I’m working on a personal film about a period of transition in my life that included loss and unsought change. My experience could be generally categorized as the stuff of the “sandwich generation” — aging parents, death, the end of a relationship, career uncertainty, an empty nest. We all go through highs and lows, but my lows came all at once.

In the summer of 2025, desperate to feel better, I travelled to a remote part of the Canadian Arctic to paddle a partially frozen river by canoe. For a month, I worked very hard physically and interdependently with five other people. Meter by meter, we moved ourselves from western Nunavut to the Arctic Ocean. At a time when talk therapy, psychedelics and (increasingly) AI agents reign as pathways for understanding and coping with our inner selves, I found that uninterrupted work that demanded my full focus both physically and mentally, and the company of other humans undistracted by phones or computers, refocused my brain and my heart.

Sometimes, there are not easy answers or magic solutions for the difficult things we go through and feel as humans. I didn’t embark on the trip expecting massive change, but I emerged feeling re-set and in a different place emotionally and physically. I reached a point of genuine acceptance of my life changes and felt a turn toward a lighter future.

These four videos are segments I have assembled on the path to creating a longer film about my experience with change and my trip in the Arctic. Please consider them a Work In Progress.

I shot and edited all the content.

Part 4 goes deeper on why we paddle and what we’re all doing there. On some level, we are each searching for something beyond what’s apparent.