Explorer School: What I’m Really Teaching My Daughters
How Explorer Skills Become Everyday Survival Skills for the Next Generation
I’ve spent most of my adult life moving through other people’s maps. Walking, cycling, paddling, riding. Forty years of planning expeditions and then watching reality quietly tear up my plans. I’ve slept more nights in tents than in many of the apartments I’ve rented. I’ve been cold, too hot, scared, lonely, sometimes happy, mostly tired.
And then I became a father.
You’d think that was the moment it should all stop. Time to be responsible, sell the gear, trade the down jacket for a nice kitchen with an induction stove. Settle down. Stay put.
That didn’t happen.
Instead, I started asking a different question:
What, if anything, from this explorer life is worth passing on?
Which parts are just my own addiction to the road, and which parts might actually be an inheritance my daughters can use long after I’m gone?
This is my attempt to answer that.
Why take them at all?
People often ask why I bring the girls on these journeys instead of leaving them safely at home with football practice, school and Friday night pizza.
The short answer is: I believe an ordinary life is not enough protection against a hard life.
I know what it feels like when the world collapses. When relationships break, when the body protests, when money runs out, when loneliness is thick as fog. No map or TV channel helps then. The only thing that has ever helped me is something much simpler: rhythm and routines.
One more step. One more breath. One more hill.
The explorer life has drilled that into me. It’s the only kind of insurance I really believe in. And I want to pass that on. Not by preaching, but by letting the girls feel it in their own legs. Headwind. Bad road. Wrong turn. Tears. And then, somehow, still moving forward.
So I take them with me. Not because I want them to copy my life, but because I know that life, at some point, will be as demanding as any desert road. When that happens, I want their bodies to already know that feeling: this is hard, but I’ve done hard before.
Right now, I’m in post-production on a documentary called No Map For Growing Up. It’s a film about me, their dad, and my daughters—Dana, who turns 13 today, and Eva, 15. It is about four journeys by bicycle where they develop as humans and I try to help them with a kind of Explorer School.
If I drew a blackboard for this school, the subjects at the top wouldn’t be adventure and mountains. They would be things like:
Reading people
Reading places
Handling fear
Failing without breaking
Taking care of yourself and others.
Yes, there’s also the practical craft. They learn how to pitch a tent in the wind, why we don’t get lazy with guy lines, why I insist on a petrol stove instead of a cute gas canister. They learn how to find water, how to whistle for help, how to stay warm, how to dry socks in a damp tent.
But the real teaching is in the things that don’t look like lessons.
When we roll into a village in Turkey or Namibia, I don’t look at monuments first. I look at people. Who sees us? Who pretends not to? How does someone talk to their child, to the person sweeping the ground, to the dog? How does the laughter sound? Tight and hard, or relaxed and open?
The girls see that I am watching. At the start they would ask:
“Why didn’t we stay there? It looked nice.”
Now they’re starting to point themselves:
“Here feels good, Dad. Let’s camp here.”
That’s a lesson. The world is not divided into safe and dangerous countries. It’s full of details you have to learn to read for yourself.
They also see how I choose a campsite. It’s never just “pretty view”. It’s:
What kind of trash is on the ground? Glass? Beer cans? Food wrappers?
Are there vehicle tracks cutting through where we might sleep?
What’s the noise like? Shouting? Engines? Or quiet?
They watch us ride past some spectacular spot because I don’t like the signs around it, and they watch us stop in some ugly lay-by because it feels calm and boring and safe. That’s part of the curriculum too.
Where is the line between their best interests and my need to keep going?
This is the question that hurts the most, and it’s probably the most honest one anyone can ask me.
I love being out there. I often feel better on a bad gravel road than in a good apartment. I don’t need to pretend that everything I do with them is for their sake. Sometimes it is also for mine. I want to keep moving. I want to remain who I am.
At the same time I carry the same quiet fear every parent does:
What if something happens to them because of a decision I made?
So I set a line for myself:
When I am alone, I can accept more risk.
With my daughters, I am not allowed to gamble in ways I cannot explain later.
If I can’t honestly answer the question, “Why was this safe enough?”, then we shouldn’t be there.
That sounds neat on paper. In reality, it’s messy. There are nights when I’ve lain awake in the tent and wondered if I pushed them too far that day, if that last hill was one hill too many. On those days the only thing that works is to talk about it.
“Girls, that was on the edge. Tell me what you think. Next time we adjust.”
It’s not perfect. But it is honest. And maybe that’s what they need to see: not a hero who never doubts, but a father who is willing to say:
“I got it wrong, girls. Let’s adjust it better.”
The explorer gene
There’s a phrase I like from Alex Hutchinson’s last book, The Explorer Gene. The idea that some of us are more drawn to uncertainty, to the edge of the map, to the next corner even when we don’t know what’s there.
I recognise myself in that. As a child I made my own little travels and expeditions with tents and skis and bikes. There was a restlessness in me long before I had the words expedition or career.
Do I see the same thing in my daughters? Absolutely. More in Dana than Eva. In their curiosity. In how quickly they get bored when everything is too comfortable. In the way they light up when the road turns from smooth asphalt to something a bit wilder. Every time we travel—even if it’s just a ten-hour car ride—I see it in them.
But I also see something else: they are children of a different time. They know the world is on fire. They know the climate is changing. They know that adults are not really in control. Their questions are sharper than mine were at their age.
I don’t believe in a single magic gene that explains it all. I believe in exposure.
They are getting used to the feeling of not knowing exactly what’s around the next bend – and going anyway. They are learning that you can step into uncertainty and still come back, tired and dirty but intact, sometimes stronger. They are learning that fear is not a stop sign, but a signal to pay attention.
If there is an explorer gene, I think it’s more like a muscle. You can be born with a bit of talent for it, but mostly you train it. You stretch it. You use it or you lose it.
And if one of my daughters grows up and chooses a very ordinary life – a steady job, a flat, no big journeys at all – I hope she still carries some of the explorer traits inside her: curiosity, a tolerance for uncertainty, and a stubborn ability to get up again when she falls.
Failure, detours, and when life is shit
Most people want to talk about summits. Peaks. Endings. Flags in the snow.
I’m more interested in what happens on the way there – and on all the journeys where we never arrive.
On my own expeditions I’ve made more mistakes than I can count. Wrong season. Wrong gear. Wrong companions. Wrong decisions. The important thing is not to pretend these things didn’t happen. The important thing is how you carry them forward.
With the girls, I try to make our changes of plan visible.
When we shorten a day. When we decide to stay put. When we choose the dull road over the dramatic one.
I want them to see the reasoning, not just the result. Like:
“We’re sleeping here instead, because you’re too tired.”
“We’re taking this road, because the traffic on that one is too dangerous.”
“We’re stopping now, because your stomach is more important than the schedule.”
They see that plans are tools, not gods. That you are allowed to rewrite them.
It’s training for something much bigger than cycling through a country. It’s training for the first real collapses in their own lives. The big injury in football. The breakup that feels like an amputation. The exam that didn’t work out. The dream that died.
When life is shit – truly shit – I do the same thing I do in a storm or in the desert.
I slow down. One thing at a time. Water. Warmth. Food. Sleep. A walk. A friend. You don’t have to solve your life. You just have to take the next step.
If they learn that from the Explorer School, the kilometres are already worth it.
What I hope they carry when I’m gone
I have no illusions that my daughters will remember every little speech I’ve given by the camp stove, all the bits of wisdom thrown out when everyone was tired and hungry. They will remember fragments: the smell of petrol in a tiny tent. A specific hill where someone cried and kept going. A laugh shared with a stranger whose name we never caught.
But if I am allowed to wish for three clear things they take with them, it would be these:
That, despite all the evidence to the contrary on the news, the world is more kind than cruel. They have met many more helpful people than dangerous ones. They know that help can appear in the most unlikely places. But they also know that kindness is not an excuse to be naive. You still choose where you stay. You still listen to your gut. You still walk away when something feels wrong.
That they are capable of much more than they think – but not alone. This is important. Explorer stories often worship the lone hero. I don’t want that. I want them to understand that they got through the hills and the headwinds because we were a small team. Because someone cycled beside them. Because someone cooked. Because someone made a joke at the worst moment. That kind of strength is better than the lonely version.
That they are allowed to change their minds. To change route. To turn back. To say no. In other words, that courage is not only walking forward, but also saying, “This is the wrong path for me,” and stepping off it.
There are places in my life where I have been brave, and places where I have been cowardly. Places where I pushed too far, and places where I stayed too long. I hope they will be braver than me where I was afraid, more cautious than me where I was reckless.
And maybe, if I’m lucky, they will also carry one last small thing in the back of their minds. Not like a command, but like a gentle nudge when things are hard:
Just one more kilometre. Then we decide.
That, in the end, is the shortest syllabus of the Explorer School. And maybe the only one that really matters.
And for those of you following the Sigge the Wilddog saga – don’t worry. His story picks up again in the next instalment.
Copyright: All photos Sofie Rördam, Kilwa Film
