I called it the Danger Ranger. What else is there to do to your 83' prerunner Ford Ranger than to spray-paint your dream on the hood and back window. I mean you gotta dream right! So many ideas, build an offroad clothing company to take over the world. This must be the beginning!
The moment this idea latched onto my thoughts, it spread like wildfire. Clothing ideas, marketing campaigns—it would be easy, right? Just start doing what you enjoy, and the rest follows, or something like that.
Mountain people. Some people couldn't imagine living outside of a city; others wouldn't wish city life upon their worst enemy. For many, it's just where you are from. I had been to "the city" a few times. We called San Francisco “the city,” but often even the town of Auburn, CA, felt like a city compared to our little mining town in the forest. Grass Valley, CA, as a kid didn't feel like much, even at a young age: a few of the generic box stores, some mom-and-pop shops, and a few things to do in between. This left a massive gap in the famous neighborhood pack of kids to ask, "What do we do now that we're bored?!" You could almost guarantee the parental directive would be to go outside and not return before the sun went down!
Exploration. As a kid, it was a mashing of pure curiosity into an unadulterated presence of now. Kids just do, with little thought. The results? That moment will be what it is. Good, bad, or indifferent, that exploration will convert to an adventure. As an adult, exploration has expanded into so many trails that include curation and planning. These can be a bonus to a moment of exploration because they give alignments of time and resources to potentially be some next-level adventure—adventure alchemy, if you will. A potential pitfall of this can be the lack of one important element: being present. If all exploration is rooted in curation, how do you convert exploration to discovery?
I have become accustomed to and need a balance of both. So much joy comes from planning for a backpacking trip with a group of your favorite forest humans or getting the wheeling crew together and smashing some rocks. On the other end, nothing matches the unknown discovery around the adventure of exploration. Have you ever just wanted to turn down that road you have no clue where it goes? Or hike just a little bit further to see what's around that bend? Our innate thirst, rooted in curiosity, that lived wild as youths, still runs through our blood and in our hearts. Connecting with this can turn a trail into unexplored terrain.
NGSU has been an elusive trail with unknown offshoots, burning the question deep into my thoughts: what’s down that road?