Microadventures
I very recently stumbled across the term microadventures during one of my internet rabbit hole dives, and I instantly fell in love with the concept.
If you're not familiar with the term, a microadventure is, according to the coiner of the term, Alastair Humphreys, “an adventure that is short, simple, local, cheap – yet still fun, exciting, challenging, refreshing, and rewarding.”
The family and I have had a few microadventures since stumbling across this term, but I wanted to write about our most recent one that took place in our very own backyard. We didn't even have to get in the car and go somewhere! That's how cool microadventures are.
Our area of the country is still experiencing chilly weather and we had all been stuck inside most of the day Saturday. By the time Saturday afternoon rolled around, the kiddos were getting restless. So, we bundled up and hit the backyard.
We have a small firepit in the yard so my significant other and I decided to have a fire to sit by while we watched the kids run around in the yard. We set the kiddos to gathering small twigs, and my better half used a ferro rod to get the fire started. Something they had never done before. Once we had the fire going, I went inside to scoop up some extra adventure for us.
We have a fire anchor with a pot hook and small grill grate on it. I grabbed that and a billycan. We stuck the fire anchor with the pot hook down in the fire, filled the billycan up with water and let it come to a boil. Once the water was ready, we used it to make us all cups of tea to sip while we were outside.
After the tea was made we sat by the fire and chit chatted while the kids played. By that time it was getting close to dinner. Instead of packing up and heading inside to the kitchen we decided to cook dinner over the fire.
The kiddos had hotdogs and my partner and I made shrimp skewers. For sides, we had asparagus cooked in a foil pouch down on the coals. The billycan was used to boil potatoes. Sadly, when I was draining the water from the potatoes, the lid slipped off the billycan and the potatoes were lost. But the shrimp, asparagus, and hotdogs were tasty, and dinner over a fire was a nice way to wrap up our backyard microadventure.
I like the idea of the microadventure. I view it as a kind of mind shift. We could have just gone, and played in the backyard, but by making it a microadventure, it punched up what could have been a fairly humdrum activity, and made it something special.
On a recent family road trip, we stopped by a state park to stretch our legs, and ended up climbing a small mountain. That was not our intention with that stop on our trip, but it turned out to be a great microadventure for us. The park was a bit out of our way, but it was cheap, the climb was short, but also challenging, fun, and rewarding. It only took us a few hours to check all the boxes for Humphreys' definition of a microadventure that day. I think the same can be said for our little outing in the backyard. Maybe not as exotic as climbing a mountain, but we still had quite the adventure.