HOW TO PACK FOR A MICROADVENTURE

No one wants to spend the whole summer indoors. Seek out adventure close to home with some of the season’s best gear.

“a microadventure is an adventure that is short, simple, local, cheap,” says British author and adventurer Alastair Humphreys, who coined the term back in 2015. The appeal, he adds, “is that they make adventure accessible to people who may have very little outdoor experience.”

It’s been more than a year since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, forcing millions of people across the globe into perpetual lockdown. And while vaccines and falling infection rates provide a glimpse of light at the end of this tunnel, it will be a while still before everyday citizens are planning crosscontinent escapades in the name of adventure.

The remedy, then, to a long year indoors, is to heed Humphreys’s advice and seek out your thrills a little closer to home: Walk every street in your neighborhood. Forage your own dinner. Bike 100 miles. Paddle the length of a local river. Or drive somewhere no car has been before.

Sound fun? We think so. Here’s everything you need to get out there.