Adventure Ramblings, August 2023
A journey through the borderlands where adventure meets social and environmental change
Curated by
, Adventure Ramblings is how Adventure Uncovered shares thought-provoking adventure stories. It follows in the footsteps of the seventeen Editions we published between 2020 and 2023 (the seventeenth is in the works!). You can read more about why we’re transitioning here.If you have something you think we should include, email Sam at sam@adventureuncovered.com for consideration.
Let’s ramble.
AU happenings
📆 New Dates Announced: OUTSIDE Adventure & Film Festival has been postponed to May 17-19, 2024
In a first-of-its-kind collab alongside the good folks at TYF Adventure, OUTSIDE is a new festival celebrating slow adventure, outdoor films, and nature connection. It will take place in a few months in Pembrokeshire, Wales - all outside!
3 tiered ticket levels include:
Your choice of immersive nature adventures, including surfing, coasteering, wild ocean dips, climbing, and mindful coastal walks.
A film evening of inspiring, purpose-driven, nature-connected adventure stories.
A firelit feast of hearty, home-cooked food.
Interactive workshops, talks and discussions exploring environmental activism, ocean stewardship, the circular economy, creative writing, adventure filmmaking, and more.
Camping overnight in the heart of Pembrokeshire Coast National Park.
Stargazing amidst the sounds and smells of the ocean.
Morning yoga with Sophie Jones from The Flying Fit Foodie and Gurpreet Dosanjh from Brixton Yoga.
Shared stories of adventure, connection, and sustainability around the campfire.
🎬 Submit a film to the Adventure Uncovered Film Festival 2024
Are you a filmmaker? Do you know any filmmakers? Or have you recently seen an awesome film connecting adventure and the outdoors with social or environmental issues? 2024 AUFF submissions are open until November 30th 2023, with early bird entry rates until September 30th. Get involved with the only adventure film festival dedicated to stories with social and environmental narratives.
🛹 An interview with the first Ambassador of Skateboarding
Neftalie Williams is a scholar, teacher, writer, founder, bridge builder and the first U.S. Ambassador of Skateboarding. But first and foremost, he’s a skateboarder. In all of these ways, his life work is letting the possibilities of skate culture blossom. Speaking with him for our Abundance Edition was a pleasure.
Williams doing a nollie backside tailslide shove-it, photo courtesy of Rachele Honcharik.
💬 Words
Why isn’t the outdoor community more engaged in climate action?
This passionate, provocative and persuasive Looking Sideways guest blog by activist Calum Macintyre proposes five reasons. His focus on the systemic over the individual, evidence over feelings and inclusion over exclusion is spot on.
Remembering the man who made Robert Macfarlane want to write
“I was acutely nervous in the hours before our encounter, for Barry’s influence on my life over the preceding two decades had been that of a north star: distant, blazing, and guiding.” So begins Robert Macfarlane’s stirring piece remembering and honouring the late Barry Lopez, a man who “had blown open my sense of what nonfiction could be and might accomplish and had confirmed in me my wish to become a writer about nature, landscape, place, and people.”
Antarctica is not a woman
“Many of us are so used to the idea of the Earth being a mother that we no longer feel what it’s asking of us,” writes Stephanie Krzywonos in this essay for Emergence Magazine, which critiques the tradition of expedition writing that uses “Antarctica as a stage to perform nostalgic versions of masculine heroism.”
🎥 Films
Amani Saeed on overcoming her fear of nature
“I’m afraid of the darkness of the woods – the quiet they keep.” Poet Amani Saeed speaks these words, standing in a forest performing a poem about navigating her fear of nature through her love of the ocean. It’s part of a collaborative series between Huck Magazine and non-profit On The Edge, which works to reconnect people with nature through stories and games.
Can’t stop. Won’t stop.
Monte Cosby grew up in a public-housing project in Virginia’s East End. He was lost at school, surrounded by the wrong people, and struggling with death and incarceration at home. In this emotional short film by Patagonia, he recounts how the freedom, meditation, and motivation of biking helped him turn his life around.
Kayaking, but in boats designed to sink
Squirt boating is just like kayaking. Except you wear goggles, and paddles on your hands, and a neoprene suit. Ah yes, and the aim is in fact to spend as much time underwater as possible, in a craft designed to not float. This short doc tells the story of a wacky, increasingly obscure outdoor subculture.
🔉 Sounds
Keiara Wade: The Compton Cowgirl
In this For The Wild conversation, Keiara Wade discusses her experiences as a Black cowgirl in Compton, and the human-horse relationship as a force for individual and community healing. It’s an illuminating look into an often misunderstood culture, especially recommended for anybody who appreciated photographer Rory Doyle’s Delta Hill Riders series, which documents the subculture of African American cowboys and cowgirls in the modern Mississippi Delta, featured in July’s Ramble.
Biology, adventure, and indigenous knowledge
Dr. Rosa Vásquez Espinoza is a Peruvian-Andean and Amazonian chemical biologist, conservationist, and National Geographic Explorer. This roaming conversation with Matt Pycroft, for The Adventure Podcast, is a testament to adventurous biology, indigenous knowledge systems and community-driven scientific research.
The world’s most prolific birdwatcher
No human has even seen 10,000 different bird species, but Peter Kaestner is doing his darndest to change that. For this entertaining Outside audio doc, ornithologist and writer Jessie Williamson travels through South America with a twitcher on a mission.
📸 Photography
All that was left was a yellow duck
Norwegian photographer Ole Jørgensen’s surreal series places solo adventurers into ethereal, painterly landscape shots in the style of romantic paintings, with an often absurd effect. The images comment playfully on idealised, filtered depictions of outdoor recreation and the natural world.
Ocean Photographer of the Year
Oceanographic Magazine has announced its Ocean Photographer of the Year 2023 finalists, with the winners of nine categories to be announced on 14th September. The competition celebrates our beautiful blue planet and highlights the many plights it faces. Maybe you’ll be inspired to enter in 2024?
💡 Opportunities
An incubator for organisations making nature more accessible
Opening Up The Outdoors and Hatch Enterprise are welcoming applications for the second edition of their collaborative Changemaker Programme, which supports people of colour starting organisations aiming to make the outdoors more accessible – initially with a programme of support, and then potential grant funding. Applications close on 24th September.