(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 understanding 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 the Yellowknife tribe as guides and hunters.

He lost half his men to starvation during the second 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, and offers 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 separation 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 get 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 inspiring.

You know people back home, say why do you do this?

They 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 everything 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 up 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.

And that is to heal this core wound of... Being thrown into a world that's totally overwhelming.

Feeling unsupported.

And this sense of desperation that I have to get through this.

I was really looking at why it's so hard to take a day off.

The wind stopped me today and it was like oh well, maybe I can leave by five or maybe by seven it'll be died down enough.

It was hard just to sit here.

Yeah, I've got to keep fighting, I've gotta keep, keep struggling.

So just to relax.

Just to be present.

Crossing from the last lake back to the river was a long portage.

I found no clear markings, so it was a challenge to find the route then follow it each time.

At last I was back on the river.

Rapids ahead, but I felt the freedom of moving water and the promise of a river to follow.

Three more portages and I would be on Carp Lake, with miles of open water.

One of the most delightful things has been my connection with River Spirit.

I finally asked what she was.

The response was, "Just a flow of energy."

"Energy itself has intelligence."

By connecting to her energy I was receiving both the emotion and the wisdom of her particular flow.

River Spirit gave me the key.

Her instruction to see everything as God was a beginning.

Now I felt my body being rewired to enable it to feel a more fundamental level of joy than I had ever experienced.

I saw that joy was a choice.

Each time I called in joy, I watched to see where in my body there was resistance.

And inquired what belief was underlying that resistance.

Once I began living with joy there was a natural embodiment of gratitude and love.

It was that love of life that my soul craved.

And it was what shifted the resistance to being in a body to a welcoming of this experience of being on earth.

So later in the night I had a dream.

It was very strong.

And in the dream I was invited to participate in a ceremony of healing.

I got to camp, I asked for some instructions on what this ceremony was.

I was told to bring a sacred object, so I brought this feather.

And my hand just started moving in a figure eight.

And words started coming.

Of weaving back together the duality.

Right and wrong and back and forth and up and down and good and bad.

Love and hate, peace and war, weaving together the duality back into the one, back into the one... (gentle music) I was 30 days into the trip, with about half my food left.

I was looking forward to moving faster on the large lakes ahead, all of them named by Franklin.

But it was becoming clear I would not have enough food to go down the Copper Mine River.

Each day I mulled over the options of where to end the trip.

The passage between lakes was usually a portage, and the one to Reindeer Lake was no exception.

As I paddled toward the end of the lake I saw no good landing place where a portage trail would start.

I asked Grandfather where to land, and was guided to stop at a rocky bank, thinking this cannot be it.

As I climbed at the bank I nearly tripped over a cairn marking the trail.

Then I saw an old fire ring.

The upside of rapids was great fishing.

This was my first cast.

Little patience is required here.

This grayling was hooked in seven seconds.

It took far longer to come to terms with my emotions about eating such a beautiful creature for my dinner.

Why should I have that option, rather than becoming dinner for the fish?

I think there's a subtle change happening.

And I'm really not sure how to describe it.

In part there's less drama over... Not even drama because it wasn't drama, but less... I guess what it is is there's less preferences.

In some way it doesn't seem to matter whether I'm portaging or paddling or whether it's cold or hot.

There's sort of an evenness to the experience.

And underneath it is a sense of well-being.

When I was sitting here this afternoon I actually had this sense of almost disappearing into the environment.

Everything I looked at I became.

And it was all beautiful.

And it's not that I'm one with everything or we're all one, but that I don't exist at all.

That... The rocks are here, the trees are here.

The lake is here.

And something is observing them.

But I'm not here.

(gentle music) So this is what's become of the Yellowknife River.

It's hardly enough water to float a duck, much less a canoe.

The portage up this section of river was one of the first examples of true tundra.

A welcome relief from thrashing through the brush and rocks.

The blueberries were plentiful, as were the mosquitoes.

A short section of river led to where I could begin climbing the hill that Franklin described in detail in his journal 200 years ago.

- [Franklin] The officers ascended the hill, from whose summit an extensive prospect is commanded round a circuit of 20 miles.

But the view was cast over a perfect, barren country.

Scarcely a tree can now be seen.

The soil is in general sandy, supporting lichens in abundance, and most of the northern berries.

We enjoyed a fine feast collecting these.

- [Narrator] I am struck by two parts of this description.

The treeline has clearly moved farther north in response to a warming climate.

And I am enjoying blueberries six weeks earlier than Franklin.

(gentle guitar music) Once in a while I got lucky and the passage between lakes was navigable.

On July 26 I reached Greenstockings Lake, named after a woman in Chief Akaitcho's band.

I camped on a beautiful esker left by a river flowing under the retreating glacier 12,000 years ago.

The lake is considered the source of the Yellowknife River.

From here I would be traveling over the height of land to the Snare River drainage.

I took a day off and sank into the beauty of my surroundings, opening my heart to the wonder of the world.

It seemed an important step in my process.

I asked Grandfather what is the role of opening my heart.

He responded, "Awakening depends on it."

"The heart only opens when there is total safety.

"That implies no separation.

"The two have to happen simultaneously.

"The heart cannot open when you're afraid.

"Nor can you fully resolve fear "unless nothing is perceived as separate."

So on the north end of Singing Lake, about to start the portages.

Looks like there might be five of them going over to Aurora.

And then from Aurora to Winter is a big question.

I took a day off, a rest day, on Greenstockings Lake because it was so beautiful.

And then ended up pushing a little hard yesterday, with a hard portage and the worst bugs I've seen so far.

So it just wore me out.

During the portage I strained a muscle in my calf stumbling over slippery rocks.

It was raining and the rocks were slippery and it was a hard portage.

So today I decided I wasn't gonna do a portage, so I just paddled the lake.

So it was a really easy day.

I think I mentioned that my meditation practice has really turned to non-dual, just sitting quietly, focusing on who am I, what is this.

And I suppose that's appropriate, that's the next piece after getting in touch with nature spirits and guides and that realm, is what's beyond that realm?

What is the ultimate reality?

Squirrel Spirit appeared chattering in a tree.

You have blundered into my land.

No problem or hard feelings.

Remember this is sacred ground.

Each step you take is death to some life form.

Yet you belong here.

Can you take that step consciously, without guilt or regret?

Do not shrink to make your footsteps smaller, but expand your heart so your love can encompass all of life including death.

How can I live so that each step, each word, is a sacred act?

Om namah shivaya.

Shivaya namah om.

Om namah shivaya.

Shivaya namah om.

("Om Namah Shivaya" by Anandmurti Gurumaa) My leg was still extremely painful to walk on, so I was using every bit of lake that would flow to canoe.

In some ways this was the most interesting part of the trip.

There is no defined route, just a series of lakes presenting a multiple-choice puzzle.

I tried to figure out how John Franklin had come, but it was difficult to tell from his description.

I spent a day hiking up to hilltops to get some perspective on the route.

(gentle music) Each task became less of a burden.

A hard portage brought no complaint.

Bugs were only a background drone to the song of rain, Sun, wind, and water.

Loading and unloading the canoe was a breath in and a breath out.

No longer an endless chore.

I knew love, joy, and exuberance were part of the fabric of creation.

An integral part of my being.

I only had to breathe them in.

(gentle music) When I was doing the portage yesterday I saw this beautiful cinnamon bear.

I assumed he was a grizzly, it disappeared in the woods too soon to really get a good look at him other than the color.

So I'm into bear country.

I was at the height of land and ready to start down a series of portages following a creek flowing into Winter Lake.

I took an easy walk up the esker to see if the route was passable.

Franklin described the portage as difficult, requiring seven hours over loose stones.

I concluded he went a different way, but where?

and the canoe half full of muddy water.

One flotation chamber and a dry bag had been punctured by teeth or claws.

On my hike I'd seen a young black bear.

I felt relieved.

If a family of black bears was in this area I was less likely to be bothered by Grizzlies.

I didn't expect one would ransack the canoe in the middle of the day.

What I missed most was the loss of the last roll of toilet paper.

Lichens will never be a popular substitute.

Finally I was headed downstream.

I did not know if it was navigable but the beauty of the creek and the excitement of traveling with the flow lulled me into following it with a hope that it would carry me the 10 miles down to Winter Lake.

(gentle music) I was afraid that the creek would be blocked where the brush was too thick to portage.

I was not disappointed.

I had to thrash on through.

At one point I had to unload the boat and maneuver all the gear through the boulders.

I felt like I was squeezing through a birth canal into Winter Lake and the homeward leg of the trip.

Emerging in the delta, I passed five moose and hundreds of ducks and birds.

It was one of the richest habitats I had passed.

(gentle music) Winter Lake was open water and windy.

So I'm camped here on the edge of Winter Lake.

This is the northern turning point.

Tomorrow I'll start down the Snare River.

I'm a little disappointed.

Actually I was going to paddle down to the river today, and stopped here, I guess I wasn't ready to face civilization.

But it caught up to me.

Looking around here there's plywood scraps and old stove parts.

Clearly I'm within range of human occupation.

And we make such a mess at the places we visit.

I hiked up this ridge to the north of here today.

I wanted to get a sense of what John Franklin did because he went overland from here.

I encountered a series of lakes and ridges.

The tundra was spectacular with fall colors.

With so many species of plants all intermingled.

Crowberries, blueberries, cloud berries, and lingonberries.

Nature does not like mono crops.

I stopped at Fort Enterprise, where Franklin wintered with his men.

A lead plaque verified the location.

I could imagine the hardships of eight months of freezing temperatures with inadequate supplies.

Tough men.

On the other hand it was almost the end of my journey.

I had about five days of food left.

Not enough to make it to the Arctic Ocean but enough to travel 50 miles down the Snare River.

I lingered for most of the day, absorbing the silence.

Then headed down the river.

The first rapid was easy, though Franklin had portaged it.

I was flying down the river.

(gentle music) But then I rounded a bend and was blinded by the Sun.

(lively music) I hung up on a rock.

I was lucky, however.

The boat stayed pointing downstream and I was able to get out on a rock and push it off.

Now I was past the edge of my map.

I'd not anticipated coming this way and had not printed out maps of these lakes.

The digital version was lost with the iPad.

It's interesting not having a map.

It's kind of fun.

You really don't know what is gonna happen, and have to pay attention.

There was one point where it seemed obvious the river was going straight ahead.

But there's a little gap off to the right.

And something told me, Grandfather probably let's say, that I should investigate that.

So I paddled over to where I could get into the shallow-enough water to see the weeds, and sure enough the current was going through this little gap.

So it's things like that that are rewarding.

To not get tricked by the river's playfulness.

Well this is my last night here.

Again it's the perfect timing to find a little site.

This is the minimal site.

Just barely enough room for a tent.

So I think I've turned the corner as far as resisting leaving.

We passed maybe eight or 10 cabins today.

So I'm in civilization, it feels like time to go.

The airport was three miles or so from the village of Wekweeti.

I saw it was possible to carry my gear from the lake to the terminal, but decided to head on to explore the village.

The wind and rain came up and I was making very slow progress.

It was clear I would not make it to the village before the one store closed.

What I really needed was a shelter from the rain, to pack up my gear for the plane trip.

I gave up and turned back toward the airport.

Directly in front of me was the town's beach and shelter, tucked in a cove.

Since I had no map I would not have known it was there unless I'd paddled past the airport toward town.

I saw the perfection of the event and realized that the whole journey had been orchestrated with the same perfection, even when I thought I was making a mistake.

Over the course of the next days I realized that that same perfection, that same guidance, had operated throughout my life.

Every success and failure, every obstruction, had been essential to guide me to this moment.

More than guided, I was just a witness to the evolution of this body, this mind, toward the source, toward wholeness.

One more portage of less than a mile, across the runway, and I was at the terminal.

(gentle music) The journey is not over.

Awakening is an ongoing exploration, a continuing refusal to live in separation.

A refusal to separate the world of spirit from the world of life on this planet.

The magical feeling of the perfect unfolding of events faded as my personality came back in to deal with the modern world.

But the perfection does not care.

The essence of the creative force continues to animate the world, the water, the earth, and our lives.

We can recognize that and live in harmony or continue to ignore the earth and spirit world until they can no longer support life as we know it.

Even if we cannot change the course of civilization, can we maintain our connection with the mystery, and continue to embody love and joy in a time of crisis?

I left the North with an intense feeling of gratitude for the earth, the spirits, and the creatures.

I realized that to truly live in gratitude I had to acknowledge my vulnerability as a fragile speck of life in a staggeringly complex web.

I had to live with the wonder that life exists at all.

(gentle music)