public inquiry into the deaths of Aboriginal women
was resisting the provinces are looking to turn up the pressure the world had stopped making sense
and I was feeling lost too you know and full of anger and disappointment so I just wanted to be
alone in nature for a while and I set out to make a documentary on the longest trail in the world
500 Days in the Wild turned out to be a lot more than that I mean I'll leave it as a surprise for
viewers but what an extraordinary experience the film
is and part of that is because number one
I don't think I could do that I don't think I could sleep in a tent mostly alone in the woods
all across Canada for six years that to me is your greatest achievement awww thank you thank
you but seriously how did you deal with the fear initially well you know Anne I always like to
say there's many different types of fear there's physical fear there's emotional fear there's a
psychological fear and absolutely right from day one the first and obvious
fear is I'm a woman I'm
alone and I'm sleeping alone in a tent which does not have a lock on the door so that was the first
fear I had to overcome and all I can say was you know it took a while um but as the days go by
and nothing happens the fear starts to subside because fear needs to be fed you know basically
in order to sustain itself and when what you confront instead of the big scary things are in
fact when you do meet people that are extremely kind when you do see wild life they're
just as
curious about me as I am about them and um so days went by and then years went by and that fear
subsided wow incredible but I mean the very first night were you sort of crying or well not because
of the fear it was of the realization that uh the last time I had done you know a journey like
this was a long time ago um and uh you know it was kind of on the job training so I was more
about like oh my God I can't stand like I am so sore right now I am lying on my back and I can't
even
get up I'm crawling out of my tent so I mean just the very you know was it the breaking in was
quite uh intense I guess for a lack of a better way of expressing it but again you know um just
one day at a time like everything in life right any large mountain you just have to tackle it
one day at a time one step at a time it ain't it the truth now all right you occasionally you
had people there to to shoot with you you had your own four or five cameras that's right and
occasional drones fant
astic footage oh my God thank you but it makes it the sum total of what
you collected and how you collected it is that it the film feels very visceral so we're right
there and that is magic I think that's one of the leading you know wonderful things about the
film um and of course you would have no idea what it would look like during so you were just kind
of hoping and praying that it would turn out or were you pretty conf there's a little bit more
to it than that I mean for me film making
is not unlike making a sculpture gather the clay
and then you get into the edit room and you're like now I'm going to sculpt a horse and by the
time it's done you're like oh it's a unicorn so surprises for sure but what I can say is if you
follow your heart when you're following your eye you're following the things that make you feel and
you have to trust that it's going to if it lands on you it's going to land on someone else as well
and this is how I make my films I'm a cinema ver filmmak
er I usually observe people but you know
as you know I've been to Mount Everest I've been to the high Arctic these are the kind of films
that I like to make the difference being usually I'm following the people that are trained for
these things and this time I am the subject of my own film and clearly not an extreme athlete in
any way shape or form um but yeah well you know you said that right off the top that you're not
an extreme athlete but mentally you are a thank you well you know um I
'm a woman like yourself and
so you know we have to overcome a lot of obstacles sometimes in our life and I think that once you
you know right from the age of five you know I wanted to be a professional hockey player in 1970
and of course there were no women only now are we getting a professional hockey team for women
and so when you have to confront these things in your life it's like muscle building right you
get stronger and stronger and stronger and you're like I can I can do these thin
gs you know I just
be patient be gentle and like you saw I mean you know when it was rough weather I sat on shore I
was very cautious I respected my boundaries and I respected nature a lot and um well speaking
of respecting nature I actually have a phobia about Lake Superior I was on the shores once but
from what people have told me who live there I'm terrified of it and I saw a graphic about how deep
it is and there you were having these traumatic experiences waiting for storms forest fire
s and
knowing the depth and and everything that lies below Lake Superior were you prepared for the the
feelings that you had there no I really wasn't Anne and I must say right from the very beginning when
I looked at the map of the Trans Canada Trail uh to you know for 500 days I was right off the back
going whoa but we'll just deal with that when we get there um and fortunately I had by that point
of time done you know it's 8,000 kmers of paddling on this journey and by that point I had do
ne a
little bit I you know so I had some experience my first you know um and then it turned out to be
the most profound one of the most profound parts of the entire journey and a lot of that had to do
with um just my profound connection to the to some of the people that I met along the way I spent
time um with the Anishinaabe in ceremony and I think um gathered the wisdom that I needed to be safe
out there which was really you know connecting with the water instead of the sense of being on
it
so whenever I got afraid I would just be like the water is sacred the water is sacred like really
connect with the water and then it the it really did help eliminate some of the fear instead of
being this adversary or this trying to conquer something you are with something and that was a
shift in me there was a lot of shifts over the last over those six years but that was aound one
it's one thing to be told the words it's another thing for them to actually land and actually
shift the wa
y you experience something and I did there and I'm very grateful like I said I
really believe it was my time with the Anishinaabe people uh that prepared me for that there
is this wonderful moment uh you're always on the move pretty much unless you're you're stuck by
weather or conditions whatever you are with the wild horses and I haven't seen visuals of people
being approached and being with them before that must been absolutely chillingly wonderful yeah it
really was I mean that was in S
askatchewan and by that point I'm in year four of the journey so a
lot of changes happened in me at that point and um you know it was again I what I learned out
there was so much of this is about resonance it's what it's the energy that we put out and
as you saw you know I walk out into that field I get down on my knees and I pick some wild sage
and I just bow my head and offer it to these wild horses and within a few minutes they started
to respond and I really believe that they could feel
my energy horses can you know people go to
them for healing uh because they can sort of see through your BS they know what you're you know if
you project something that isn't in alignment with the energy that they're getting from you they know
it and they will not trust you so um they're kind of a mirror to your soul there's another wonderful
there's so many wonderful moments but you're at the lake in the lake I forget actually if you're
on the beach or on the lake but somebody comes by in
a boat as two strangers offering wheat that
was on the 4,000 kilometer paddle up to the Arctic Ocean uh which was um by far the longest paddle
and the most intense and yeah at that point I had was up at the McKenzie river only about a 1000
kilometers from the Arctic Ocean quite you know in the middle of nowhere and yeah I was paddling
with um my now partner Louisa and yeah off out of nowhere come these two hunters and of course uh
well we were we immediately we accepted the meat and we imm
ediately landed the boat and cooked it
all up because of course we were very concerned about bears so here's this wonderful gift of this
bag of fresh Caribou meat but then we've got this bag of meat in our canoe and we've been so afraid
of bears so we pulled over and we literally cooked it up and we ate it all right out of the pan like
children in a candy store yeah that's hilarious just out of curiosity if you were to put like
load the bag and balast it down with something underwater would
they find it uh good question
you know I never did that and so I mean they have a very good sense of smell like yeah probably
not probably but certainly that a lot of people do do that now you talk about the changes and
transformations that you went through on it at the beginning of the journey you were you just had
to get the hell away yeah get into nature yeah I need to take a break yeah I need I'd like to say
to people it was time to check out to check in you know yeah and I'm a filmmak
er and I needed
a new project I mean as an indie filmmaker you know you just kind of throw yourself into things
so uh it just met all the criteria it seemed like a really good idea well I mean and it and it was
on many many levels that I can think of anyway um but at the end of the journey you are a completely
different person yeah that was stunning I can see how it happened I mean it you know gradually you
you see that there's not a lot to be scared about that people are generally good and
kind
as opposed to the way we think they are well I me you know the news you watch the news you think
the world's full of psychopaths Anne but it's not uh you know if it bleeds it leads in the news and no
hard feelings I mean we do need to know about the things that we need to be concerned about so they
have a job to do but it is important to sort of take a breather sometimes and just remember
that 99.9% of the world are kind people and that's something I needed to be reminded about
that'
s something I forgot about too you know when I went I went out there to be alone and of
course what turns out is that the whole film is about connection it's about connection to self
land connection to community connection to water so yeah it's all about connection and I think
one of the big things too that happens in the middle is this realization of like you know in in
one of the scenes about individuality something I had really obviously romanticized as do a lot of
other people who go of
f on these adventures and yet you know uh something I romanticized I changed
my you know over those years all of a sudden it was like no that's actually something that's very
dysfunctional and it's actually a sickness in our culture you know we need each other yeah you
should write a I mean I'm sure everyone's told you that but you should really write a a detailed
book not only your yay it's so coming I've already been writing it for like over a year good and
I have a great literary agent a
nd uh he's been very patient because of course we did the film
first but um I've written books on all my other documentaries uh my documentary up in the high
Artic that I did with the NFB this land I I wrote a book called this Vanishing Land so 500 Days
in The Wild will definitely be followed up with a book oh I'm so happy to hear that because I I
want to know more you told us so many interesting things in the film and I just want to make sure
that I absorb them all um like and like you sai
d the cult of the individual that's been celebrated
all this time and I agree with you that it's maybe not what we need to strive towards so and I'm sure
you have many more BOS for us so I very much look forward to that um have you started watching
in news again yes I have I I do you know I I like to read the news but I limit myself and I
also make sure that I take a long walk and sit with an old tree every day too whenever possible
even in Berlin I'm hiking around trying to find those tree
s to sit with and just ground out and
just remember that we really are all as one you know one of the things I remember to looking out
in the forest one day and realizing on the surface every tree looks like it stands alone but beneath
the surface they're all connected by their roots and guess what so too are we so that's the big
takeaway here you know we are all one oh my God what a great interview thank you so very
much Anne thank you an pleasure was maybe I'll get to interview you again
when your book comes out sure
that sounds great good stuff thank you so much thank you an take care mind if I lie here with you
a while totally bagged it's all good I chose this this journey is about reconnecting and uh saying
thank you to the ancestors of this land so thank you as they say it's the
journey not the destination
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