Mind, Body, Soul filming continues into another summer
When we hatched this idea in 2020 we had no idea how it would take over our lives. We thought we'd hike the Continental Divide Trail and make a nice little movie about how being in nature affected us. We hoped to be releasing the movie by the spring of 2022. Now almost three years into this project we are still filming and it has taken on a life of its own. We are just doing what the project requires at this point.
While the film takes place on the Continental Divide Trail, the goal of the project is so much more than just thru-hiking. Our mission is to explore how spending time in nature affects a person's mental, physical, and spiritual well-being. Last summer we lost sight of our mission and we became too focused on hiking from Mexico to Canada. We wanted to finish the CDT so badly that we weren't listening to the signs that were telling us to slow down. We ended up running ourselves into the ground and we had to get off trail at Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park after 5 months of hiking.
Alex comes from a thru-hiking background so hiking 20+ miles a day and always pushing towards the end of the trail is engrained in him. He pushed Amy to strive towards the same goals even though that's not why they had embarked on the hike in the first place. In hindsight it's clear that our priorities where off, but in the moment we were both convinced that they could do both, finish the trail and achieve the project's mission.
Now that we have had a whole winter to process what happened on the trail last summer we are trying again with a completely different approach. Since the impetus for the hike was primarily about Amy healing in nature, she is hiking solo this time around. We both agreed that hiking with someone would distract her from that mission. Also for reasons unrelated to this project, Alex has plenty of other work to do this summer. Amy will be hiking around 5 miles a day and even taking many zero days on trail. Her mission is to create time and space to be able to process a lifetime of traumatic experiences. The northern terminus of the CDT is merely a direction to be heading and nothing more. Alex will meet Amy on the trail occasionally and provide some commentary, but it will primarily be Amy completing the filming of this project. Now we hope to have the film ready by the spring of 2024.
The Latest episode from the trail
Episode 25
Time to remember what we have lost...
Us humans have come a long way since our hunter gatherer days of living off the land. For tens of thousands of years people lived virtually the same lifestyles as their grandparents. Generation after generation very little changed. Then the scientific revolution began to change things very rapidly. The industrial revolution drew people away from pastures and into the cities. Technology and consumption became the driving forces of change. It happened so fast that a single generation saw the world transform from horse and buggy to landing a man on the moon. The rate of change only continues to increase.
Today 55% of the worlds population lives in cities. Life today would be unrecognizable and downright magical to our ancestors. They would marvel at the average supermarket, they would envy our effortless transportation, and they simply wouldn’t understand our ability to communicate across the world.
With all these wonderful inventions our ancestors would be confused to find out that anxiety, depression, and substance abuse has been steadily increasing. They would wonder why so many people are suffering in a world where there is abundant food, comfortable homes and all the material goods one could ever need. If they stuck around a little longer they would be shocked to learn how little we know about nature and worse yet, how little we respect it. It would become obvious to them that we have made a grave mistake in this pursuit of technological power.
Severing our connection to nature has fundamentally changed our relationship with the world and our place in it. We act as if we have outgrown our need for nature. Now we think that nature needs our help. The truth is that we are the ones who need help, now more than ever. We have the technological power that human kind has been dreaming about for millennia but we have lost the wisdom necessary to use it responsibly. If we aren’t careful, we will destroy ourselves and the planet with this newfound power.
All we need is a very simple shift in perspective. We need to remember that we are a part of nature, not its master. Nature is not some place that’s “outside.” It’s within all of us and we need to spend time in the wilderness to understand who we are and what we need.
This projects aims to help us remember how nature is essential to our well-being as individuals and as a society. If humanity can’t understand why we need nature then we won’t be able to halt the destruction of it.
In other words, we must fix ourselves before we save the planet.
The Three Pillars
Mind is the interface between body and soul. It's the space the we live our inner lives and play out scenarios before the body acts them out. In nature there is finally time and space to think things through completely without the distractions of modern life to interrupt the process.
Body is the physical manifestation of mind and soul. It's our vehicle and our means for interacting with the world. Nature has been shaping our bodies for 10's of thousands of years. We have literally evolved to thrive off of the cues that are found in nature.
Soul is the source of everything we know and feel. It's our tie to the surrounding universe both seen and unseen. It used to be the primary source of understanding but has largely been forgotten by modern society. In a time where we think we have all the answers, nature reminds us that there is still mysticism left in this world.
