in the circumstances of your life.

What is the biggest chunk of time you might be able to carve out for an adventure? Is this long enough to do what you’d like to do? Squeeze another week on at either end. Is that long enough? How much time do you need?

When in the next year might you have time? Can you block off a non-negotiable chunk of time in your diary? It might be quite far in the future, but once it’s in the diary you can treat it as sacrosanct.

What are your time constraints? Why can’t you go away?

If it’s work, do they truly need you all the time? Could your colleagues cope without you for a while? How much loyalty and time do you owe them? Beware of misplaced loyalty. Talk to your boss about how you might be able to free up some time. Don’t just second-guess them by saying ‘it’ll never happen. They can’t do anything about it’. Have the conversation. Tell them how important this is to you, explain the benefits it will have for you and your work performance.

Imagine you were suddenly bedridden for a couple of months. Would the world cope without you? How would it manage? Could you, therefore, bugger off on an adventure for a couple of months without the world collapsing?

Could you take a sabbatical from work? Maybe you could work from the road. If you resigned, could you get your job back when you return? Could you quit, then seek a new job when you return? Or apply for a new job now but agree not to begin the position for a few months?

If you are too financially constrained to stop working, are there ways you can free yourself a little? Can you clear your credit card debts, downsize your house or rent it out, or even take out a loan? Richard Parks’ parents re-mortgaged their house to help him accomplish his expedition dream of climbing the Seven Summits and bagging both Poles. Extreme measures, perhaps, but it is important to reflect upon how important this experience is to you. You can get more money in life, but not more time.

On expeditions you often need to take bold, decisive decisions that will have a significant impact on your chances of success or staying alive. You have to be confident, clear-headed and brave enough to back yourself. The wilderness is a place for positive decisions, pushing forwards and making shit happen. The sooner you begin to get into this adventurer’s mind-set, the sooner you will have that big juicy chunk of time inked into your diary and the adventure can at last begin.

WISE WORDS FROM FELLOW ADVENTURERS

SEAN, INGRID AND KATE TOMLINSON

CYCLED THE LENGTH OF THE AMERICAS

Kate was eight: the perfect age – old enough to remember and benefit from her experiences, but not yet a reluctant stroppy teenager!

HANNAH ENGELKAMP

WALKED ROUND WALES WITH A DONKEY

Often I’d get people saying, ‘Oh, well, I’m glad you’re doing it now while you’re young, while you can’, and they’d be people in their fifties. Sometimes I’d just think, ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, you’re just giving yourself an easy excuse.’

ROSIE SWALE-POPE

RAN AROUND THE WORLD IN HER SIXTIES.

You’re a long time dead, so you might as well get on and do it whilst you are alive!

JAMIE BOWLBY-WHITING

RAFTED DOWN THE DANUBE

It’s not the days in the office that we’ll reflect upon with nostalgia when we are old.

SARAH OUTEN

TRAVELLED ROUND THE NORTHERN HEMISPHERE BY HUMAN POWER

Treat it as you would any other project. Identify what the project is, break it down into bits and put a time frame on it, then suddenly it can happen. Monitor your progress as you go along and learn stuff on the way. I think so long as you’re flexible in that plan and willing to change and adapt, then it’s not rocket science.

COLIN WILLOX

BACKPACKED THROUGH EUROPE

People are often paralysed by fear at the difficulties of making an adventure happen (‘where will I keep my car?’). There is no perfect time to go. So tie up the loose ends you can in a reasonable time, and leave. It will be messy. You’ll screw up. There are no guarantees. Remember that this is what you want, it’s why you’re going. If you didn’t, you would stay home.

PAUL RAMSDEN

TWO-TIME WINNER OF THE PIOLETS D’OR AWARD

It’s really hard [to make the time]. I’m busy. It’s hard to find the time to get fit. The most important thing is that I get the dates in the diary maybe a year in advance. It’s then non-negotiable – if I get work offers or party invites I can then say ‘sorry, I’ll be in India’. It’s a bit brutal. There’s no compromise. It’s massively important to set those dates, otherwise it would be much easier just not to bother.

ROLF POTTS

CIRCLED THE GLOBE WITH NO LUGGAGE OR BAGS

I’d say that procrastinating about the journey is tied into the core fears that keep us from travelling. We keep thinking that there will be a better time, a time when we have more money or fewer obligations, or when the world feels safer and more open. In truth it doesn’t take as much money as most people think, obligations are something we can manage, and the world is far safer than you might think from just watching news headlines.

KIRSTIE PELLING

FOUNDER OF THE FAMILY ADVENTURE PROJECT

We made a decision to go freelance to make time to spend with the children. We started a website to record our adventures. If you voice your ambitions out loud you are more likely to achieve them.

MENNA PRITCHARD

CLIMBER

[Things like time], they’re not the reasons – they’re the excuses. Aren’t they? I really believe that if you want something enough then you will find the time, scrape together the money, and overcome your fears… But it’s all about priorities. And I know because I’m completely guilty of it myself. Ever since I became a mum, I have used it as an excuse. An excuse for not having the adventures my heart desires. There comes a time when we have to say to ourselves, ‘stop making excuses’. That if something means so much to us then it’s worth working towards, it’s worth fighting for – and, dammit, it’s worth the struggle. I don’t want life to be about the battles I never fought, the barriers I never overcame, the excuses I made.

HELEN LLOYD

LONG-DISTANCE JOURNEYS BY BIKE, HORSE, RIVER AND ON FOOT

My job in engineering, although it started as a career, is now a means to an end. It’s how I earn money to do the things I really want. I now work short-term contracts, live cheap, save up and plan another journey. For me, the mix of travel and engineering job satisfies all my needs, which I couldn’t get from just one.

GRANT RAWLINSON

HUMAN-POWERED EXPEDITIONS BEGINNING AND ENDING ON INTERESTING MOUNTAIN SUMMITS

I have a full-time job as a regional sales manager based in Singapore, travelling around Asia spending lots of time eating very nice meals with customers and staying in beautiful hotels. All of which I do not appreciate as much as a lukewarm cup of instant soup in a freezing snow cave. What is wrong with me?!

SCOTT PARAZYNSKI

ASTRONAUT AND MOUNTAINEER

[A lack of time] can probably be viewed as a cop-out on many occasions. A couple of times in my life, I’ve had the opportunity to take a leave of absence and do big things. Both my trips to Everest required some creative work-arounds at my day job, banking vacation time, initially. There are all sorts of really cool adventures that can be done on a shorter scale too.

ANT GODDARD

ROAD-TRIPPED ALL OVER THE USA

I have a young kid and a pregnant wife, so I’m in a good position to tackle the regular excuse given by people that ‘the timing’s not right for adventure now, I’m too busy, life’s too complicated.’ It’s an interesting thought because it’s kind of similar to the dilemma of if/when to have kids. The timing will never be perfect. If you wait for the perfect time you’ll miss out. Mostly everything you think you can’t leave will still be there when you get back, and travelling gives you a lot of time to think about those complications and put them in perspective. There are very few things that are honest blockers to just getting out and having an adventure, no matter how large or small the adventure is. You may feel like there are a lot of ‘what-ifs’ preventing you doing something adventurous, but the scariest one in my mind has always been ‘what if I never go? What if I stay here forever?’

ANDY MADELEY

CYCLED FROM LONDON TO SYDNEY

I realised that we only have this life to get everything done. That outweighed the fear of the unknown and gave me the momentum to bust out from the rut I found myself rolling down.

© Anthony Goddard/Linda Martini