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(gentle music)

- [narrator] there's a land to the north, past the last road, past the last tree, called the barrens. it is one of the last places to find true wilderness, still untamed. there i find a sense of freedom. even a sense of safety, far from the next human. to get there i drove 2000 miles north from my home in oregon to the city of yellowknife in the northwest territories of canada. for years i've wanted to canoe the coppermine river, down to the arctic ocean. on other trips in the arctic i used a float plane to bring me to the source of the river. this time i wanted to do it with human power by paddling up the yellowknife river to reach the coppemine. i spent months in preparation. i used a folding canoe so i could pack it up

and return on a commercial flight. i outfitted it with spray deck and packed food for two months. i wanted to travel alone because i wanted to connect with the land and my own inner being rather than a traveling companion. my time in the wild is sacred time and i want to fully honor that process. this is not the first solo journey. there have been others. canoe trips, sailing trips, and backpack trips. each one has led me a step closer to understaing who i am and my place in the universe. i'm comfortable with river travel but i never tried going upstream before. there were over 80 portages, each requiring four trips to carry my boat, food and gear. that works out to eight miles of walking for each mile-long portage.

weight was critical. rivers have been pathways for travel and trade for centuries. the aboriginal people use the yellowknife river to travel north in the spring, following the caribou to the calving grounds. then south in the fall to their winter camps. i was inspired and guided by the journal of sir john franklin, who was sent out by the british admiralty in 1819 to explore the coastline of the arctic ocean as part of the search for the northwest passage. after a year traveling up rivers, following the fur trade routes, he arrived at great slave lake, the farthest outpost of the hudson bay company. he started up the yellowknife river in august with three canoes and 27 men, but inadequate supplies. he was completely dependent on chief akaitcho

and members of theellowknife tribe as guides and hunters. he lost half his men to st winter but was hailed as a hero on his return to england. i planned to follow is route, but with a more tasty diet of grayling and quinoa. before leaving the city of yellowknife, i saught out an elder of the yellowknife tribe, fred sangris. i wanted to acknowledge that i would be traveling across his people's homeland and i wanted to do that with as much awareness of his culture as possible. we talked about my route and his life living on the land, hunting and trapping. i asked him how he honors the land as he travels, and he said he lights a ceremonial fire, separate from the cooking fire, anoffers tobacco.

in meeting him i felt like i'd met a kindred spirit and would be welcomed on the land. the true measure of a journey is not in arriving at a destination but in how the traveler himself is changed. for me it was a gradual expansion of my awareness, a clearing away of false identifications. i honor the role of fire in burning away what is not real. as i watch the wood dissolve into heat i feel a visceral sense of my own impermanence. something inside relaxes from the grip of a lifetime, of having to get it right, of having to know what to do.

i offer cornmeal and prayer to be transmuted by the flames to the spirit world. i pray for safe passage through this wilderness. but more imperative is the prayer to travel here as a partner. i'm not here to conquer this land but to be conquered by it. not in some life-threatening way but to allow the love, support and beauty of the wilderness to erode the feeling of paration from the natural world. i want to honor the spirit of the rocks, the air, the water, the birds, and the animals and fish. i want to give back to the earth. even here in the far north, diamond mines are being gouged out of the tundra. the ugliness and disregard for the earth as a living being

makes me cringe, as if my own body is being torn open. i hope that in honoring this land and the original inhabitants i can help restore some peace, some balance. writer and tracker tom brown had tremendous respect for the wisdom and skill of his mentor, stalking wolf, who he referred to by the respectful title of grandfather. he is no longer alive but i was inspired to ask him to be my spirit guide on this journey. at first i was not sure if it was just my imagination but i came to trust that by calling on grandfather i could effectively access information that i did not consciously know. sometimes in asking for help the result was too immediate to be mere coincidence.

i was enchanted by the song of a solitary loon. i got out my recorder and microphone and immediately stopped and remained silent. i asked grandfather to tickle his throat to make him sing. within moments five loons flew overhead, calling. (loons calling) there are two options for getting up a rapid. portaging and lining. lining is flying the canoe like a kite out in the stream while walking up the bank. the first two rapids i lined were near disaster. i had too much weight in the bow of the canoe, and instead of aligning with the current the bow buried and pulled me into the river.

the result was nothing worse than a bath and a few bruises, but i saw how easily i could lose the canoe with all my supplies and gear. i realized that lining up this river was no less risky, and far more exhausting than going downstream. going down a rapid the tension lasts only moments, but going upstream the high level of vigilance is required for much longer. when i planned this trip i planned on going up the yellowknife and down the coppermine. and i knew it was ambitious, i wasn't sure at all if i could do it. and now i'm pretty sure i can't within the timeframe. it's taken me, this is the fifth day, and i still am a couple of miles short

of where john franklin camped on the second day. and i don't want to push that hard, i realize that's not my purpose really. it's not to see how far i can t or to test myself. i'm here to see what's here. to listen to the guidance of this land. i've been having fun with the rocks. there seems to be a rock that attracts me to each place i need to go. whether it's a portage trail or this campsite (gentle music)

most of the altitude is gained in the first hundred miles going up the yellowknife. most of my day was spent portaging, with little time left for actually paddling. i was getting run down. i did not recover each night, and started the next day already tired. i felt my body getting weaker. i knew i could not keep up this pace. each morning i asked grandfather what i should pay attention to that day. one day he responded with, "your soul." "this is a journey to awaken the soul. "to unite the soul. "part of your soul wants to leave the body.

"it is tired of being limited by the physical world. "the other part wants to fully experience "this embodied life, but it has no support. "to complete this trip requires unifying both parts "so the full resources of mind, "body, and spirit are available. "you must unite the will and the spirit, i came to realize that to bring harmony the two aspects did not demand equal time but equal levels of intention. i could not spend all my day moving upstream then collapse in the tent at night. i had to find a balance. i began by doing short meditations of a hundred breaths after each of the four loads i carried over the portage trail.

living close to the land and water was so simple, so nourishing. every time i drank from the river i felt gratitude that there was still places where the water was pure. but today it feels like i'm getting in touch with my true purpose in being here. i don't know quite what it is yet but it's more about the pleasure, the joy of this wild and open land. just looking out at the horizon now i sort of feel it,

like there's a freedom, but i don't know what that means yet. i've got this boat and a bunch of gear, and movement is slow. bugs are constraining, wind is constraining. so what is this freedom? and what am i looking for? i think it's related to beauty. there's something about the beauty of this, and the isolation, and the purity of the energy. talking to fred before i left, and getting the sense of his longing to be out here in some way. and even the guy at the power plant, he was inspired, and inspiri. you know people back home, say why do you do this?

th had no question, they knew. they knew there's something magical here. it brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it. but i can't quite grasp it. (gentle guitar music) arctic life depends on redundancy. in fact it thrives on it. the bugs too came, in unfathomable numbers. mosquitoes serenade the mornings and evenings, waiting impatiently on the door of the tent. black flies take the midday shift. mosquitoes are pretty innocent but black flies are far more devious.

so this is a lesson. putting on my armaments in the morning. the first thing is the bug jacket. which is invaluable. and what's amazing is that even with this drawstring at the waist the black flies can still crawl in under the waist. and they love to crawl up things, so even with boots on i have to tuck my pant legs in. and then there are these. gloves which i've sewn socks on to.

so that they cover and overlap my jacket. and they all have to seal. and then i'm ready for the morning. everything i looked at was dim and slightly out of focus. if the sun was in my face i was completely blinded, but the mosquitoes were always waiting. i really have to honor the first inhabitants of this land. and the early explorers who traveled here without the luxury of modern bug protection. as the weeks pass my mind became quiet. my connection with the unseen became more clear. dreams became more potent and dynamic.

during the night i had a, it was almost like a shamanic journey. i was awake and was invited to connect with a spirit and i chose the spirit of the river. and this energy came into me that was just delightfully playful. and what it had to say was, see evything is god. when you heal the wound of separation it brings joy to us. every individual who heals the wound and lives free from the delusion of separation begins to heal the collective wound. that is the goal. it is the rift in consciousness itself,

caused when consciousness chose to enter the game of duality and can only be healed by the collective remembering and living without separation. so my life, in thinking about enlightenment as an individual concept. but to think about it as a world concept, as a universal healing of a wound is a really different point of view. how to live beyond duality. relative to the clouds i do not move. yet i feel the power flow into each paddle stroke and the canoe surge ahead. i'm living in two worlds. one of infinite space and beauty. the other of transient sensation. there is no separation, no space between them.

i tried to send a blessing to each rock each patch of ground. i felt the pain of the burned over land, a sign of the changing climate. the peat soil itself burns, obliterating the trail so at times i had to make my own. a calm lake was always a gift, a chance to reflect and take in the beauty without struggling to keep my footing. i could meditate on the vortex created by each paddle stroke, seeing it vanish back into the lake. as an inspiration to let go of everything i call my own. i felt the sense of personal identity itself dissolving.

my mind keeps calculating time and distance, as if i could figure out where i could get to, and had that as a specific goal, as a destination. then it would give purpose to my journey. and i'm thinking about that in my life, that my quest for purpose is all based on finding a destination. then i would know where i'm going, then i would have a purpose, because my purpose would be to get there. what if life was only a series of lakes connected by a river?

(gentle music) a few miles north of fishing lake i came to a decision point. i either had to go up a narrow stretch a river, the gorge, with multiple rapids, or divert to the west and travel up a series of nine lakes, requiring longer portages. fred made this comment. - [fred] well this is really treacherous, really treacherous here. i don't know if you want to go on this, this is fast, fast water. - [narrator] of course i had to see for myself. i went exploring with an empty canoe, planning on hiking up the river.

i made a bad call and swamped the canoe lining up an easy riffle. it was pinned to a rock as i watched my day pack, life jacket, and other valuables float away. i couldn't budge it. in desperation, instead of pulling it out i gave it a push with all my strength back into the river, and lunged into the badly bent canoe. i emptied it, recovered the gear, and paddled back to my camp to disassemble the canoe and assess the damage. four of the frames were bent, and all of the stringers. the stem was broken. i tried straightening a stringer with my own weight but could not do it. the ipad had been in a plastic bag that leaked. it was dead. i relied on it for my gps and digital maps.

could i navigate this maze of lakes without it? at first i thought i might have to abandon the trip, but i was too angry at my carelessness to quit. i set about straightening the frames and stringers and rebuilding the stem with epoxy and fiberglass cloth. the birch trees turned into my best ally, providing the leverage i needed to straighten the stringers and frames. when it was done i decided it was seaworthy. in past trips i'd never had a gps, so i decided i could do without that. paper maps and a compass worked fine, even though at this latitude the compass preferred to point straight down. the sun however was usually visible 20 hours a day. unnerved by the whole incident i headed back for the first portage on the nine lakes route.

franklin named it icy portage, and wrote in his journal. - [franklin] today the river was found to be barred by impassable heavy falls. we therefore turned off to make a portage more to the westward. our astonishment may be imagined on perceiving at this point an icy covering over the bed of a ravine. this accumulation appeared to have been the collection of some years, and probably will increase until the glacier be formed. - [narrator] what franklin described was actually not a glacier but overflow ice, formed when water flowing under the rocks freezes and is forced over the ice, building up layer upon layer. the ice is melted, but the flat surface of the rocks is evidence that a thick sheet of ice once covered this area. it was the first clear evidence of climate change.

franklin found the portage difficult, and made this comment. - [franklin] the task was extremely laborious and not performed without much risk of the men laming themselves. - [narrator] for me it was an all-day trudge in 80 degree weather. there was a discernible trail at each end of the mile-long portage, but in the middle there was a boggy area and i lost the route each of the first three trips. finally making the connection on the final load. the lakes were quite beautiful and provided a brief but welcome relief from portaging. the map showed that at the end of each of the nine lakes there was a creek. so i was always hopeful it would be navigable. and in some cases it was, for a hundred feet. now, how do i get out of here, to some place i can walk?

(gentle guitar music) it's such a relief to find a lake. just the ease of moving all this stuff upon water is almost miraculous after carrying it on my back. finding the balance between moving and resting, between moving and doing spiritual practice, was an ongoing process. today i think i really got back to the basics of what's going on, why i'm here.