The Backyard Adventurer Quotes

“I’ve come to realise that everything is a waste of time unless you think of it otherwise.”
― Beau Miles, The Backyard Adventurer

“This book is dedicated to anyone who has lived a hard life in order to get by. Such people are seldom regarded as adventurers, yet I think they’re the mantle-piece characters.”
― Beau Miles, The Backyard Adventurer

“But I’ve come to see easy googling as the antithesis of innovation and invention, likely pegging us back in the evolutionary stakes, because: 1) it obliterates curiosity, which is a foundation for fun, and cockups; 2) having oodles of information makes me feel like I’m about to roll out a script by the time I get to the start line, and I’m not an actor; and 3) getting to the point of something being easy means truckloads of energy has been spent gathering and scheming, and is potentially a critical waste of a lifetime if you consider mortal life to be all about bang-for-buck.”
― Beau Miles, The Backyard Adventurer

“Within all this is what’s commonly called real versus perceived risk; an example of real risk is Alex Honnold’s free solo climb up the face of El Capitan in Yosemite, while perceived risk would be climbing the same route attached to a system of ropes and anchors. One version means certain death when you fall and the other is a wedgie.”
― Beau Miles, The Backyard Adventurer

“To think at a deeper level about my irritable state of play, being unsure of this thing I’ve come to call adventure, I make toast. As I stand eating at the sink, crumbs going everywhere, it occurs to me that, in a horrible stroke of symmetry, I’ve lived roughly the same number of days as adult and non-adult. This is a somewhat arbitrary statistic, other than to say the physical meat of me is no longer prime. Lamb is turning to mutton. I can no longer, for example, share a birthday with the winner of the Tour de France.”
― Beau Miles, The Backyard Adventurer

“I always seem to have a perverse attraction to chaos, and a toothache-like appetite for occasional misadventure. Sure, I don’t like rotten teeth, but if I have one, I play with the spectrum of pain it provides because it tells me I have a galaxy of nerves in my mouth – a universe that was dormant until the rot set in. Misadventure is a toothache – to be avoided, but embraced if it comes along because there’s no other choice.”
― Beau Miles, The Backyard Adventurer

“Backyard adventuring is about concocting meaningful events and experiments that challenge me, that redefine my childhood sense of the hero’s journey, that force me to look intimately in everyday places, and question how I live among others.”
― Beau Miles, The Backyard Adventurer