Description
Bringing adventure into the daily routine.
This book is based on my 2018 thru-hike of the Hayduke Trail, but it goes much deeper than that. The hike is a metaphor for life and it inspires lessons and perspectives that we can incorporate into “regular life” to put us on a path of growth.
The Hayduke Trail is an 800-mile hiking route across the Colorado Plateau. It starts in Arches National Park in Utah, winds its way through remote canyon country, dips into Arizona to go through the Grand Canyon, and ends in Zion National Park. There is no trail most of the time and the terrain is harsh and unforgiving. It’s considered by many accomplished hikers to be the hardest long-distance hike in the country.
After Money Shot’s first big adventure into the wilderness he came back with a different set of priorities. Things like comfort, stability, and predictability were of the utmost importance before, but now he valued growth, novelty, and adventure even more. He was in the wilderness for three months but it felt like he had lived an entire lifetime. Out there, he caught a glimpse of his real potential and he made it his mission to grow into the best version of himself.
Now the idea of a “regular life” with its 9-to-5 job, nuclear family, nice car, and retirement plan felt like a trap. It offered a lot of safety and stability but the repetitive nature of doing the same thing most days didn’t offer the variety he needed to grow. However, he didn’t want to give up on society and become a hermit in the woods, either. He needed to find a way to combine the adventure he found in the wilderness with his everyday life in modern civilization. Life would have to become an adventure. So he went on an 800-mile hike through the desert in search of metaphors that he could bring back and integrate into regular life.
This book is his attempt to lay out the process by which we can use adventure to learn about ourselves and the world around us. That knowledge will serve as a compass, helping us choose and navigate a path through time, one that will lead towards realizing our full potential.
