Barry Lopez sums up the challenge of adulthood: how to face and acknowledge the ‘dark threads of life’ while somehow living in an exemplary way (I would add ‘joyously’, though that may be a stretch goal). 

We watched a film about the Via Francigena which featured a man who of his own volition takes walkers and pilgrims across the Po River on their way to Rome, hearing their tales and sharing his own.  An exemplary life, I’d say, but then there’s a million ways to be exemplary, and I would include the candidates we’re nominating for the Nuannaarpoq Awards. 

One of the oldest dreams of mankind is to find a dignity that might include all living things. And one of the greatest of human longings must be to bring such dignity to one’s own dreams, for each to find his or her own life exemplary in some way.  The struggle to do this is a struggle because an adult sensibility must find some way to include all the dark threads of life.  A way to do this is to pay attention to what occurs in a land not touched by human schemes, where an original order prevails.

This oldest of dreams is more journey than destination, and we have a long way to go.  Happy walking.

By the way, this is from the book which inspired this website, and here is our quote-studded tribute to it. 

Source: Barry Lopez, Arctic Dreams (London: Picador, 1987), p. 405

Photo credit: rottonara at pixabay