Adventure Activism

How vital is it for adventurers to take more responsibility for the the environmental crisis? What can we do do to help?

THE age of 75 is perhaps a good time to reflect on personal things past, present and future, a suitable moment to consider what has been for me a ‘life of adventure.’ I put that term in parenthesis because adventure is such a loosely defined concept. I remember Hamish Brown telling the story of a lady who sat by the side of the road with a picnic table taking afternoon tea from china cups. For her that was “roughing it”, or an adventure, and I think of Sandy Allan, my neighbour here in Newtonmore, climbing the Mazeno Ridge of Nanga Parbat in Pakistan, a feat described by commentators as one of the greatest mountaineering achievements of all time, a great example of the opposite extreme. In between lies an unlimited variety of experiences and situations that could be legitimately defined as ‘adventure.’