Life is a creation and we get to make it up.  ~ Jean Aspen

I was browsing Prime videos when I came across a documentary called Arctic Daughter by Jean Aspen. I’d never heard of it but decided to have a quick look. Well, I was enchanted and captured by it. It is gentle and slow-paced with beautiful photography and healing words of wisdom. For days after watching it, I continued to feel the effects at a deep level that goes beyond words. It’s as though I’ve been there with them.
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Jean and her husband, Tom, built a cabin in the wilderness of the Brooks Range in Alaska. For 25 years, while at the cabin for up to fourteen months at a time (with their teenaged son, Lucas), they encountered no other humans. No electricity, computer, internet, TV, radio, or phone. Imagine. In the latter years they did get a satellite phone so they could stay in touch with Lucas who became a nurse in Washington.
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Following are a few of the thoughts Jean shares in the video. The images are screenshots.Each moment of life is an irreplaceable jewel.

Life takes away everything we think we are and gives us the opportunity to recreate ourselves.

Life continues to change. And with that change we evolve into something new.
It doesn’t make what was before wrong but it is gone forever. Life is a one way trip.

Life is not just about growth and expansion.
It’s also about pruning and returning to the land.

The real tragedy in life is not failing but in not setting out in the first place and not being willing to commit to one’s dreams.
It’s very easy to lose your window while waiting for perfection.

Life isn’t easy but it is an adventure when you have the courage to follow your heart.

The real question is not how to live forever or to live securely
but how to live joyfully; how to make your life matter.

We need to re-imagine how we are with the planet. It is time for us to mature as a species
and to look at how we can rejoin the community of life.

Living simply and with deliberation is not a hardship but a joy and communion.
It is beyond price. Each of us has the ability to let go of what we think we need in life.
And we will be enriched by it not impoverished.

It is my hope to inspire people to live consciously.
To find things o beauty and value to invest in. To pay attention.
To step out of the insanity that is driving us to extinction.

All I can do is my best.

The cabin built lovingly by hand.

 

Images are screenshots from Arctic Daughter.