The most valuable lesson I learned during my 2017 R2AK is how deeply important it is to challenge myself outdoors. That is where I belong. It feels like home. I am ready to go further. Each step we take in life is training for the one after. The Next Thing.

Next year, 2019, I plan to paddle the Northwest Passage. My goal is to paddle from
Tuktoyaktuk to Pond Inlet on Baffin Island. I will paddle a custom-built carbon fiber expedition/ race SUP built by Joe Bark. I will travel very light, as quickly as possible, with a minimal safety net. There is no point heading out the door to see what you are capable of…while weighing yourself down with a crushing burden of unnecessary gear.

My entries in 2017 and 2018 R2AK gifted me the opportunity to test skills I’ve been honing since before I have memory. I was small when I was sent along down this path. I learned a lot about endurance, and I developed a strong sense of my own horizons during R2AK. I was excited/relieved/proud that my stripped down approach to the race worked as well as it did. Yet, I was left feeling like I wanted more; that I have further to go, more to learn.

My chief strategy for dealing with physical/emotional/psychological/spiritual crises involved extremely disciplined focus on my breath, my stroke, and the countless details of my environment…raindrops and the patterns they made, localized breezes and what was causing them, the shapes in the clouds, the Ravens, the Whales, Fish, Seals, Otters, Bears, and Trees. I would blur my vision and allow the water shapes/ovoids to work their magic, all while also focusing on my breath. The miles simply melted away. I felt a deep sense of joy and satisfaction in the overpowering sense that I was safely enveloped by the whole of time and the paddlers who came before me. I slipped easily between worlds. That trip changed my life in fundamental ways. I came home, and found that home wasn’t where I’d left it. My ‘real life’ had become like an old pair of shoes that had become too small to wear any longer, even painful.

I have a dear friend, Mary Henrikson. She is an artist. Her work brings tears to my eyes. Mary has an eye for the ephemeral and fleeting moments by which we measure the worth of our lives.

I met Mary the night I finished the 2017 R2AK. I knew instantly, the moment she walked in, we would be friends. I signed the first autograph of my life for her, and she later returned the favor by signing her latest book for me. We talked about the paper-thin veils between worlds. She handed me one of her cards. It bore a miniature version of one of her paintings. Depicted were the sky, the land, and the sea. The three blurred together like a melting ice cream cone. I understood instantly that she knew the depth of what I had just experienced.

I am seeking the answer to one very simple question. How much can I do…with how little? I adore the simplicity, speed, purity of movement, and the raw physicality of long-distance SUP. There is nothing more satisfying than moving with great speed and precision, with a light load. Perhaps, I’ll finally get the answer to my question. Perhaps not. I aim to find out.

My whole life I have nursed a strong attraction to the Northwest Passage. My assumption was that I would sail through it one day. Toward the end of my R2AK I realized—in a moment of painfully blinding clarity—that I must paddle it. I must. It brought tears to these eyes, like Mary’s art does.

“What will Mary hand me this time?” I wonder.