Adventure begins where our knowledge ends

Sometimes the excitement of not knowing is all that's needed

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Approx. 850 words; five minutes read time

As kids, all we want to do is overcome our limits. It's programmed into us to learn. We ache to be able to ride a bike. Master swimming. Know how to read and write. Everything we do while young, including play, is all about learning. If things go well, this lust for knowledge continues our whole lives. 

But knowledge isn’t everything. Sometimes not knowing can be the reason to get excited.

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When I was young, I was wildly naive as most kids are. I was as apt to believe in the science fiction I saw on TV as I was to accept the science fact taught in school. Flying around galaxies, meeting aliens, and time travel, all seemed plausible. Even when I knew something wasn't real, I could suspend doubt enough to enjoy the fantasy.

Likewise, real-life holds many adventures for a child. One of the great joys of youth is being blissfully unaware; routine events can be a wondrous experience simply because they are new.

But as we age, it's easy to feel like we've seen and done it all. We get bored with the repetition. Fooled, we think there is no more adventure.

But it doesn’t have to be so. All we have to do is embrace our ignorance and revel in the unknown. Adventure awaits!

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In my last post, I shared details on a trip I took along Route 66 in western Arizona. Now almost 20 years ago, that trip I car camped in the Mojave Valley, stranded because of a rare winter storm. Through the blinding snow, I had driven into the valley hours before, in complete darkness, barely aware of where I was.

The next morning, I woke to a frosted in windshield with only the faintest idea of what came next. I didn't even know what direction I should head. Without a GPS or a cell phone, my only guide was my intuition and a beat-up road atlas.

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To be sure, the Mojave Valley is a large expanse of rugged desert. It's blazing hot in the summer, and as I learned firsthand, it can be frigid cold in the winter. For the ill-equipped, this landscape can be a death trap. A trip through it under any conditions can be an adventure. But it's not all that far from civilization.

I had camped at the junction of Oatman Highway (Arizona 10 - Historic Route 66) and Oatman Road (Arizona 153). In the darkness of night, and the snow, it felt desolate. But like much of the US, even the most remote places are not far from something. Here, in the Mojave Valley, I was only 13 miles from Ft. Mojave, Arizona, and 19 miles from Needles, California/I-40. I was hardly in the middle of nowhere. 

But the fun I had then came from not knowing what was over the horizon. Despite civilization a handful of miles away, I was for all intents and purposes alone. It was uplifting not to know what was next.

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On that trip, I felt like a kid again, inhabiting a universe where anything was possible. That was the goal, and I succeeded.

Since then, I've taken many more adventures, some to the Earth's proverbial far corners. The "middle of nowhere" still exists, and I've been pretty close to it now. But none of these “authentic” adventures have trumped that time along Route 66 in the Mojave Valley.

It turns out that adventure is a state of mind, not a destination. And not knowing what happens next is really all that’s needed to take one.

The adventure begins where our knowledge ends.

Let’s go.

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Until next time. Science. Fiction. Create.

JRC