In one’s life there are many ways of obtaining a sense of joy, satisfaction and accomplishment, one of which is adventure. Adventures allow us to get away from the stresses of everyday life and do something both fun and challenging. They give us a real feeling of being alive. While contemplating the importance of adventure in one’s life I was reminded of some tales of real adventures I’d recently read. The first of which was Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson, the story of a quest to identify a sunken German U-Boat found off the coast of New Jersey, where no such boats were supposed to be.
The location of the wreck was originally given to Bill Nagle, one of the pioneers of wreck diving, who dove to depths nobody had been to before and was the first to explore many wrecks.
Nagle pushed deeper. Diving below 200 feet, he began doing things scientists didn’t fully understand, going places recreational divers had never been. When he penetrated a shipwreck at these depths, he was often among the first to see the vessel since it had gone down, the first to open the purser’s safe since it had been closed, the first to look at these men since they had been lost at sea. But this also meant that Nagle was on his own. He had no maps drawn by earlier divers. Had someone visited these wrecks before, he might have told Nagle, “Don’t brush against that outboard beam in the galley–the thing moved when I swam by, and the whole room might cave in and bury you if you do.” Nagle had to discover all this by himself. It is one thing, wreck divers will tell you, to slither in near-total darkness through a shipwreck’s twisted, broken mazes, each room a potential trap of swirling silt and collapsing structure. It is another to do so without knowing that someone did it before you and lived.
With no guide to follow every dive was an adventure for Nagle, with the strong possibility that he would not come back up.
One of the divers Nagle brought with him to find out what was at a set of coordinates he was given, was John Chatterton. Chatterton had also been breaking ground in wreck diving, going deeper, and into seemingly inaccessible places before anyone else.
For the next three years, Chatterton owned the Doria. He penetrated into third class, second class, the first-class galley–all groundbreaking achievements that for years many had thought impossible. In a sport famous for hoarding, he gave away priceless Doria artifacts, asking fellow divers, “How many teacups does one guy need?” He gained a reputation as one of the best shipwreck divers on the East Coast; some said he might be among the best in the world. One day Nagle paid him the highest compliment by saying, “When you die no one will ever find your body.”
Like Nagle, Chatterton pushed the limits of what seemed possible, and unlike many other wreck divers, did it not for the treasure he could get, but more for the adventure of going where no one else could.
Switching to the opposite end of the adventure spectrum, I also recently read Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer an account of disaster at the top of Mount Everest. While attempting to reach the summit an unexpected storm came in, forcing many to fight their way back to camp, and ultimately killing five climbers.
Early in the book Krakauer gives a summary of the values of the climbing community. For them climbing is less about just getting to the top and more about the way in which one gets there, taking the most difficult paths.
And climbing provided a sense of community as well. To become a climber was to join a self-contained, rabidly idealistic society, largely unnoticed and surprisingly uncorrupted by the world at large. The culture of ascent was characterized by intense competition and undiluted machismo, but for the most part, its constituents were concerned with impressing only one another. Getting to the top of any given mountain was considered much less important than how one got there: prestige was earned by tackling the most unforgiving routes with minimal equipment, in the boldest style imaginable. Nobody was admired more than so-called free soloists: visionaries who ascended alone, without rope or hardware.
Deliberately choosing to take the more challenging path results in a greater adventure as you face the greater challenges encountered along the way, and a greater sense of accomplishment when you do finally make it to the top. As we complete each adventurous task we set for ourselves, repeating the same feat over again can quickly become boring, so we must then look for new mountains to climb, or new ways of climbing the same mountain, to maintain the same sense of adventure.
The slopes of Everest did not lack for dreamers in the spring of 1996; the credentials of many who’d come to climb the mountain were as thin as mine, or thinner. When it came time for each of us to assess our own abilities and weigh them against the formidable challenges of the world’s highest mountain, it sometimes seemed as thought half the population at Base Camp was clinically delusional. But perhaps this shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Everest has always been a magnet for kooks, publicity seekers, hopeless romantics, and others with a shaky hold on reality.
For most, the only reason for wanting to climb Mount Everest, is simply because it’s there, it’s a challenge to be faced, and conquered. Just getting to the top is liable to be the greatest adventure of one’s lifetime, assuming, of course, that you also make it back down.
To face the biggest challenges in life, even when we know that the odds are against us is what makes for the greatest adventures. Although, for most people, simply doing something new and different is enough to qualify as an adventure, even if others have done it before us.
Just getting out of the house and exploring where we live could be considered an adventure. Or trying a new sport. There are opportunities everywhere to create our own adventures and really live our lives, we just need to look for them and see the potential in the areas that surround us.
While we can’t all necessarily dive deeper or climber higher, finding someway to squeeze a sense of adventure into your life is what makes life worth living. Adventures are an opportunity to learn about yourself, who you are, and what your limits are, and the chance to push yourself to, and beyond them.