A conversation with the adventurer who recently paddled solo over 1600 km through some of the most bug-infested terrain in Canada…on a single, transplanted kidney. Podcast presented by Citizen Watch Canada.

Stephan Kesting is a long-haul paddler, an author, a jui jitsu master and a firefighter. His lonely subarctic paddling Odyssey only took him 41 days, which is pretty wild considering a lot of the journey was upstream.

Stephan talks to Feet Banks about the risks of complacency, the will to carry on and what it’s like to really stare down your own mortality.

Warning: this episode contains a few cuss words.

His new book about the journey (and more) is called Perseverance: Life and Death in the Subarctic and it’s a doozy! Here’s more about the book from Simon & Schuster:

“The Canadian North is a vast and lonely land where bears roam free, fires rage unchecked, and storms blast every living thing on the tundra. When Stephan Kesting, already no stranger to pushing his own physical limits, was faced with a rare illness, he knew the only way for him to recover in both body and mind was to dig even deeper. Despite the dangers inherent in the far north, Kesting sets out on an unimaginably difficult journey.

Completely alone in the wilderness for six weeks, where a single mistake could cost his life, Kesting followed in the footsteps of the native peoples and earliest explorers. In this deepest solitude and wracked with self-doubt, he found the strength to endure.

Perseverance is the moving and nail-biting account of his journey from near-death to a raw embrace of adventure and life. Inspirational, vulnerable and honest, Kesting shares the lessons he learned in the wilderness that will help us hold onto hope in our darkest moments and show how we can find the strength to overcome any obstacle.”