“If you wait until you have everything ready, every detail dialed, every piece of worst-case-scenario gear squared away, you’ll never leave. Instead, learn to master the elusive art that makes adventure possible: the ill-planned, underfinanced departure.”
— Patrick Symmes, “…Or Just Go,” Outside Magazine, March 2006
“Striving for superlatives is part of human nature—the highest, the longest, the deepest. But now that many of these goals have been reached, the future of adventure lies in more subtle, more discriminating endeavors: the most beautiful, the most technical, the project accomplished with the most style. Adventure will be less about simply surviving and more about performing with grace and virtuosity. More personal, more internal, just you and your dream.
Adventure has always been about discovery, but because we and our world are constantly evolving, what we discover is, and forever will be, something new. The golden age of adventure is upon us. Now go.”
— Mark Jenkins, “Lost Horizons,” Outside Magazine, March 2006
“Better to have a short life that is full of what you like doing than a long life spent in a miserable way.”
— Alan Watts
“Better to sleep in an uncomfortable bed free, than sleep in a comfortable bed unfree.”
— Jack Kerouac, Dharma Bums
The older the gear, the better. People with new gear scare me: The scanty wear-and-tear of their equipage is too often indicative of the scantiness of their experience, which means you might not want to go on a tough hike with them, let alone descend into the orifices of the earth.”
— Mark Jenkins, in “Give ‘Em Enough Rope,” Outside Magazine, September 1, 2000
all packed 