Will to Wild: Adventures Great and Small to Change Your Life

Shelby Stanger knows her stuff.–CHRISTOPHER McDOUGALL, bestselling author of Born to Run

Will to Wild

Adventures Great and Small to Change Your Life

Shelby Stanger

Host of REI Co-op’s Wild Ideas Worth Living Podcast

Logo: REI Co-op

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP

To all the listeners and guests of REI Co-op’s Wild Ideas Worth Living podcast. Thank you for sharing with me, showing me what is possible, and how to make some of the wildest ideas I’ve heard a reality. Also to my team at REI Co-op, Puddle Creative, and to everyone who has worked with and on Wild Ideas Worth Living. Thank you for giving me a platform to explore the topic I’ve been most passionate about since I was a kid. Thank you to my friends and family for always supporting my own wild ideas. And to you, dear reader, for diving in.

Books are wild ideas. In writing this book, I presented these stories as accurately as I could. In one story, I’ve changed someone’s name, but everything else has been written as it happened to the best of my memory. Enjoy!

INTRODUCTION

A little adventure is life’s antidote.

Are you gonna go?

It’s April 9, 2009, and I’m twenty-nine years old. I’m sitting in the Pacific Ocean, legs straddling a six-foot surfboard at a picturesque surfing break called Rockpile in Laguna Beach, California. I’m hemming and hawing about finally taking off at the peak, the highest part of the wave, where it generates the most speed and provides the best ride. What if I fall? What if I break my surfboard? Or my body? Or just embarrass myself?

Rockpile is named that for a reason. To surf it requires perfectly angling your body and board to slip between a giant boulder plunked in the middle of the break where the waves break and a smaller, sharper cluster of rocks with a shallow reef in front of the wave nicknamed the Cheesegrater. Time it incorrectly, go the wrong way, and well, your skin is more than exfoliated. But time it and angle right, and the thrill is incredible.

With Rockpile conveniently located across the street from my small studio apartment, I’ve paddled out there several times. The few times I tried to catch a wave at the peak, I barely missed a slicing at the Cheesegrater. Since then, I’ve only tried to catch waves on the shoulder or in the middle section, which is easier—never at the peak, where the wave is biggest and the most powerful.

Rockpile breaks in a stunning covelike setting with a cliff above, lined with a manicured walking path. On sunny days, tourists and locals alike walk dogs, go for jogs, have picnics, and create paintings outside on easels while taking in the majestic scene. It’s a natural amphitheater, and in my mind I am center stage in the water.

The rocky reef is home to an abundance of sea life. At low tide, through the water, it’s easy to see colonies of mussels attached to the rocks as well as schools of bright orange Garibaldi fish swimming through holes in the reef. It’s a place where one can’t help but experience a moment of complete awe—a feeling I will later learn is integral to being absolutely present in the here and now, to evoking the sense of childlike wonder, to catalyzing growth, and to inviting change, which are all key conditions before deciding to make a leap.

Today at 6:32 a.m., I am alone; the beach and the ocean is mostly deserted.

Are you gonna go?

I do want to go. I want to catch a real wave at Rockpile at the peak. I want to experience riding in the sweet spot.

The problem: I’m scared.

Are you gonna go?

THE QUESTION doesn’t just refer to the wave. It’s goes much deeper. I am going to tell you a little story about myself before we get to others’, so you know where I was, and why this book pertains to you.

At the time I am not just scared, I’m stuck. I’m at a job I no longer love, in a relationship that’s over, and I feel like I’ve been swimming through thick seaweed; it looks so easy to swim through from the surface, but it’s impossible to cut through such viscous weeds.

Are you gonna go?

It’s a question I’ve been wrestling with for months, and will be asked again and again, whenever I need to make a change, to leap, to explore the unknown. It’s a question that will end up informing my own Will to Wild.

What exactly do I mean by Will to Wild? It’s the way I have come to think about how to live, especially when I’m scared or stuck, like I was that day. It’s about the decision to say yes to a change or path that may be uncertain on the outside but feels more authentic on the inside. It’s about dropping into a wave that might be scary, or perhaps even scarier, about dropping into a more intentional way of living. The will is living with intention. And the Wild refers to being in connection to both Mother Nature and your own true inner nature.

Ever since I was a kid, I have been fascinated by adventure and mesmerized by its profound effects. As an adult, I was always blown away by people who had embarked on a life-changing adventure, even women I taught to surf who shortly afterward started new careers, left dead-end relationships, or moved across the country to a place with a better beach. A little time in nature, with moments of awe, could propel them to massive change in their lives.

When you set out on an adventure—big or small—you learn so much more about yourself and develop courage that you can bring with you to the rest of your everyday life. What do I mean by adventure? It’s usually outdoors, but more important, it involves some risk and some unknown, from a short surf session to a multiday hike. Adventures physically take you somewhere else—into the trees, the trails, the mountains, wind, waves—and take your mind into a different state.

That combination of nature and adventure always seems to have a synergistic effect. The times I have hiked up to a waterfall, gotten away from traffic and looked up at the night sky, or seen a whale in the wild—those are times that have helped me to slow down, get out of my head, connect to the world and to others around me, get present, and to show me how much more capable I really am. My journeys into the wild have cracked me open every time, helping me shed a version of myself that no longer served me. They have also helped me to be more loving to others—and mostly more loving to myself.

Studies have shown that being in nature and embarking on an adventure can have powerful effects on our mental states, lowering stress hormones, boosting mood, decreasing ruminating thoughts, helping us make better decisions, and reframing our outlook. Even a walk in a park can lower cortisol levels and allow us to experience the perspective-changing feeling of awe. Adventure does this for me every time. It’s the same way so many people I’ve interviewed for my podcast have told me that hiking something like the Pacific Crest Trail and looking back to see how far they’ve walked from their previous campsite couldn’t help but make them feel more badass. Do that enough times, over and over, walk enough miles, surf enough waves that previously scared you, spend enough time in trees or looking up at the stars, and you’ll change your way of thinking too.

For me, an adventure becomes a wild idea when it scares the crap out of you, makes butterflies churn in your stomach, but you still pursue it and it ultimately changes your life in a positive way, leading to so much more. Wild ideas are the ones with no certain outcome that sound fun and exciting but still make the hair on your neck stand up. And wild ideas are self-perpetuating. One wild idea will lead to another and another.

For the last two decades, I’ve written stories about outdoor trailblazers and explorers for magazines, brands, websites, and newspapers. In 2016, I launched a podcast all about adventure called Wild Ideas Worth Living, which is now owned by REI Co-op Studios and that I still host. On the podcast, I interview people who have taken a wild idea, one that usually involves adventure, and accomplished it. I interview people who have bucked the system, taken the road less traveled, and made their wildest ideas a reality. I love hearing stories of people who choose curiosity over fear and adventure over being stuck. We talk about how to start and how to succeed. About grit and hustle. About fear and failure, and taking time to have some fun and smell the pine trees along the way.

Over the years, I’ve come to learn that wild ideas can come in a lot of shapes and sizes. But they usually start with a question that often keeps us up at night: I wonder if I could I do X?

Could a couple in Oregon quit everything to start a small organic farm? Could a Canadian marketing executive break the record for most vertical feet skied in a year? Could a conservatory-trained musician and teacher become a sponsored ultramarathon runner, even though she weighed 250 pounds? Could a couple in their fifties ski unsupported to the South Pole, even as one of them experienced some of the most uncomfortable symptoms of menopause? Could twenty-two-year-old twins paddle from Alaska to Mexico on oversized surfboards? Could a middle-aged commercial artist dabbling in sidewalk art accidentally amass over 3 million followers on TikTok? Could a surfer and aspiring photographer and food writer trade surf lessons for bread-baking lessons and become one of the best food photographers in the industry? Could a self-proclaimed soccer mom start guiding groups of non-experienced women to climb frozen waterfalls?

These are the kind of wild ideas that inspire me. And the thing about wild ideas is they often spread like wildfire.

I bet you have a wild idea of your own, or have a few you’ve pursued or accomplished. Or maybe you’ll develop one while reading this book. Or perhaps, like me back in 2009, you just need a little boost to get going.

AT ROCKPILE THAT DAY, I felt like there was no will and no wild in my life. I had no idea that finally tapping into my will and pursuing a wild idea with no certain outcome would lead to so much more. I would eventually answer yes to that Are you gonna go? moment. And I would eventually take off and ride that wave at Rockpile, leading to many more waves in my life.

Don’t get me wrong, saying yes and surfing one wave wasn’t a quick fix; it didn’t cure the depression I was feeling overnight, or land me where I am today. But it did help me start untangling the seaweed I felt I was struggling to swim through. It did start a chain reaction that gave me the courage to change a lot of things at once. It did give me focus, direction, and a desire to wake up and embrace the next day again with a huge sense of purpose.

The day I finally took off on the peak at Rockpile, I walked away from the trappings of professional success and began a life that felt a lot more uncertain but a lot more authentic. I learned firsthand that wild ideas, even ones as simple as taking one wave that scares you, can start a chain reaction.

There have been other wild ideas, before and after, but since that day at Rockpile I’ve been on a mission to share the stories of others who’ve heeded the call to wild, and to help others do the same.

Yes, there’s the obvious stuff: I ended up catching the wave, and quitting my job. Then, I gave a healthy two months’ notice since my work had been so good to me, and because part of living wildly is being a good person. After, I began life as a journalist covering adventure sports for outdoor magazines. That would lead me to where I am today.

But that makes it all sound so easy. There is so much more to setting out on a new path than just dropping in on a wave or starting a new career. It’s not all puppy dogs and ice cream. I have plenty of scars to prove it.

I DECIDED TO WRITE Will to Wild because there have been times in my life when I’ve felt stuck and scared: afraid of being broke, afraid of being alone, afraid of falling flat on my face, and mostly afraid of pursuing my own wild ideas, notions that were scary to me, but that I knew would make me a better person. I also know firsthand that hearing stories of other people going for it has given me courage to go for it too.

Every time I’ve felt stuck, I wished I’d had a trail map of how to get unstuck, to take a wild idea and actually make it a reality. Often, the place between where I felt stuck and a singular wild idea that I thought could change my life, felt like a giant wilderness.

This book is a map of trails to that wilderness, an atlas of how to live differently. It’s how any of us can get from desk to open ocean, from commuting in gridlock traffic to admiring a pregnant cow along a dirt road in New Zealand. From wondering if to actually summiting a mountain. This book is for anyone for whom the call to leap is getting louder and more intense. Anyone looking for the answer to What would happen if I could do X? What do I do now? So the question is, are you (yes, you) going to actually do the thing you want to do?

Will to Wild is the book I wish I’d had when I was scared to switch careers at the height of the recession in 2009. It’s the book I wish I had later in Indonesia, paddling overhead waves as the only woman among ten guys on a boat trip. It’s the book I wish I’d had when deciding to move to New Zealand with a guy I’d met only a few months prior while in Costa Rica. (Over a decade later, we’re still together.) It’s the book I wish I had when wanting to start a podcast with no technical recording skills and zero social media following.

In the pages that follow, I’ll share some of my journey, as well as those of many others I’ve interviewed over the years—some famous worldwide, some known in smaller circles, and some you’ve never heard of.

Each chapter focuses on the steps to finding a wild idea and seeing it through. I’ll share how I was completely and deeply stuck and how I got out. I’ll talk about using real-life trail signs to discover the wild ideas you want to pursue. I’ll talk about what to do when you have doubters, including the biggest doubter of all, the one in your own head.

This guidebook of sorts will show you how to make the leap even if it seems overwhelming and daunting or doesn’t add up on paper. I’ll cover the nuts and bolts of educating yourself in your new endeavor, and mapping your own trail, with deadlines so you don’t turn back before you get to the starting line. I’ll show examples of people who completed extreme adventures along with those who planned smaller ones that had just as big of an effect on them.

I’ll talk about what happens when something goes wrong, which it will inevitably on almost every adventure. Lastly, I’ll talk about finding the joy on the journey even when we fail, and then what to do when that journey is over, exploring together how to bring that sense of adventure to your everyday life.

That’s part of what the Will to Wild is about. It’s about that peace you get when you consciously choose to pursue your dream. It’s also about the choice to physically go outside to change your perspective and decide to change your internal circumstances as well.

Interspersed throughout the chapters are a few pro tips to serve as helpful reminders and points of orientation for folks who may be reading through for the second or third time. And at the end of every chapter, there are additional tips, stories, and inspirational bits from myself and other adventurers I’ve interviewed to help get you going. Like any grand adventure, you get to take what you like and leave the rest.

BEFORE I GET TOO DEEP in the proverbial woods, though, let’s get clear on what this book is not. This is not a book about how to quit your job or empty your bank account to have an adventure. We all have different circumstances and duties in life. However, there are likely many things you can do within a few miles’ radius of your home that will connect you with nature, and many adventures that don’t cost more than a park pass or take more than an afternoon. There are those adventures, of course, that require more planning, time, and investment, though this book is about showing what’s possible no matter where you start.

Will to Wild is not just for the hard core either. Everyone has a different call to the wild. Maybe it’s a desperate need to change a habit, to get healthier, to take the family on a grand adventure, or even to make a commitment to watch the sunrise or sunset a few times a week. One person’s swim across the English Channel is another’s first swim in a small lake. Another’s hike along the Pacific Crest Trail is someone else’s first time going to a national park. Maybe you’re not going to paddle to Alaska or climb Mount Everest. That’s okay—I’m not either. This book is about heeding your own call to the wild, whatever it may be.

In the following pages, you’ll read stories from people of all different backgrounds and walks of life. Every person’s story and wild idea is important. As Dr. Edith Eger, a Holocaust survivor you’ll meet in chapter 3, says, we should never compare ourselves to one another or compare our suffering. We are all beautiful. God doesn’t make junk, she says. We have to celebrate one another, as every human is part of one human family. Comparison, as the saying goes, is the biggest thief of joy.

All wild ideas, however, do have one thing in common. They will scare you, and on your way to pursuing them you may try to turn back. But if you follow where they lead, life will never be the same. I hope if this book does anything, it inspires you to go after your wild ideas, to connect deeper to nature, and to say yes to your own version of Are you gonna go?

CHAPTER 1

GET UNSTUCK

If you want to live a life you’ve never lived, you have to do things you’ve never done.

—Jen Sincero, You Are a Badass

Over the years, I’ve interviewed hundreds of entrepreneurs, travelers, and explorers, and I’ve been struck by a common refrain: a lot of them have told me that being stuck is what catapulted them to action. That’s not to say you need to be stuck to choose to live wildly. But I’ve come to realize, the opposite of stuck is adventure. Adventure excites and invigorates, with forward momentum and action. You aren’t stuck if you’re moving.

On that day in 2009 at Rockpile, I am epically stuck. But first a fair warning that, yes, telling this story makes me cringe a little. At the time, my job is pretty sweet. I work in marketing at Vans, the iconic shoe company. I love my coworkers and the brand. It’s the height of the 2008–09 recession. Quitting makes zero financial sense, and the job is the envy of many friends. Something else is tugging at me, though. I want to be a writer. It’s been a dream for the last few years, but I am afraid to quit my job and go for it. Fear has kept me stuck.

I’m also in a relationship with a guy I’ve been dating for five years—a guy I don’t see a future with, but I am scared to fully end things for good. Most significantly, I don’t fully understand, or am willing to accept, that mental health issues run deep in my family. At the time, I believe that, as an athlete, I am different. I can will my depression away.

At first, I attempt to cure myself by exercising. I run in the hills above my Laguna Beach rental until I injure my foot and can no longer run. I swim in the open ocean until I hurt my shoulder. I go to a Buddhist monastery and sit in silence for a weekend, which is positive. My friends call me a hippie.

Decisions as simple as whether or not I should order fish on my tacos become impossible. I start getting short with people, bitchy. It feels like PMS on steroids. I am moody, morose, and beginning to feel apathetic. I busy myself by working harder, and trying to work out harder, which just makes me more tired and more depressed. After a few months, not even surfing sounds fun. I’ve lost my sense of spunk and humor. Even my desire to date is gone.

I know what I want to do, but I can’t seem to do it: I want to quit my job and end my relationship. I want to make a change. I just don’t know how. I feel like a spoiled millennial (and technically I’m a GenXer). I beat myself up more for not having the answer. The cycle is vicious.

I see one therapist after another. Four different doctors suggest I take antidepressants. I tell them all without hesitation no way. Medication feels like a quick fix to my symptoms, not the problem. To me, my problem feels more like a situation I just need to change. While today I believe medications can be, for many people, a lifesaving treatment, things were not as clear for me over a dozen years ago.

My feeling then was more like I had deferred a dream for too long. I’d dreamed of being an adventure journalist ever since I was a kid. Writing is what turned me on, starting when I was fifteen. In 1995, I won an essay contest and published my first story in the San Diego Union-Tribune. I worked as a youth reporter for 360 Degree Magazine, a national publication for, by, and about youth. When I wrote an article about a family member’s battle with addiction, other kids wrote in saying the story affected them. My soccer teammate shared the story with her boyfriend, who decided to get sober. I learned at a young age that words can travel far and that stories can impact change.

Journalism, in fact, is what brought me to Vans. I studied journalism in college, writing a local newspaper column about surfing and adventure sports one summer called Breaking News, and spent another summer covering sports for the Cape Argus, South Africa, newspaper. I interned at CNN and spent six weeks after graduation backpacking through Fiji, Australia, and New Zealand. When I came home, I landed a job as the first female journalist on the infamous Vans Warped Tour in 2002, leaving on a tour bus the day I turned twenty-two.

THE VANS WARPED TOUR is the longest-running punk-rock music festival in the world. When I started in 2002, it traveled to sixty cities in two months, featuring as many as one hundred bands a day, as well as skateboarders, BMX riders, and a motley crew of performers, punk-rock personalities, and activists at every stop. At the time, the tour had a mostly male crew and the guys doing the interviewing weren’t sure a girl could hang. So I beefed up my résumé in my interview, claiming I had a tattoo on my backside, and that my favorite band was blink-182. I know, I’m cringing too. But I was twenty-one. Even then, the truth is, I preferred Bob Dylan over the Dead Kennedys. And I don’t have any ink. But I wanted the job, and the Vans crew—who knew I was joking—laughed and gave it to me on the spot.

My job consisted of taking one hundred photos a day with an early digital Canon ELPH and writing two daily stories.

In 2002, sending those stories meant using a dial-up Internet connection, which meant needing a phone line, which meant needing to find a phone line. Vans Warped Tour concerts were held in fairgrounds and stadium parking lots, and the few makeshift offices with phones were occupied by tour staff, some with thick Mohawks who intimidated me. (I would learn later the guys with the scariest-looking tattoos and Mohawks were often the nicest; many had been through a lot.) I resorted to wandering the venue or even getting in the mosh pit to find a fan of driving age who looked the least likely to be an axe murderer. I would trade them free Vans shoes or a T-shirt for a ride to a Kinko’s or, in some smaller cities, their parents’ house. Then I had to get back to the tour bus before it left that evening.

After that, I bop around for a few years, writing about action sports for various outlets, and even host a small action sports TV show in a mountain town in Colorado. I eventually land back at Vans, where I am placed on the small international marketing and sales team that oversees all of Latin America, Canada, Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. I spend that time flying business class, going to dream locations with an amazing boss, and learning things I could never have paid to learn in business school. Most of my meetings in Latin America are in Spanish, which I love to practice, but spending days in malls and meetings begins to wear on me. (I also realize I don’t exactly love wearing shoes at all. To this day, I still prefer wearing sandals or being barefoot.) And throughout this time, my desire to tell stories grows stronger. Most important, I feel like something is missing.

I love the Vans brand and I love the people who I work with. But at this point in my life, I’m not cut out for the structure of a corporate job. To help cope, every day on my drive home I call a friend and hear about how he’s surfing a remote point break at lunch with no one else in the water. I’m happy for him, but I want to surf at 10:00 a.m. too, and not only at dusk or dawn or on weekends when it’s crowded.

I make endless lists of pros and cons about quitting, checking my bank statements, asking friends and family if I should quit. They all tell me I’m crazy. I convince myself I should just suck it up and be grateful for what I have rather than chase a