After screening 500 Days in the Wild at our 2024 World Trails Film Festival Premiere, Dianne Whelan joined us for an audience Q&A. In it, she shared the highs and lows of making her film (which — don’t let the title fool you — took over 6 years!), a mix of logistics and how she got it done, and some of her biggest lessons learned.
The following is a lightly edited version of the conversation from the evening.
On the key to making it
The legit part of the first thing was burning that schedule. And honestly, what kind of film would it have been if I hadn’t, right? These are gifts we have to give ourselves, right? Slow it the f*** down.
And so I honestly, as a creative person, that was the best experience and the best gift I could have ever given myself. Honestly. I fell in love with my camera again, because usually when you’re making a film in production, it’s like constant pressure. You got to get the film in the can! And all of a sudden I had the gift of time. I really did.
On her gear and logistics
For the first couple years, whenever I changed from biking, canoeing or walking, I didn’t have any gear. My bike is 40 years old. My backpack was 15 years old. The canoes, in the beginning, I borrowed. I just put the word out and someone’s like, I got a canoe you can use! That’s the way things kind of happened. It was very grassroots.
When I brought somebody in, it was always another filmmaker. That person would resupply me, help me get my canoe, and bring my food, supplies, and tent, which got better by the way. Thankfully, after I failed camping school in those first few months, I never actually lost my tent again for quite a few years.
I hired filmmakers. And so they would come and we would be able to recharge my DSLR batteries. I had a solar panel, which worked really well with my GoPro and cell phone. I tried to shoot everything in 4K. When the filmmakers came every couple months, I could recharge the big four hour batteries and I could back up all the footage onto a drive so then I could leave again and start fresh. So from a logistical perspective, that’s how I managed that.
And then I applied for grants while I was out there. Over the years, I got a few of them. When I got grant money, I was able to afford to hire artists and every artist would provide food, diesel material by herself. It’s a four and a half minute credit sequence. So obviously, Dee got a lot of help from a lot of people. Almost every artist that I worked with and I collaborated with on this film, honestly worked for a lot less than they’re worth. They’re “well, how much do you pay? What do you got? We’ll make it work” kind of people.
On getting gorgeous drone footage
So much incredible spirit of creative collaboration here too. That’s how I got the drone shots. I knew that so much of it was being filmed from my POV that I needed to also take people into the vastness of these spaces. So those film shots were filmed by other people and different people as I traveled across. And even the indie filmmakers that I worked with were kind of more regionally based.
In the beginning, it was the same woman that kept coming out and helping me, Anne Barrel. She’s based in Halifax, so for her to get to the maritime provinces and you can go back was quite attainable. But as I moved further along, I reached out to other people.
On asking for help
The fact of the paddle is it was beautiful, but I don’t know about those 200 portages, I got to be honest with you. What the heck?! But that was still at that time when my friends came out. So I knew I needed help.
And I think that’s one of the things I’m most proud of because a lot of these adventure films, it’s like you fail when you ask for help. And I think that’s just, well, it was nice to bring another sensibility to that part of this idea because I did need help. And bringing on my friends into those sections really brought the journey a lot more meaning for me.
And then the paddle that Louisa and I did up to the Arctic was amazing as well. But also that’s when two people died, right? We never saw another paddler out there, but we heard Thomas was behind us in a kayak, and we knew Julien Gauthier was ahead of us in a canoe, and we only heard about them once we hit Great Slave Lake going on to the Mackenzie. So we were already 2,000 kms into that paddle.
So it was heavy, right? There are dangers out here. Of course, we know that. But night after night, day after day, and then suddenly when two people die in two weeks and they’re the only people you’ve heard of that are even out there with you at that time, that was really an eyeopener.
On having a gun on trail
So the arctic’s amazing, but it’s also very “you’re on your own,” it’s dangerous for sure.
And it was actually interesting. I never carried a weapon the whole time I was on the trail before we headed up to the north, we were like, “we need to get a gun license before we head up to the Arctic.” And I’m “No, we get a gun going to track that energy in.”
Now aren’t we happy we had the gun? Waiting for that bear to come within five feet to use the bear spray? That would not have been a cool plan.
And it was great because having the gun — the bear didn’t get killed, right? Nobody got killed. We were able to use it to hold the bear back at a safe distance, get the hell out of there. And then after that, we had to deal with the psychological fear, just like the fact that Julien would be killed.
On what she’s learned About Herself, fear, and self-care
As far as what I’ve learned about myself, well, I think listening and learning and stepping outside of the modern world for a while is a really bright thing to do. I mean, obviously you live all those years with only what you can carry. So you do a take two on that.
My grandmother Waylon used to have an expression that said, “you don’t see a hearse pulling in a U-Haul.” And I never really fully understood that, but I do now. You only carry what you can carry. And actually over the years I carried less and less.
I mean, a lot of what we carry is to deal with our fears. Too much food, too much clothes, too much everything really in the beginning, barely. I couldn’t, I had to walk that bike across Newfoundland. It was too heavy. So that was part of it.
I think in an odd way, I also did learn a lot more about self-care, and I learned a lot about emotional regulation because in times of panic, if you panic, when you’re in danger, you’ll die. So a lot of this journey is learning to manage fear. We have lots of fears, psychological fears, emotional fears, physical fears. There’s lots of different types of fears.
When I left, I was afraid of just being alone in my tent. I had a lot of fear. I didn’t leave with the bravado of a lot of people that do these kinds of adventures. I left with what anybody would feel going off on an adventure like this. So I learned emotional regulation.
I learned how to deal with fear. And a lot of that was, in my case, I talked to a lot of other people. And there’s a lot of ways of dealing with that. Some people count when they’re on the water and things start going wrong. They start counting strokes and other people sing songs. Some people say prayers.
For me, I probably did all of those things, but I also always came back to those words that I learned in the community, which is when I was afraid in the woods, it was like, “the earth is sacred, the earth is sacred.” And when I was afraid on the water, “the water was sacred” because it turned the fear of something into a connection with something. And I think that was a very profound teaching for me.
And like I said, I don’t think I was really that great at self-care before I went. And when you’re out there and you realize, man, it’s life or death here. You really got to get down with this self-care thing, learn boundaries, all of that. I mean, I guess I came late to that game, but six years on the trail definitely gave me some of those teachings to come home with.
More on self care
When I was filming on Mount Everest, I went 40 days without a shower. So you get used to that kind of stuff.
You’ll note that you’ll never see me washing my underwear out there because, well, I just didn’t bring it. If I don’t have ‘em, I don’t have to worry about cleaning them.
On Saskatchewan
Saskatchewan blew my mind! When you’re in their cars, we all make jokes about it. It’s nothing. But you get off that highway and what a stunning province. I mean so much wildlife! So much wildlife. Between the buffalo and thousands of snow geese and the deer and oh man, it was amazing. The pronghorns, who knew we had pronghorns! I didn’t even know what a pronghorn was! And then I’m like, that is a unicorn running across this field with this little thing coming up.
And by the time I hit the prairies, I finally, I even mellowed out more when I saw the animals. I’d be like crawling on the ground. I’m hanging out for days! It was really amazing.
On her least favorite day of the trip
Least? I mean, there was no part… the least favorite day for me was the day I finished. Honestly, reentry can be difficult. Let me tell you. If you go on a journey like something like this and you come home and you get depressed, that’s normal. Just so you know, there’s nothing wrong with you. That is a normal thing that will happen to you when you get back. And it’s something that Mel and I have talked a lot about too. It’s just, it’s normal because you step outside of the modern world for a while. You’re not reading the news, you’re not looking at that stuff. And suddenly what’s really important is this sensory connection to the environment that you’re in. What’s the wind doing? What’s the waves doing? What’s the ground doing? And when you do that, you’re really entering into a really ancient way of moving through the earth.
As much as like, I’m not saying we did go through cities and villages and communities, so there is still this connection over the years to that, but you also spent a lot of time alone. And so you enter into this other kind of state of mind. I had to get rid of all my bills. I got rid of my place. I sold my car. I got rid of my New York Times subscription. All those little things you get rid of. The only thing I had out there as a monthly bill was my cell phone, and then eventually my sat phone. Those were my only, because once you get into the groove of how to prep your food and stuff, you are not buying, not the freeze dried food stuff. You’re buying in bulk, right? You’re buying oatmeal, bulk pancake mix. So you start learning how to live off of you, not very much money.
And it’s kind of freeing. That you’re actually not being driven by this need to make money all the time to pay your bills all the time. There’s something else that can have the opportunity to take up space in your life. And well, for me, that was just the whole trip was the greatest gift I could have given to myself, honestly. Not only as an artist to have the kind of time to make film in this way, but just as an individual, being able to free myself of some of those needs.
I mean, I’m glad to be back. I’m working away trying to fill my bills, but there’s a part of me that still longs to go back out there. And there’s definitely another long trip in here if I can do that. Yes.
On the one place she’d go back to
I would go back to any of those water trails. I mean, there’s more than even what’s in this film, but St. John River and New Brunswick, Saskatchewan River and Saskatchewan, there was a lot of paddling.
Lake Superior, profoundly and deeply blew my mind open, partly because I guess it was one of the more remote sections by that point. I was out there for two years, and you go a couple weeks without any kind of contact at all, and you really got to, when you’re out there, it’s on you. There’s nobody that you can call if you get in trouble that’s going to get there in time to help you. You really got to dig deep on that stuff. And it was just spectacularly beautiful. And the coastline of Lake Superior in Canada is almost all park now.
And in an odd way, the lake itself is an embodiment of hope because the lake is healthier today than it was a hundred years ago or 200 years ago. So for me, yeah, I don’t know what it is, but I would go back in a heartbeat to Lake Superior.
Recommendation to others looking to get out on the Trans Canada Trail
You can find your own favorite: the trail was 487 different trails when I left, and it’s even more now. And it’s just about finding what resonates for you, honestly. I mean, if you go to the map, you just click anywhere on it, it’ll tell you the name of that trail, how long that trail is.
My buddy Mel Vogel walked the whole thing and we would make some jokes, but tonight we were laughing. She’s like, don’t do the boys trail! We both were like, there’s no trail. That was the one where we were hacking our way, but I bet you now it’s a great trail. But anyway, at that time it was like, it’s only 200 km and you think you’re going to get it done in a week, and it took two months. It was kind of crazy. But there’s lots of great parts on the trail. It depends on you and what you want.
On what might be her next journey
Good question. Well, I don’t like to talk about my next journey quite yet. I do have something burning in my heart, but honestly, I’m still with this one. Every time I make a documentary, I also write a book. And I do that because the film is the moment you capture on camera, but obviously there’s so many moments that aren’t captured on camera. And so I love writing the books because part of the hardest thing is choosing your story.
And everyone’s like, oh, the film can only be about one thing. None of my films are ever about one thing because life’s not about one thing! But you know what I mean? There’s a lot that gets left behind.
On trails
Thank you to all the volunteers who make these trails. We are tomorrow’s ancestors, and I think that the act of preserving trails, looking after trails, and making trails makes us good ancestors.
I just read that in the Junior Oxford dictionary that they just removed the words for willow, lark, and birch. They’re all gone. They’ve been replaced with MP3 and chat room. And this is a grave concern because our human survival depends on people caring about the web of life and caring about nature in order to sustain ourselves and for the next generation. That is our responsibility. It’s not free. It comes with the responsibility of looking after it. And trails take us there. Trails take people out, and they foster these very important connections to nature. So thank you to all the volunteers who make trails.
