This is the story of two men from different cultures; a 40-year-old native guide and a 73-year-old white man kayaking the ocean passage between the two great islands in Haida Gwaii. They each bear the scars of their personal and cultural history. Jack Hawk the native guide, whose parents had their culture ripped from them in residential schools, whose ancestral village was burned to the ground so his people could be relocated is trying desperately to hang onto his culture. The old white man he is leading.has lived estranged from the rabid individualism and materialism that began with his own generation. Both men have found purpose and meaning in life by establishing a deep connection to nature. Jack lives with nature every day. The old man lives with a metaphorical connection to nature through poetry.
Instead of being on a journey to the heart of darkness, these two men from different cultures, are on a journey to find a personal redemption that transcends their two cultures.
They are on a journey to meet Jim Moncrief at his wilderness camp, a white man who has come to terms with what it means to be a human being by reestablishing a connection to nature through native culture. Twenty years before, when Jack Hawk came out of prison for stabbing his brother, he changed Jack Hawk's life by teaching him how to protect himself from the toxic narratives of whites society and white privilege. Fifty years before, in a three hour conversation in the student pub, Jim Moncrief change the old man's life by letting him see the problematical future of materialistic liberalism. This is the story of two men working through the pain of what modern culture had done to their lives. It is the story of how they came to understand that in each other, and realize that their journey would become an initiation into a greater meaning in life.
