Behind the scenes of history adventuring IRL (In Real Life)


I was watching a nature documentary yesterday, and after it ended, they showed the "behind the scenes"  - that is, the people who were hauling around the equipment, dealing with traveling to the location, and just generally putting it all together, out in the wild. I've seen these "behind the scenes" clips before, and my first is "are they crazy?", but apparently they love doing it.

So since I'm going to be out into the real world, away from my computer where I usually do my history adventuring, I thought that you might like a "behind the scenes". And if you're wondering if I'm crazy, well of course I am, but I also love doing this.

It's 7 am and my fellow-adventurer will be here at about 9, and will be doing the driving. I'm a better sightseer than driver, so that's perfect for me. At this point we've studied some old maps, and of course new ones. I'll take a bunch of photos, and write it up after we've been there. Of course, it's not about the destination, it's about the journey, so I'm sure we'll see some cool stuff along the way.

Anyway, back to "behind the scenes". The most important thing is to pack a lunch. That is really at the heart of history adventuring IRL (In Real Life). That's why I have the pic of the lunch bag at the top of this post. My experience with most people is that they travel to destinations, such as restaurants. This is all well and good, but mostly I've found these people to be the "are we there yet?" type, and all they want to really do is to get somewhere, and then go back as quickly as possible. Anything that slows them down is just an annoyance to them. As you can tell, I'm not very popular with these people! My goal isn't to get to back and forth to a destination as quickly as possible, my goal is to soak up the world around me. I like to stop, to take back roads. And I don't worry about food and water, I bring it.

And that leads me to something that I've never been, but most of my history adventuring IRL (In Real Life) friends are, hikers. They know about bringing water, about using GPS, wearing sunscreen, bringing along things that you may need out in the middle of nowhere. I suppose they have snakebite kits, although I don't want to think about that! I've never been all that outdoorsy (except for sitting on patios at restaurants) so in the last few years it's been an interesting learning process for me.

OK, I now have two hours to prepare for history adventuring IRL, so I'd better get busy!

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