We’re Having Fun and This Is How

Remember when you threw that rock at that other rock?

A few months ago, I was at a remote trailhead in the Mojave, waiting for a friend to arrive, and after fifteen minutes of trying to hop from one randomly designated boulder to another—don’t fall into the lava!!!—I turned to what might be one of the world’s first and best sports: chucking rocks at other rocks. I started with throwing little rocks at big rocks, and then I threw rocks at the creek, and then I threw rocks at rocks in the creek, and then I threw rocks at rocks on the other side of the creek. The water was too turbulent to skip rocks off the surface, so I tried to skip rocks off rocks in the creek and hit rocks on the other side. In that last effort, I was a total failure. Or was I? Maybe I just found a couple dozen rocks that were poorly shaped for skipping off other rocks.

The next day, I had a sore arm and another entry on the very long list of outdoor shenanigans in pursuit of amusement. Oftentimes, I have passed grimacing trail runners or backpackers humping seventy-liter monstrosities or mountain bikers coughing up lungs to clean some gnarly section of uphill and I’ve thought are we having fun yet?

I’m as guilty as the next schmo at embracing the suck, chasing type two and three fun, etc., but fun is fun. Let me put it another way: How often do you laugh when you’re having adventures?

Many years ago, five of us went on a ski-mountaineering expedition to the Tantalus Range in coastal British Columbia. The team was Canadian big mountain pioneers Trevor Petersen and Eric Pehota, a Swede known as the Swede, American ski legend Mike Hattrup, and me. On one of our rest days, we came up with the Tantalus Olympic decathlon, ten made-up events that would crown the winner with bragging rights. This was decades ago, and I’ve forgotten all but two of the events. Pehota had a huge stash of sunflower seeds, and we spit them to see who could project them the farthest. The final event was the high jump. Using adjustable-length ski poles, we set up a bar in the snow, then got a running start from the patch of dirt where we’d erected our tents and launched ourselves over it. This wasn’t easy, because we were wearing down booties. I can’t remember who won, but I distinctly remember the joyous feeling of successfully clearing the bar and landing with a splat in the snow.

Running, skipping, hopping, juggling, hanging, tossing…there is no end to the games we can play when the natural world is our toybox. I have played pine cone baseball on four continents and in the northern and southern hemispheres. The rules are simple: There are no rules. Or, like Calvinball, there can be an infinite number of them. The branch you use for a bat has to be curved. Or it can’t be curved. Or it must be as long as you are tall. The pitcher has to have their eyes closed. Or throw with their non-dominant hand. Or be sitting down. If you hit the pine cone past that tree, it’s a home run. If the pine cone splits in two and both halves go past the tree, it’s two homers, but if only one half goes past, you lose a run.

Aside from throwing things at other things, my favorite ad hoc amusement is improvisational disc golf. It’s best played with other people but can be pursued solo. You pick a tee box, designate a target “hole,” and declare the par. The only limit is your imagination. Through that picnic table without touching it. Around that tree and over a branch. The hole is hitting “forest” on the national forest sign. After being rained out of the backcountry, a crew of us played with lighted discs in the middle of the night in the tiny town of Escalante, Utah. Our “tee” was sitting in the seat of an ancient tractor now used as decoration. Another time, in the Alps, we decided our hole would be the flank of a grazing cow before listening to our better angels and choosing a fence post instead. The point is…well, there is no point. And that’s where the fun lies.