The Power of Pilgrimage
by Gregg Levoy
 Lake Superior is an inland sea. In terms of sheer size it is the largest lake on the planet, more than 1200 miles around, and one of the most volatile, capable of whipping itself into a frenzy of 30-foot seas, and famous for its shipwrecks. It is also one of the coldest. For most of the year, the water temperature is in the mid 30's, about as cold as water can be without turning into something else. During the hand test, Ann Linnea found that she could hold her hand in the water for only nine seconds.
Kayaking around the lake would be the most dangerous thing she ever did.
The idea first came up five years earlier, when Ann and Paul Treuer, a longtime friend, bought a couple of used kayaks and after their first exhilarating runs on the lake, he said, "I bet we could kayak around this whole lake," to which she replied, "Yeah, right."
Nothing would have come of it, except that that little seed happened to drop into fertile soil: "the part of me," said Ann, a former Forest Service naturalist and marathoner, "that always wanted to do one long wilderness adventure." It was further nourished by the part of her that, as she said, "knew that I was approaching the end of some kind of life cycle, the life my parents lived, the life I thought I was raised to live: wife, mother, home, good citizen. I wondered, is this the fullness of what I can be doing? I wanted to reset the course of my life, to come to clarity about what the gift is I'm supposed to return to the world, and I thought the trip could teach me."
"My purpose was to find a purpose, to find the deepest courage in myself, to look for the extraordinary growth, not just the ordinary, day-to-day growth, which is certainly valid, but it was the kind of incremental journeying my whole life had been about. I wanted to step outside of that, to really open the door wide, which is why I liked the symbolism of Lake Superior. It was so wide I couldn't see across it, couldn't see what was on the other side, and that was just the magnitude of change I was inviting. To grow beyond the expectations we're raised with is a radical act, but one I felt was necessary to claiming my full self."
"The question that I brought with me on the trip, and kept asking over and over, was 'Am I doing the most I possibly can with my life?'"
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Copyright Gregg Levoy. This article was originally
published at our website, SoulfulLiving.com, in January 2001, as part of Soulful Living's "Life Purpose" Issue.
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