One of the fundamental tenets of Yonder Journal is our fervent commitment to exploration. It could be said that we are exploration fundamentalists. But exploration as a concept is a colossal, impacted, ambiguous beast that can mean so many things to so many people. For our part, exploration isn’t just about strapping a bike to your body, or splashing down a naughty little river in a packraft, but the thought process involved in the development of an adventure and the consideration of its results. Otherwise you’re not exploring, you’re just going on a trip. Exploration then is about questioning and considering; by this definition, exploration can come in many different forms. Sometimes through physical exertion, sometimes through mental focus, and sometimes it comes to us in the form of another complete stand-alone human being.

Now it could be argued that if you dig deep enough, every person walking and talking on this green earth is worth his/her own discovery. We don’t have time for that, we’re busy, we need to float down some more naughty rivers, cross some more craggy mountains, visit a few more re-enactments. So we have to be choosey about the individuals that we want to work with. Fortunately if you put it all out there, if you project into the astral plane, if you ask the world to deliver, sometimes it just might be listening. Enter Benedict “Poppi” Wheeler aka @ultraromance.

As it happened Be’né was a manifestation of light/wisdom/tanning/strength/vision throughout our New Zealand, Broderick Pass expedition, his blown-out aural spectrum illuminated our minds to new possibilities, possibilities that the world at large deserves, nay has a right to know. From that experience we formulated a plan to help bring Poppi’s philosophy to light in a series of articles and treatise we’re calling Club Macho.