For Dreamers, Travelers and Armchair Wanderers, This Part of Too Old for This Sh*T is For You
You're Too Old to Spend the Rest of Your Life on the Couch: Let's Adventure!
Whether you’re an experienced traveler or someone who simply enjoys watching others wander, welcome
Those of you who are familiar with my work on Patreon or Medium, so very glad to see you. With this article I’m launching another phase of my writing and adventuring career. You’re invited to join me.
My purpose is to pry people off the couch, get us all out into Nature and get nurtured. This part of Too Old will explore both soft and hard adventures, as well as ways for anyone to get started even if the idea of a night in the wild is a five-star hotel in downtown Dallas.
Well, you wouldn’t be far off.
For those new to me, I’ve been doing serious adventure sports since I was 58. I launched myself wholesale into this realm at sixty when I trained for and summitted Kilimanjaro.
That feat, while not terribly impressive to those who do this for a living, was for me the beginning of a brand new question: if I can turn myself into an athlete at sixty, what else can I do?
The next ten years I spent exploring my boundaries, chasing physical, emotional, psychic and psychological horizons, which is why I call myself a Horizon Hunter. It’s not hubris and it’s not meant to be a joke. I can be plenty of a running joke myself without trying but that's another article.
I like to push boundaries and have been willing to pay the often steep price to see what’s on the other side of a distant line.
There aren’t a lot of women who have done what I do. Most weren't silly enough to do what I like to do but I digress.
I didn’t even begin until I was sixty.
What I’ve learned from those experiences informs my writing about aging well as life's final, true adventure. Above all it’s taught me that adventure doesn’t stop at an age. It stops because of an attitude.
I’ll share with you some of my past stories and what I’m finding for us all to do right now. I hope you’ll be inspired to try something really different- take a hike, a rafting trip, get back to riding horses, something you’ve always dreamed about.
It is never too late.
I am just coming slowly out of a year of seven major surgeries including two foot reconstructions -too many very large horses stood on my tootsies. Lots of us this age have new hips, knees, shoulders. I asked for a new brain but they were out of stock.
Many people I have met on the road have new body parts and they aren’t stopping. There are plenty of ways to go play in Nature which don’t involve extreme sports, where you can still enjoy the thrill of white water, steep mountains and bright air.
I’m committed to finding, trying out and inviting you to a whole variety of soft adventures that you can do, as well as sharing some hair-raising and funny stories about the hard adventures I’ve done.
Travel teaches. The best part of it is that it invites us to be someone we never thought we could be.
Why not now, as we face our second half, last third? Why not you, why not now?
Exactly.
You are Way Too Old to spend the rest of your life watching reruns of other people’s adventures.
I’ll have plenty of suggestions on how you can ramp up gently to be able to do more. I’m no doctor, but I can direct you to resources where you can find guidance for the shape you’re in right now. None of what I write should be construed as medical advice, so please always seek professional guidance before you start any exercise program.
To be able to do that, we get to do the real self-care: smart eating, lots of movement, a rich society of friends and a good reason to lace up our sneakers each day.
Oh, the stories we will tell.
I’m at expert at nothing. I am however, a prize-winning journalist and author of two prize- winning books. I have done and seen and experienced so many once-in-a-lifetime moments. I sincerely hope that you will consider giving a few more to yourself.
You are worth that gift: the gift of hope, health and the ultimate high of living well right to the very end when we are date-stamped.
I promise to make you think, laugh, chortle, cringe, and with any luck, be deeply motivated to get out and do that thing you always wanted.
I will never ask or expect you to do what I do. Good lord no. I do hope you will be inspired to find what you’d like to do, tick off what’s on that bucket list.
Just keep an open mind, and ask: why not me? Why not now?
I asked those questions at sixty. I still live the answer. How about you?
If you woke up suddenly and realized OMIGOD I’m (fifty-sixty-seventy-etc) WHERE DID THE TIME GO? It’s time to get going. Life is a whisper, a will’o the wisp, a geological gnat fart.
What are you going to do with it?
Let’s play.
Sunrise in Tucson 2023
If you're on the fence, all in or I dunno, still, welcome. If you’re intrigued, please consider
If you know someone who could use a gentle nudge to put down the remote and go remote, please also consider
Either way thanks for taking this quick walk with me.