Book Review: Microadventures

When we moved to the mountains, I realized how much of an indoor person I really am. I realized, though, that it wasn’t good for me to spend all my time inside, and began making a concerted effort to actually spend time on our property. Through the 1000 Hours Outside movement, I started wanting to spend more time outside, get more adventurous, and truly enjoy the outdoors more.

In the last year, I’ve noticed how spending time outside has improved my mood and overall health. I’ve noticed that when we are having a difficult day with school or attitudes, going outside always seems to help. I have also noticed that when we don’t get outside, bad behaviors (for all of us) increase!

This year, I was excited to see that Ginny Yurich of 1000 Hours Outside was hosting a monthly book club. For January, she picked Microadventures: Local Discoveries for Great Escapes by Alastair Humphreys. I jumped right into this one as soon as the month started, and really enjoyed it as I read through it.

Alastair Humphreys is a National Geographic Adventurer of the Year. He cycled around the world for four years, and spoke at schools around the world about his adventures. The premise behind his book Microadventures is that anyone can have an adventure, either on the weekend or between 5 and 9. Essentially, Humphreys shows readers that if you aren’t at work, you can find a way to fit in a microadventure, if you just step outside and do it.

Each of the microadventures he writes about and suggests to readers, he himself completed. He writes about his experience with each microadventure, and gives readers tips on how to accomplish a similar microadventure as well. He also, refreshingly, writes about what goes wrong on certain trips.

Humphrey’s lives in England so his book and microadventures are more specific to his home country, but most, if not all, can be adapted for wherever a reader lives.

As a professional adventurer, he repeatedly talks about sleeping outside–no tent. As a mom, and quite frankly, a wuss–I don’t know that I’d be comfortable enough to do that. BUT, maybe I can work my way up to that level of adventuring overtime. Maybe we can check in on this in a few years!

Until then, I love the idea of making mini-adventures for me and the girls. While I know that Shawn would not get behind us camping somewhere without him (even in a tent!), I can still accomplish some adventures with the girls during the day, and replicate parts of Humphrey’s adventures either with Shawn and the girls on the weekends!

He writes about 38 microadventures, all of various time commitments (overnight, 1-2 days, a week) and planning. Each of them sounded incredibly interesting to me, and the photographs included in the book are absolutely incredible. But I am not going to review all 38!

Microadventure number 28 was all about building a wild hut. He talked about building a shelter outside using only twine, a saw, and nature. While he does mark this as “hard,” this is one I would absolutely love to do with my girls. He says the time required is 1 day–and for adults, that would probably be completely accurate. But I think that we could do this over a few weeks on our own property. Considering they’re small, and it is cold this month, it might be a series of microadventures to build this, but I think it still accomplishes the goal of getting outside and out of our comfort zones. Plus, this is something they were already working on. With his guidance, maybe we can make our shelter a bit more complex than what they currently have started!

In microadventure number 30, he met friends on a hill for dinner–they cooked their stew over a fire, enjoyed each other's company, and then slept outside. They made it back to their trains first thing in the morning so they could get back to work on time, which is dedication to say the least! Again, I probably will not sleep outside, but I love the idea of meeting up with friends somewhere for a bonfire, cooking something delicious over the open fire, and enjoying the time together. While we’d all likely end up back in our own homes, and in our own beds, the time spent together in nature would be so unique and a great way to enjoy community.

Living in mild-weathered California, I find it ironic that I read this book during one of the longest stretches of rain our state has had in the last 50 years. The UK easily gets double the amount of days of rain we get here in California, and Humphrey’s continuously wrote about rain in most of his microadventures. It just proves that just because it’s wet outside, it doesn’t mean we can’t get out and explore!

If you need some more adventure in your life, this is a great book filled with inspiration after inspiration! If you aren’t looking to read, maybe check out the 1000 Hours Outside Podcast or one of Allistar Humphrey’s four podcasts!

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