Adventure Ramblings, October 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.If you have something you think we should include, email Sam at sam@adventureuncovered.com for consideration.
Let’s ramble!
AU happenings
🎬 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. Get involved with the only adventure film festival dedicated to stories with social and environmental narratives.
Skating in Palestine (photo courtesy of Maen Hammad)
Skateboarding: the new face of Palestinian resistance
As the horror in Palestine rages on, complete with callous forces of dehumanisation, we recall this March 2022 piece by Samia Qaiyum on young Palestinians using skateboarding as a new form of resistance to occupation.
💬 Words
Climbing and soul searching in Korea
As a homestead farmer and respected member of the local climbing community, Yeongju Lee had found happiness in rural Colorado. But her parents, who immigrated from Korea when Yeongju was two, didn’t share her definition of success. Against this backdrop, Yeongju embarks on a surprise trip to Korea to climb, reconnect with distant family, shoot a film, and investigate a half-forgotten part of herself – documented in this fine Climbing Zine essay.
Swimming the River Mole, in Jo Tinsley’s The Slow Traveller
The art of travelling slowly
Jo Tinsley, founder of the bewitching Ernest Journal, has created a similar source of inspiration for thoughtful adventure. The Slow Traveller mediates on how, why, and where to travel slowly, from paddling remote archipelagos to ambling city alleyways. It brims with good advice and thought-provoking ideas.
How sustainable is outdoor kit, really?
Friend of Adventure Uncovered Em Hartova is one of the most interesting, critical voices around on outdoor kit and clothing. So I heartily recommend her Substack, No Bad Weather: a blend of recommended reads and pieces putting seemingly progressive products under the microscope.
Scotland’s new generation of woodland crofters
The Scottish Highlands is seeing a resurgence in woodland crofting: a system of land cultivation and social cooperation built around small-scale rural holdings, typically used to produce crops and crafts. Through stories of contemporary crofters, Ros Nash tells a tale of rediscovered resilience, reconnection, and sustainability.
🎥 Films
An intrepid tribute to a trailblazing ski mountaineer
Ostensibly, Earthside follows all-woman supercrew Emily Harrington, Brette Harrington, Christina Lusti, and Hilaree Nelson on a ski-and-climbing expedition to Baffin Island. In reality, it’s a moving tribute to Hilaree Nelson, who died in an avalanche five months later. Her reflections on risk, motherhood, and friendship in the film are gut-wrenchingly poignant.
Regenerative craft in Britain’s ancient woodland
I first learned of Banyak films through The Runner, their lovely short – shot primarily from a bicycle trailer – about Victoria Park joggers and why they jog. Their latest, Time Travel in Britain’s Lost Rainforests, profiles regenerative forester John Williamson and his relationship with the gnarled, ancient woodlands of the Teign Valley.
A trip down memory pier
If heading to the seaside is the quintessential British summer adventure, venturing to the end of the pier is one of its great side quests: a nostalgic cacophony of arcade machines, seagulls, and – if you’re in Cromer, Norfolk – variety performances. Seaside Special, filmed on 16mm film by German Jens Meurer, documents the characters, punters, and general hullabaloo as Cromer’s end-of-pier variety show rolls into town – all as Brexit takes shape. It has received high praise for its affectionate portrayal of a Britain that already feels half-forgotten, and it’s now showing in UK cinemas.
Rafting Australia’s most polluted river
For his latest offbeat caper, the world’s chipperest disposition, Beau Miles, decided to raft Australia’s most polluted river: Tasmania’s Queen River, or ‘pumpkin soup’ as some locals call it. Bad River features Beau’s usual cockle-warming blend of mildly absurd dad humour and backyard-adventure philosophy, best enjoyed as a revolting double bill alongside his 2022 kayak along Australia’s sickest urban river.
🔉 Sounds
Spoken Word Nature Disco: an aural autumn almanac
Enjoy it when nature and music meet? Then get Caught by the River’s sporadic Spoken Word & Nature Disco mixes on your radar, if you haven’t already. Volume 7 weaves poetry, sound samples, and genre-spanning delights into a sonic meander through the season.
The silence seeker
Aged 27, Gordon Hempton set camp in a cornfield and listened to a thunderstorm for the first time. So began his life quest to become a better listener, and his work as an acoustic ecologist recording soundscapes free of human noise. He also bodyboards, which enabled this Surfer’s Journal profile by Gavin Ehringer and Shawn Parkin – part poetic reflection, part wave philosophy, part rich sound.
📸 Photography
The colours of decay
This show by Jil Quigley and Adrian Tyler, in which the pair add colourful adornments to dilapidated buildings, is a wham bam of cognitive dissonance. It asks us, or perhaps forces us, to see life in decay. An apt metaphor and prompt for the dark months.
💡 Opportunities
Keen to reimagine the role of outdoor sports?
You’re not alone. Repurpose Sport, facilitated by Julez Webb and Stanley Townsend, is a community of practice coming together to explore how outdoor sports might better contribute to these critical times. Learn more and apply through the link.