Into the wild - we recommend it

This time last year I had just arrived home from a two year, globe trotting stint.

Traveling the world with nothing but a backpack does something to you that I’m not too sure anything else can. It makes you realize what true freedom is. It liberates you. It puts life into perspective. It gives you the ability to be whoever you want to be.

But most of all, it gives you timeout from your life so that you can decide on what it is you really want to do – what’s really important. What makes you happy and what you are passionate about.

I was reading through my travel diary this morning, reminiscing and just before I came home I wrote a list of all the things I wanted to achieve and things I wanted to change.

I remember being really anxious about going back to my old life and forgetting all things I’d learnt about myself. I wanted to really appreciate things more and DO things that I would otherwise procrastinate about.

Whilst reading I came across this quote by Christopher McCandless which I’d written down when we were cruising around Alaska in our van. I was reading John Krakauer’s ‘Into the Wild’ (if you haven't, you should read it)

The quote resonated with me so much at the time and it still does.

“So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more dangerous to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future.

The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.”

Here are some pics from Alaska. We decided it was one of the biggest highlights of our trip. It was so vast, untouched and uncompromising.