[Music]
as a kid I loved listening my parents
tell stories about their adventures one
story in particular captured my
imagination in 1974 my parents and my
uncle Andy built their own canoes and
against all advice launch their boats
into the Pacific to become some of the
first people in modern history to paddle
the Inside Passage that story became a
foundation of my identity shaping the
way I saw my parents and the notion of
what it meant to grow up but as a kid
[Music]
[Music]
my first memories are from adventures in
the outdoors with mom and dad they
taught my brother Ben and me to fish and
make fires and when we got bored
they’d Bloor us back into the wilderness
with stories from their youth stories of
exotic places an adventure I honestly
don’t know when they first told us about
the passage but this is the story I
remember it began in 1970 when my dad
after finishing high school got a job as
a deckhand on a yacht called the Thea
Foss taking guests up and down the
Inside Passage a labyrinth of straights
and islands that extends from Washington
up the coast of British Columbia and
into Alaska everybody thought I had the
dream job and I would smile and nod my
head but my dream dream was to go and be
off the boat canoeing along the
coastline the first person he shared
that dream with was his brother and my
dad and Andy have an unusually close
relationship as brothers
you know they grew up as best friends
and not in sort of the way that a lot of
people say oh my sibling is my best
friend like literally they were each
other’s best friends people think that
it’s weird that we went to college and
we roomed together to me that was just
natural up until that time I was not
aware of anyone trying in the passage
everyone we talked to said crazy there
were a lot of letters that literally
said you would kill yourself don’t do it
when he
said that he and his brother wanted to
go on a canoe trip but invited me along
it sounded like a fantastic adventure to
me her parents thought it was a really
bad idea
and they actually sent her to a
psychiatrist with the mission that her
job was to talk Sarah out of doing the
trip Andy and I were studying and going
to classes during the day we just
basically would dedicate every evening
for four months building these canoes
with a dream of where you’re going to go
with these boats Alan and I had very
little understanding of what our parents
were going through my mom she wrote long
afterwards that as they paddled off I
cried and I wondered whether I’d ever
see my kids again the first start was I
like music drama calm is a beautiful
thing and you just get this feeling like
oh yeah I got to get a picture of this I
know in here that and of course
everybody’s excited jabbering it doesn’t
take many hours before all that quiets
down there by stroking away quiet
[Music]
inland passage is one of those beautiful
places in the world all you see are
mountains rising out of the ocean and
the water is almost silent but in that
silence is an ecosystem just packed with
life and your boat makes these ripples
and the ripples then start reflecting
the sky the water itself and the
greenness of the landscapes and it all
has these moving it just undulating
shapes it’s so beautiful Ellen and I
were together all the time
it was pretty romantic yeah I was pretty
hooked if you’re still paddling and
talking with each other at the end of
that eight hundred miles then you better
for almost two months
they paddled fish camp tuned through one
of North America’s wildest places
[Music]
changed
I didn’t know it at the time of course
but it really was a coming-of-age story
it was one of those stories where people
said don’t do it and to go ahead and do
something that people said you shouldn’t
do I mean for us that was incredibly
empowering when it was all said and done
it said something made me see that we
could take a dream and move it into the
presence of reality that may
that’s the story I heard growing up this
was my dad’s journey into adulthood and
like all good stories that adventure
lived on in our imaginations the story
about the original canoe trip there’s
something that Nathan and I grew up
hearing a fair amount about it’s a
legend in our family it’s something that
Ben and I have told every one of our
friends every one of our girlfriends we
grew up with one of the original canoes
as part of our household and we really
beaded up in the Virginia rivers which
it really wasn’t designed to do every
time we took that canoe out it was sort
of a source of fascination to me that my
dad had built it we had always talked
about how cool it would be to redo the
canoe trip but as we took our own paths
into adulthood that dream got put on
hold
distracted with my own life I hardly
noticed my dad getting older
in my mind he was still that young man
who braved the inside passage in his
handmade canoe but little by little he’s
changed every year that version of my
dad seems to slip a little further away
and with it my childhood dream of
canoeing the passage with him and then
maybe weddings have a way of making
people reflect on their own lives
I don’t know but that day my dad and
uncle Andy had this conversation they
said that they’d never really finished
the canoe trip I was shocked that meant
that the story I know still had chapters
to be written
dad Mandy explained that the original
goal was to canoe all the way did you
know but they stopped and Ketchikan when
the summer ended there were still 300
miles to go and I think we all realized
that if we didn’t do it now it would
never happen so right there at the
wedding
we agreed that now was the time to
finish what they had started 43 years
ago
[Music]
one of the first things was how to get
the boat ready these boats are now more
than 40 years old and you know they’ve
been through a lot we packed up our gear
and canoes and loaded them onto a ferry
in Bellingham from there we traveled two
days up the coast to Ketchikan to pick
up where they had ended their journey in
we paddled north as brothers Ben and I
and one canoe and our dad and Andy and
the other so the first job I caught
three fish all at once crazy I thought I
had a snag I was like so I had one on
the jig and two of the cebiche then
after that I’ve almost never had to fish
more than a minute to catch a fish you
kind of eat like I came out here you
know rockfish is inexpensive inexpensive
fish yesterday we pulled up a crab pot
that was just packed with huge male
Dungeness crab and you pay a lot of
money of the restaurants building like
that
[Music]
this is a landscape with unbelievable
abundance
[Music]
it’s rolling hills and trees in a maze
of water
[Music]
you feel tiny and it kind of living
[Music]
for all of us who get the outdoors and
understand how it connects into the
Earthmen gives you a state of wonder and
a state of awe it’s a state of religion
this is the place where you think the
world is a great place hi mrs. M
incredible
yeah when you’re out here you just have
no awareness of time you just paddle
along time disappears time is such an
odd mistress that feels just like a few
years have gone by since we were here in
1974 to believe that it’s 43 years yeah
it doesn’t make sense when you age its
death by a million cuts you know you
never really feel it going on you I
think most of us feel young inside and
so coming back to this a lot of it feels
similar but you know picking up the
boats they’re they’re heavier than they
were growing up with this image of our
parents as sort of invincible figures I
think as a lot of people do to see our
parents show the first signs of physical
decline something that’s kind of
difficult to come to grips with as a son
just yesterday I was we were getting
camp together he was carrying a pot out
and he just slipped on a log and I could
tell that he you know he wasn’t a young
as can be this and I am an ocean value I
stand by me
my parents stories taught me a lot about
the kind of person I wanted to be but
until now I had always known the
characters in those tales as storybook
heroes and heroines frozen in time I had
grown up and I struggled to recognize
those adventurers in the past and my
parents of the present but as we paddled
north I discovered something I should
have known all along
my dad had never stopped being that guy
who paddled the inside passage in 1974
just became other things too
I don’t think that adulthood is
something that you do between the age of
0 and 30 and then that’s it that’s where
you are I think that’s a real fallacy
though there’s certain kinds of ways we
grow during those first 30 years that
are different from the ways that we grow
in later years but I don’t think that
ever stops in life I don’t think it ever
stops in life you know not everyone can
do the hardest route not everyone can be
the fastest but everyone can do their
own epic journey follow that voice in
you that says yeah I can do this or I
want to do this I just want to give it a
shot maybe 1974 was the end of one trip
but it wasn’t the end my parents epic
journeys that voice inside them never
faded some of their biggest adventures
were still ahead that’s the thing I was
too young to understand when I first
heard the story of the inside passage
and I thought life was like a book when
a new chapter begins the chapter before
it has to end
but life story is more like a tree with
branches as the chapters new branches
don’t replace the old ones they grow
alongside them and the more branches the
canoeing the passage with my dad is a
new branch on my tree growing alongside
older ones and every branch is a piece
of the story I’ll tell my kids the story
they’re going to tell themselves not
lying and before I know it will grow up
that maybe they never really understood
their dad’s whole story either
[Music] you
as a kid I loved listening my parents
tell stories about their adventures one
story in particular captured my
imagination in 1974 my parents and my
uncle Andy built their own canoes and
against all advice launch their boats
into the Pacific to become some of the
first people in modern history to paddle
the Inside Passage that story became a
foundation of my identity shaping the
way I saw my parents and the notion of
what it meant to grow up but as a kid
[Music]
[Music]
my first memories are from adventures in
the outdoors with mom and dad they
taught my brother Ben and me to fish and
make fires and when we got bored
they’d Bloor us back into the wilderness
with stories from their youth stories of
exotic places an adventure I honestly
don’t know when they first told us about
the passage but this is the story I
remember it began in 1970 when my dad
after finishing high school got a job as
a deckhand on a yacht called the Thea
Foss taking guests up and down the
Inside Passage a labyrinth of straights
and islands that extends from Washington
up the coast of British Columbia and
into Alaska everybody thought I had the
dream job and I would smile and nod my
head but my dream dream was to go and be
off the boat canoeing along the
coastline the first person he shared
that dream with was his brother and my
dad and Andy have an unusually close
relationship as brothers
you know they grew up as best friends
and not in sort of the way that a lot of
people say oh my sibling is my best
friend like literally they were each
other’s best friends people think that
it’s weird that we went to college and
we roomed together to me that was just
natural up until that time I was not
aware of anyone trying in the passage
everyone we talked to said crazy there
were a lot of letters that literally
said you would kill yourself don’t do it
when he
said that he and his brother wanted to
go on a canoe trip but invited me along
it sounded like a fantastic adventure to
me her parents thought it was a really
bad idea
and they actually sent her to a
psychiatrist with the mission that her
job was to talk Sarah out of doing the
trip Andy and I were studying and going
to classes during the day we just
basically would dedicate every evening
for four months building these canoes
with a dream of where you’re going to go
with these boats Alan and I had very
little understanding of what our parents
were going through my mom she wrote long
afterwards that as they paddled off I
cried and I wondered whether I’d ever
see my kids again the first start was I
like music drama calm is a beautiful
thing and you just get this feeling like
oh yeah I got to get a picture of this I
know in here that and of course
everybody’s excited jabbering it doesn’t
take many hours before all that quiets
down there by stroking away quiet
[Music]
inland passage is one of those beautiful
places in the world all you see are
mountains rising out of the ocean and
the water is almost silent but in that
silence is an ecosystem just packed with
life and your boat makes these ripples
and the ripples then start reflecting
the sky the water itself and the
greenness of the landscapes and it all
has these moving it just undulating
shapes it’s so beautiful Ellen and I
were together all the time
it was pretty romantic yeah I was pretty
hooked if you’re still paddling and
talking with each other at the end of
that eight hundred miles then you better
for almost two months
they paddled fish camp tuned through one
of North America’s wildest places
[Music]
changed
I didn’t know it at the time of course
but it really was a coming-of-age story
it was one of those stories where people
said don’t do it and to go ahead and do
something that people said you shouldn’t
do I mean for us that was incredibly
empowering when it was all said and done
it said something made me see that we
could take a dream and move it into the
presence of reality that may
that’s the story I heard growing up this
was my dad’s journey into adulthood and
like all good stories that adventure
lived on in our imaginations the story
about the original canoe trip there’s
something that Nathan and I grew up
hearing a fair amount about it’s a
legend in our family it’s something that
Ben and I have told every one of our
friends every one of our girlfriends we
grew up with one of the original canoes
as part of our household and we really
beaded up in the Virginia rivers which
it really wasn’t designed to do every
time we took that canoe out it was sort
of a source of fascination to me that my
dad had built it we had always talked
about how cool it would be to redo the
canoe trip but as we took our own paths
into adulthood that dream got put on
hold
distracted with my own life I hardly
noticed my dad getting older
in my mind he was still that young man
who braved the inside passage in his
handmade canoe but little by little he’s
changed every year that version of my
dad seems to slip a little further away
and with it my childhood dream of
canoeing the passage with him and then
maybe weddings have a way of making
people reflect on their own lives
I don’t know but that day my dad and
uncle Andy had this conversation they
said that they’d never really finished
the canoe trip I was shocked that meant
that the story I know still had chapters
to be written
dad Mandy explained that the original
goal was to canoe all the way did you
know but they stopped and Ketchikan when
the summer ended there were still 300
miles to go and I think we all realized
that if we didn’t do it now it would
never happen so right there at the
wedding
we agreed that now was the time to
finish what they had started 43 years
ago
[Music]
one of the first things was how to get
the boat ready these boats are now more
than 40 years old and you know they’ve
been through a lot we packed up our gear
and canoes and loaded them onto a ferry
in Bellingham from there we traveled two
days up the coast to Ketchikan to pick
up where they had ended their journey in
we paddled north as brothers Ben and I
and one canoe and our dad and Andy and
the other so the first job I caught
three fish all at once crazy I thought I
had a snag I was like so I had one on
the jig and two of the cebiche then
after that I’ve almost never had to fish
more than a minute to catch a fish you
kind of eat like I came out here you
know rockfish is inexpensive inexpensive
fish yesterday we pulled up a crab pot
that was just packed with huge male
Dungeness crab and you pay a lot of
money of the restaurants building like
that
[Music]
this is a landscape with unbelievable
abundance
[Music]
it’s rolling hills and trees in a maze
of water
[Music]
you feel tiny and it kind of living
[Music]
for all of us who get the outdoors and
understand how it connects into the
Earthmen gives you a state of wonder and
a state of awe it’s a state of religion
this is the place where you think the
world is a great place hi mrs. M
incredible
yeah when you’re out here you just have
no awareness of time you just paddle
along time disappears time is such an
odd mistress that feels just like a few
years have gone by since we were here in
1974 to believe that it’s 43 years yeah
it doesn’t make sense when you age its
death by a million cuts you know you
never really feel it going on you I
think most of us feel young inside and
so coming back to this a lot of it feels
similar but you know picking up the
boats they’re they’re heavier than they
were growing up with this image of our
parents as sort of invincible figures I
think as a lot of people do to see our
parents show the first signs of physical
decline something that’s kind of
difficult to come to grips with as a son
just yesterday I was we were getting
camp together he was carrying a pot out
and he just slipped on a log and I could
tell that he you know he wasn’t a young
as can be this and I am an ocean value I
stand by me
my parents stories taught me a lot about
the kind of person I wanted to be but
until now I had always known the
characters in those tales as storybook
heroes and heroines frozen in time I had
grown up and I struggled to recognize
those adventurers in the past and my
parents of the present but as we paddled
north I discovered something I should
have known all along
my dad had never stopped being that guy
who paddled the inside passage in 1974
just became other things too
I don’t think that adulthood is
something that you do between the age of
0 and 30 and then that’s it that’s where
you are I think that’s a real fallacy
though there’s certain kinds of ways we
grow during those first 30 years that
are different from the ways that we grow
in later years but I don’t think that
ever stops in life I don’t think it ever
stops in life you know not everyone can
do the hardest route not everyone can be
the fastest but everyone can do their
own epic journey follow that voice in
you that says yeah I can do this or I
want to do this I just want to give it a
shot maybe 1974 was the end of one trip
but it wasn’t the end my parents epic
journeys that voice inside them never
faded some of their biggest adventures
were still ahead that’s the thing I was
too young to understand when I first
heard the story of the inside passage
and I thought life was like a book when
a new chapter begins the chapter before
it has to end
but life story is more like a tree with
branches as the chapters new branches
don’t replace the old ones they grow
alongside them and the more branches the
canoeing the passage with my dad is a
new branch on my tree growing alongside
older ones and every branch is a piece
of the story I’ll tell my kids the story
they’re going to tell themselves not
lying and before I know it will grow up
that maybe they never really understood
their dad’s whole story either
[Music] you
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