Our Need for Adventure

Loon Laughter at Midnight

Je suis un homme du nord.

Now I, too, am a north man.

The Boast of the Voyageur

For some, it is a wild howling.

It is a yowl for others. Some

yip-yip incessantly. Others

turn back towards the leader,

impatient to begin. And some

remain calm and quiet

in the traces.

It is the beginning of a dog sled race.

The air is filled with a chorus of dogs wailing in anticipation of when they

are off and running. The anchored

claw presses down into the snow, holding them back.

The official gives their announcement: Ten … nine … eight … and they’re off.

And within a fraction of seconds, all is quiet as the dogs set to their task. And they are away.

And I think to myself: If only we could show such passion. Not only restless

in the traces but testing them, leaping forward and then back, again and again, so eager to start.

Each athlete (for that is what they

are) is prepared in their own way.

But together, they are a team.

In his book, The Adventure of Living,

the Swiss psychiatrist Paul Tournier

writes that there is a profound

penchant for adventure in each

one of us.

We may enjoy it from a distance. For example, a writer who never writes a great novel may instead settle for becoming a movie critic.

We may quiet this instinct by choosing lesser experiences such as an affair or gambling or making work our one

grand ambition.

Adventures that once animated us can turn normal. We joy in the retelling of older achievements; we hold on to the glory days, we identify ourselves with what we might consider the pinnacle

of our life when we were at our best.

But these dogs had a crazy-eyed,

blazing abandon to follow the one

thing they were born to do.

No house dogs these.

Their mark was for the trail, for the rhythmic panting, for the steamy

breaths escaping them, for the

shadow nights, for frost on their

nose hairs, for the straw bed at

the end of a good run in the

depths of January.

In a recent issue of Conservation magazine, there were pictures by outdoor photographers. One was

of a moose emerging from a halo

of snow and frost.

Of this experience, the photographer, Jim Brandenburg, wrote:

I thought I saw a ghost today.

I went after them in the waist-deep

snow with town clothes on and made

a mating call. They responded

and came toward me. Felt

wonderfully nervous!

These last words stopped me. Brandenburg had found his adventure that day. “Wonderfully nervous” is an excellent way of knowing when we are on the edge of some great journey.

Soon we are to be off and running.

The passion we experience, like the passion of these dogs, is rare. And

that is why it is so important to

welcome it when or if it comes.

We owe it to ourselves to go to a sled dog race sometime to witness even a fraction of their enthusiasm. It is the one sport where we can stand so close to delirious eagerness.

Their yips and yowls, their howling

and songs of passion, remind us of

our indifference to living. In their straining and eagerness to begin,

we are challenged to care more

deeply about the trail we are on.

We forget life might just be

intended to feel like this.

When was the last time you looked back and wondered why you weren’t being released and when that ecstatic moment would finally come?

It is then that we set to work.

The sublime expectation is over.

Now we are on our way.

While it may be an individual journey,