Not long ago, I Googled my old
hometown, Moab, along with the word “adventure,” and
found over 500,000 links. Apparently there are adventures enough to
be found in Moab to keep tourists entertained and spending their
money until the next millennium. Just to mention a handful, I found
the Moab Adventure Center, Moab Adventure Xstream, Moab Adventure
Headquarters, Moab Resort Adventure Package and a link to Moab
Adventure Park, from television station WWTI in, of all places,
Watertown, N.Y. It reported:
“Riding down the ski
lift from the highest point on the red-rock rim overlooking the
Moab Valley in Utah, our feet dangled some 800 feet in the air as
Scott McFarland talked about the latest project for his Moab
Adventure Park. ‘We’re applying for permits for a zip-line, a
2,500-foot-long cable that goes from the top of the hill to the
bottom… Without a braking system, you’d hit about 145 miles
per hour. With the system, you’ll go 50 or 60. That’s on the
computer, anyway. We’ll see.’” That’s one
adventure we’ll never have to embrace, thanks to The Nature
Conservancy, which bought the tram and removed it from the face of
the earth.
By comparison, if you travel just 55 miles
south to the sleepy Mormon-cowboy hamlet of Monticello, the
adventure falls off dramatically in the world of Google, to just
759 hits. What do you expect from a town without a brewpub? At the
other end of the scale, nearby Aspen, Colo., kicks Moab’s
relatively passive rear with 1,890,000 adventure hits, and New York
City boasts a stunning 8,370,000. According to Google, you can find
four times as many adventures in New York as you can in Baghdad,
which produced less than 2 million hits. That is a telling piece of
information. Just what kinds of adventures are we talking about?
According to one dictionary definition, an adventure is “an
undertaking of a hazardous nature” or “an undertaking of a
questionable nature.” Both sound like Baghdad to me.
But there’s a third definition: “an unusual or
exciting experience.” This was the one I was looking for, the kind
of adventure that tourists search for when they come to places like
Moab. Most, if not all, of the Moab Google hits are commercial
enterprises, eager to provide an exciting and unusual experience
for the paying public. But an adventure that’s truly
hazardous is out of the question. Imagine a company that faced its
customers and announced, “Listen up, people… we want all of you
to understand there’s an excellent chance only half of you
will survive this hike in Arches National Park to the Fiery
Furnace…the rest of you will probably die in free falls or rock
collapses or from equipment failure. So call your family and tell
them how much you love ‘em.”
No, none of this would
pass muster. The adventure-tour companies must endure inspections,
meet various federal standards and pay substantial insurance
premiums to ensure that an adventure is as free of danger as
humanly possible. It’s okay for the customer to get excited,
and compared to the workaday cube-farm life he or she leaves
behind, how could it help but seem exciting? But is it really an
adventure?
I have my own adventure definition; I call it
a “spontaneously sought, poorly planned, stupidly conceived
exploration of a mystery.” Spontaneity is critical to an adventure.
How can an adventure be planned and scheduled? And a real one
should have an unknown component to it: You might get lost, for
example.
But instead: “Now, let’s see, Kimberly …
I’m thinking…an adventure that starts around 10 a.m. would
be perfect because I want to have a leisurely breakfast at the
lodge. Love the eggs benedict! Then maybe a rappel down a cliff? Or
would you rather do a boat thing? No more than $100 … $150 tops.
And back here by four for drinks … does that rock or what?”
Yes, it’s true. I’m out of touch with
Mainstream Adventure America, and how can I argue with 480,000
Google hits and a booming adventure economy? But like so many other
words — wilderness — for instance, an adventure isn’t what
it used to be. I’ll take mine as they come, unplanned,
unscheduled, free of charge and sloppy. If it kills me, I just hope
I don’t die with a cell phone clutched in my hand,
frantically punching 911 as I hurtle toward the greatest adventure
of them all.
Jim Stiles is a contributor to
Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.org). He
publishes the Canyon Country Zephyr in Moab,
Utah.
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