Essay: ADVENTURE & THE AMERICAN INDIVIDUALIST

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Most of those who deliberately seek adventure have their moments of selfcriticism. For all his enthusiasm, Alaska's Bishop Gordon sometimes wonders whether "the really heroic people are not the ones who travel 10,000 miles by dog sled, but those who stay 10,000 days in one place. I believe that all of us have the capacity for one adventure inside us, but great adventure is facing responsibility day after day." That view is echoed by Amherst's Historian John William Ward, who sees something "pathetic and sentimental" in the American adventurer. "Today," he says, "the man who is the real risk taker is anonymous and nonheroic. He is the one trying to make institutions work. What we need is not to go West, but to return eastward, to create excitement and adventure in things that are no longer solitary. If a man can only find adventure by going to Alaska or running wide open across the salt flats, then society is in bad shape."

Fair enough—up to a point. No one would argue that a society's strength increases proportionately to the number of adventurers in its midst. But it is equally true, and much more relevant, that America is the stronger for its adventurers past, present—and future.