Sometimes I wake up desperate to escape, to shake things up, to be that family who is always doing some kind of amazing and epic adventure. On these days I have a choice. I can sit drinking coffee and scrolling through Instagram lusting after the glamours sanitized life of others while feeling increasingly depressed or I can get up and move. Often I chose the former, lusting after material things, believing that if we had this pack raft or that backpack, then those things would make our life more fun and our adventures easier and more epic. In the winter, when the gray cold grips me, I can spend hours scrolling through places to move that are not filled with snow, ice and cold for much of the year–concocting grand schemes as to why we should move. All this mindless scrolling and lusting leads me to think that we either do not have the right gear, we live in the wrong place or we don’t have the time or resources to be epic. All lies and skewed perception, of course.

Instead of all of this lusting, scrolling, watching, dreaming I need to be moving. It does not have to be epic. Though epic is relative. For someone with a toddler and epic could be going for a walk around the block. Our epic is not your epic and some days our epic is just going for a walk on the trails I’ve built and discovering a pile of bear scat. Simply go and ride the current of the day and see where it leads. Pack some snacks and the essentials; hot chocolate in the winter, swimsuits in the summer. Whatever it is, throw it in a bag and go.

Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard says, The cure for depression is action… do what you can according to what your resources are. I have to agree with him. This concept can be applied not only to getting outside but also to our life dreams and goals. So move your body, move the pen, move your mind. Move beyond your preconceived notions. Don’t compare your day to those on social media or your friends down the street. Your adventure is your own and as long as you are having fun, and even when you’re not, the important thing is that you are making memories. You don’t make memories staring at a screen.