Episode 15: Adam Paskowitz

LIFE ON TOUR

“I wear my boardshorts as my underpants,” Adam Paskowitz laughed, getting ready to plunge into a chilly Pacific Ocean. “I’m always ready to go!”

Adam wasn’t exaggerating either—he is, quite literally, always ready to go. Alongside his wife Tracy and their two kids, Adam Paskowitz lives as an adventurer, calling a camper pulled by their trusty Land Rover home…but if we’re honest, home for the family is anywhere in the great outdoors.

We caught up with Adam in the epic, coastal wilderness of Vancouver, British Colombia. For a few weeks, he and his family set up base on a rented farmstead, eating produce picked fresh from the farm and making dinners from locally-sourced chicken or fish they caught themselves.

The Paskowitz family has traveled around two-thirds of the world by boat, exploring, learning, and cleaning up the coasts as they go. Founded by Adam, the Paskowitz Foundation strives to keep the oceans free of plastic pollution.

“I feel like the ocean is really important to the overall health of our planet,” Adam explains. Since we’re at the beach a lot in remote places, we pick up a lot of plastic. I really do believe that we can make some impact just by setting some examples.”

Adam comes by his love of nature and adventure naturally. His father, Dorian “Doc” Paskowitz, was a doctor turned legendary explorer, surfer, and humanitarian. Years ago, Doc loaded his family of eleven into a camper van and set off to see the world. No house required.

“My dad and our family had a really good idea, right?” he laughs. “Live in the best places in a camper and just take over the waves. My dad was pretty experimental, and that was—for me—pretty exciting.”

“People ask me all the time: What’s it like growing up in a camper with eight siblings and your parents?” Adam relayed. “It was a very unique upbringing. Imagine having five kids that are all teenagers—crazed, surfer teenagers—and then some babies. My dad and my mom had their hands full… But we also saw things that nobody saw and did things that nobody did.”

The Paskowitz family became legendary, blazing a trail for a non-traditional way of life—one that Adam and the second generation of Paskowitzes still lives by.

“People are sold a bill of goods: you go to college, you get a good job, and you got it. And that’s not true,” Adam explains, his passion evident. “People come in all different shapes and sizes… and freedom allows you to be different. The ability to move, not to be stuck. I think freedom is a commodity that’s real. I just hope to instill in my kids the same thing that I had—this sense of wonderment and this sense of learning.”

In the words of Adam, “Life requires, sometimes, just to get out and find it.”