Sidetracked Volume 16

'If exploration is curiosity in action, the seduction of adventure is how we test ourselves to discover our edges, pressing on them to see if and how they expand. This issue of Sidetracked pulses with questions and answers that deepen our understanding of what fuels our motivations, obsessions, and search for meaning.' – Kim Frank

Golden hour, post-downpour. Damask light glows on cold rock. It is a time for reflection. Jungle vines drip rainwater onto a lush green floor. Rum burns in the throat. This is the afterwards, when all is said and done. Survival has been secured and that post-adventure hum courses through your veins. Stories are shared, a means to bond through experience. As Kim Frank says in her foreword to this issue, those of you reading Sidetracked, and the many who contribute to these pages, can fully relate. If exploration is curiosity in action, she suggests, the seduction of adventure is how we test ourselves to discover our edges, pressing on them to see if and how they expand.

This issue seeks to deepen our understanding of what fuels our motivations, obsessions, and our search for meaning. Whether it be the truth found in letting go that Vreni Vom Berg describes in ‘Alaska Is For Dreamers’ or the art of learning shared by Shannon McDowell in ‘Aniakchak: A Wild Love Story’, adventures ask questions of us all and the answers come in the time we have to reflect afterwards, when firelight flickers and muscles ache. In ‘Fjord Til Fjell’, James Forrest speaks not only to his experience emerging with the wild, but also to the transportive power of immersing in stories.

Sidetracked Magazine is an online and printed journal featuring a limited collection of personal stories of adventure travel, journeys and expeditions. The concept is simple: to capture the emotion and experience of adventures and expeditions throughout the world… and to inspire.