good life with teal myre
Part of cultivating a good life is embracing life as an adventure!
My family does adventure. We love camping miles from the nearest light in the wilderness and we love skiing on bluebird days when the mountains look like they are going to poke right through the sky. We love live music and catching fish and climbing rocks and gear and that the storage box rarely leaves the top of my Subaru.
Like many of you, shortly before Christmas our family set out to get a Christmas tree. In our world, that meant picking up the kids after school Friday, driving 500 miles to Red Lodge, Montana where we skied on Saturday before meandering the back roads of Custer Gallatin National Forest. After a short hike which included hide and seek in the trees, kids rolling full speed over stumps and rocks, and admonishments about the unlikely event we wake a bear, the perfect 9’ lodgepole pine specimen was selected, cut, and dragged back down the hill. I made everyone gather for a family selfie as moms do, and the tree was strapped to the top of the Subaru just as the sun set. Before heading the 500 miles back home, we cheered each other down the slopes again on Sunday and laughed as the oldest, and least courageous skier, fumbled herself over a terrain park rail on a dare. It was an adventure.
Adventures can be literal, in the sense of exploring a new destination or daring to try a new experience. But adventure can be found in the every day. After all, this spirit of adventure stems from my mom’s constant (and sometimes annoying) positive outlook. Growing up, when my brother and I were unsure or unhappy about something, Mom would exclaim, “It’s an adventure!” For example, when we set up a makeshift kitchen with a hotplate and dorm fridge in our basement during a kitchen remodel – “It’s an adventure!”
What started as a catch phrase has turned into a family philosophy. Adventure is stepping outside your comfort zone, saying yes to wild hairs instead of listing off the reasons an idea isn’t convenient. Adventure is having your 4 year old say, “I want to climb a mountain” and that afternoon taking a 3 hour hike up a mountain. Adventure is walking through the hills, pretending you are survivors of a plane crash trying to find your way back to civilization. Adventure is your 4 year old playing a tyrannosaurus rex in that scenario. Adventure is camping at a trailhead instead of booking a motel on your ski trip, signing up for an outdoor skills class, taking a different route home from work now and then, and hiding in a corn field.
It is not convenient to have adventures. It is so much easier to stay home (or at least leave the kids there) than it is to load up the diapers and pack and play and snacks and books and DVDs and children’s Tylenol and go. But cultivating is the necessary work for a successful harvest. And we have reaped endless rewards. My husband and I get away twice a year together to connect in a way we can’t in the midst of daily life.
I have the coolest kids thanks to adventure. They are brave, independent, curious, empathetic, imaginative, problem-solving little explorers. We live in a world where the trend favors slow, intentional, mindful living and sometimes I wonder if we are doing this right. But we have seen the most amazing places and done the most amazing things. Together. And I see the most amazing connections our family is making with each other and with this world. To me there is no better way to cultivate a good life.
Teal Myre is a part of the Creative Team using the Project Life App. She currently resides on the beautiful North Dakota prairie. Her family consists of her husband, fierce and totally awesome kiddos Barrett (9) and Bridger (5), and a cast of critters which currently includes a black lab, 3 horses, a guinea pig, and a fish.