Hey everyone. It's been a busy few months for me. We released the State of Adventures book. Thank you to everyone who's bought it, purchased it, given it as a gift, reviewed it.

I thought writing the book would be the hard part, but I had no idea how much work it would be to promote and help sell it.

So I've been doing all these podcasts and I don't feel old but that process of being asked all these questions about the early days of the

diaries you know what our community was like back then has made me realize that I've

been doing this for a hot minute and it made me think back to the question

I used to get asked all the time from editors

or from people I would run into,

like through business and through work and I would sort of tell them what I do you know I covered this I like really believe in these sports and I think there's something really special about people you know spending their lives outdoors and they would invariably

ask me why?

Why would somebody want to hike up a mountain and then ski down it.

Why would somebody want to walk the length of the Appalachian Trail?

And I got asked it so much, I sort of started to formulate this thesis

about why that was, so I could have a quick answer and I'd explain to them that 98% of the time

spending time in the natural landscape moving through these places is just playing fun.

Playing old type one fun, you know, and I'd say but there's a lot of things in this world that are fun that don't elicit the same response, right?

Like water slides. They're super fun. We've all met somebody that has changed their life because of their

curiosity about what they can do in the

outdoors what they can do in the mountains what they can do in this community we've

met those people I've never met that person for the water slide and I would explain

it's like yes fun 98% of the time but there's like

another little bit that other 2% and in that 2% we walk into the natural world

and we emerge out of the mountains or the deserts

...