Beau Miles: Yeah, I love beans too, and I still do. People ask me that all the time, and… One of the big critiques of my film of eating my body weight in beans, which was 190 tins if I remember, was that I didn’t cook them properly like you did. You had the proper beans that you cooked up yourself, that you made a lovely sauce for or brine or something, and away you go, whereas I just bought store-bought tin beans and mixed them up and I ate as many as I could. I did that for a reason because of the simplicity of it and the fact that I could weigh things and measure things and all that, rather than having to do it on the fly. Beau Miles: Yeah. What it was, Brett was… And I’ve since stumbled upon this. What made that idea so successful I suppose, one, I did it with a sense of fun. Two, it’s not overly skill-orientated or I didn’t have… You don’t have to be a great runner to do it. And what those two things combined allow is a repeatable stunt. People can now do it themself. They can do it in their own way, in their own house, at their own pace, whatever they wanna do. And they don’t have to do a full marathon, they can do a half or a 10K or whatever. And just do a few things in between. And what a great concept. And so what it was was a repeatable thing to do, and then so people copied it. I just really wish he'd done more of that rather than selling me on adventures I've already seen him do.

From the adventures titled '1 mile every hour', to 'the human bean', Beau's excursions, and poetic narrative surrounding them, excited and ignites a fire in the reader to enjoy the little things in life. A: I’ve had the luxury of large-scale, non-local adventures as a counterpoint to local and small ones. So, while I’d love to say that local and small can tap into my sense of identity and the world in much the same way as faraway places and experiences, I’m not sure. What is important with all of these experiences is a sense of physicality, a different point of view — even up a tree next to my house — and a sense of depth in terms of how I want to tell the story of the so-called adventure. Beau isn’t talking here about finding his limits through dangerous exploits. He sees his longer trips as challenging but skills-based, and well within his comfort zone. In any case, his adventures, as his book title implies, are decreasingly far-flung. Neither does he see his adventurous identity as remotely exceptional. “I’m as letterboxable as anyone,” he says. “I’m just a dude trying to find my way in life and not quite sure what I enjoy the most, because I enjoy a lot of things.” Each adventure is the prescription drug of the vagabond – a wayfaring, beachcombing type who drifts. Sometimes there is an objective, but it’s often unclear what the objective means…” (pg. 28)

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Developing his storytelling craft is also an ongoing education. Being organic on film while refining the production process and creating films that resonate with people doesn’t just happen. “I have to open my mouth and say the very things I'm feeling or thinking, and I've got to try and be articulate about it - otherwise I'm wasting people's time,” says Beau. “So that's the craft. Sometimes it is harder [than just going out adventures without filming], because I'm having to force the issue or force this internal monologue out. But that doesn't make it a bad experience; it just makes it one where I have to work a bit harder sometimes.”

Sometimes all it takes to inspire play is to introduce some novelty! Have a collection of Outdoor Games ready and waiting for your kids to enjoy in the elements. Q: You talk a lot in your book about perspective and the power of perception. What advice would you give to someone trying to make that shift in perspective and trying to see a familiar place with new, adventurous eyes? Beau Miles: That’s right, yeah, yeah. I chose the shovel because it was very agricultural and I thought, “Oh, well, I kinda look like I’m part of the landscape if I’m lumping a shovel around. If I had anything else with me, then I look like a proper weirdo.” Beau Miles: Oh, I was just opportunistic, mate. I’d drink water out of cow troughs or whatever water I could find on the side of the road. And the big one, which people are disgusted by, these old coke bottles and Pepsi cans or whatever, whatever was a half-drunk bottle of Coke or something, I’d drink the rest. For some weird way, I trusted carbonic acid as being so evil that I thought, “It’s not gonna have any pathogens in it, I’ll just drink someone’s leftover coke.” That was one, it was calories, and two, I figured out, well, maybe no baddies are living in this water, and it seemed to work. Beau Miles: Yeah, yeah, and look, we’ve got a good police force here and I know that… Yeah, there was chances out that every chance in the world that that day I was gonna get pinged. I didn’t expect to get pinged so early to be honest but… Yeah, and you just talk your way through it, and even if they let you go, great, and if not, you gotta modify your journey and I don’t mind that either.

In saying that, I’ve still had to go through a period of convincing myself that close-to-home places are adventuresome, playing on the human sense of perception to cash in on our invisible and intrinsic want to be in new places that bring about physical and emotional challenges. This only really needs to happen once through a genuine discipline of making the effort to see all, or many places, as adventurous. Once you can do that, the close-to-home world is your adventurous oyster. How much space do we have available for these adventures? No matter what the size, it would be great to have activities to help your kids explore and imagine and discover new ideas and skills.