I can tell you the wind speed at 78° north in January. I can tell you what its like to see the South Pole station after staring into a world of white for 67 days, how to ration fuel, how to keep a routine alive through six months of polar night and how important oatmeal is for breakfast every morning. What I cannot easily tell you is how I feel.

That's the confession at the heart of this post.

I come from sturdy Norwegian stock - the kind of people who show love by waxing your skis and checking your bindings, not by talking about it. I have spent a lifetime being the strong one, the capable one, the one who leads the expedition, has it all sorted and holds the group together. Somewhere along the way I learned that the safest place to keep the tender things was inside, well below the waterline, where the weather couldn't reach them.

Two weeks ago I wrote about losing Ettra, our Husky Malamute teacher from Bamsebu. Writing that post was harder than any uphill hike I have ever done. My finger hovered over the publish button , then I did it anyway - and something I didn't expect happened. The grief didn't get bigger - the circle did. People I hadn't heard from in years wrote to tell me about their own dogs, their own losses, their own goodbyes. Strangers became less strange. It turns out the thing I had guarded most carefully was the thing that connected me most deeply.

I've come to start calling this the second daring step. The first daring step is the one I've built a whole life around – the outward kind like pushing the rowboat off the beach, skiing away from the last outpost, leaving a fulltime job for a ‘mission’. Action. Motion. Courage you can photograph and document. The second daring step is quieter and, for me, much harder: telling the truth about what's going on inside. Saying I'm grieving. Saying I'm afraid. Saying I don't have this figured out.

Here is what I believe now, after sixty-some years of practicing the first step and only recently practicing the second with total immersion: in a world this divided, this loud, this fast - self-disclosure is the great uniter. Not oversharing and absolutely not performance. Just the simple, terrifying act of letting someone see the unpolished version of you. Every time one of us does it, we give everyone around us permission to do the same. That's how community actually gets built. Not with mission statements. With admissions.

So this is me, encouraging you: say the true thing. To one person. This week. Or next week. Then watch what happens.

The Embrace

There's a story I saw years ago and every single time it moves me to tears. Whenever I need to remember what connection looks like when all the armor comes off- I hit the play button on the video.

Her name is Wounda. It means "close to death" - and when she arrived at the Jane Goodall Institute's Tchimpounga sanctuary in the Republic of Congo, rescued from the illegal wildlife trade, that is exactly what she was. Weak, sick, barely holding on. The team refused to give up on her. She received the first-ever chimpanzee-to-chimpanzee blood transfusion, and slowly, over months, she came back to life.

The day she was released, Wounda climbed to the top of her transport crate on Tchibebe Island, looked out at the forest that was about to become her home — and then turned around. She reached for Jane Goodall and Dr. Rebeca Atencia and pulled them into a long, deliberate embrace before disappearing into the trees. Jane called it one of the most treasured moments of her life.

We lost Jane last October. World Chimpanzee Day was on July 14th and this week, as I publish this it lands differently now. The work she started doesn't pause to grieve. It asks us to pick up the oar.

‍https://youtu.be/0wqfJBAtkBY?si=ETDKxgDl01okYAvI.

Walk with me this October

On October 3rd and 4th, I'll be walking in spirit with the Jane Goodall Hike for Hope, raising funds for the Jane Goodall Institute of Canada's work protecting chimpanzees and their habitats - the same work that saved Wounda. This will be the first Hike for Hope since Jane left us, and I can't think of a better way to honour her than to do the thing she asked of all of us: get outside, together, with hope.

I've started a team under the Embrace the Planet Project, and I would love for you to join it - on the trail with me here on Vancouver Island, on a trail near you, or by supporting a hiker. Whichever way you come, come. This is not a solo expedition. None of the good ones are.

Join my team here (register to join) or Donate: janegoodall.crowdchange.ca/128058/team/77407

And then — From Sea to Sky

One more thing, because hope needs a bright horizon.

Next year, in August 2027, I'll set out with a small curated team on the Vancouver Island Trail roughly 800 kilometres over 60 days, from Cape Scott at the island's wild northern tip to Victoria in the south. A citizen science and storytelling journey through the territories of 49 First Nations, ending - not by accident - on the Hike for Hope weekend in October 2027.

We are deep in the groundwork now, and the most important part of that groundwork is not the route or the gear. It is relationship. The trail crosses the homelands of 49 Nations, and walking it with respect means building those relationships first, slowly, in the right order, at the pace of trust. That work is underway, and it will shape everything else.

I'm profoundly grateful to the partners walking alongside us already — the Transformational Travel Institute, the Vancouver Island Trail Association, 4VI, and a growing circle of scientists, storytellers, and stewards who believe, as I do, that how we move through a place matters as much as the fact that we do. There will be much more to share in the months ahead.

If you want to sign up and register your interest: https://embracetheplanetproject.com/#join

Nothing is here forever — that's the invitation

The glaciers and icecaps I skied across in 1993 are not the glaciers that exist today. The sea ice Ettra bounded across is thinning. Jane is gone. Ettra is gone. And someday - sooner than any of us likes to admit - the people we love most will be stories we tell.

I don't say that to be dark. I say it because it is the single best reason I know to get outside and celebrate all of it, now, while it's here. The forest. The tide. The dog at your heel. And not least - the personal connections we make with people along the way, which are the least permanent and most precious things of all.

So: take the first daring step. Go. And then take the second one. Tell someone the truth about who you are.

I'll meet you on the trail somewhere.

Sunniva x