My mother-in-law recently sent me an email with a couple links to some outdoor adventure-loving family blogs. She obviously knows what I like ;-)

The first link she sent me was to Aaron Teasdale's blog and a family trip they did in the Rockies.

The second link she sent me was to a website about a family that did a trip across Canada by canoe and the film they made about it called Finding Farley. Their film was so good that it won the Grand Prize at the 2009 Banff Film Festival (a favorite yearly ritual for us). It is with great pleasure that I introduce to you Leanne, Karston, and Zev...

Leanne and Karsten met over thirty years ago in kindergarten in Calgary, Alberta. Fifteen years later they “re-met” by chance, and discovered they’d led parallel lives. After a decade of friendship and trips together (including the Y2Y Hike) they married and set off to honeymoon with the herd (Being Caribou). Shortly after returning from their Arctic adventure, Leanne gave birth to their son, Zev. They now live in Canmore, Alberta.

Finding Farley (62min) is a National Film Board of Canada production directed by Leanne Allison and written by Karsten Heuer. The film is about a cross-Canada family journey by canoe, train, and sailboat following the literary footsteps of one of Canada's most celebrated authors- Farley Mowat. The family, consisting of Dad (Karsten), Mom (Leanne), their two year old son Zev and dog Willow leave their home in Canmore, Alberta not exactly sure how they’ll make the trip to Mowat’s home in Cape Breton. “The hardest part about these trips is leaving,” says Heuer , “after that things always seem to fall in place.” And so they did on this remarkable necessary journey.

Any time someone gets out and does something really cool as a family, it gets our attention. So without a doubt, this family's story grabbed our attention. Below is our interview with them. Sit back, enjoy, be inspired (then go out and do) as they share their experience and wisdom. Be sure to check out their films, available for watching on their website necessaryjourneys.ca.

Who's crazy idea was it to embark on this trip?

It was both of ours. And Farley Mowat's (the famous Canadian author). He was the one who invited us, after all. But I think he was imagining we would fly or drive across the country to come meet him. But the more Leanne (my wife) and I thought about it, the more we realized we wanted to do the trip in a style that respected the characters and places Farley had written about in his 40+ books (e.g. Never Cry Wolf, Owls in the Family, People of the Deer). And we wanted to pay tribute to him, a living tribute, I guess, given that he is getting on in age (he'll turn 90 next spring). And we wanted to take a route that traveled through as many of the settings from his books as possible, of which many don't have road access. So we decided to mostly canoe and sail.

Did either of you need some convincing or some serious time to think about it? Or were both of you on board with the idea from the beginning?

I remember the night well. We were in bed, talking about the great letter and invitation we'd received from him. He's a childhood hero for both of us and we definitely weren't going to pass up on the opportunity to meet him. But we wanted it to be special. And then it just hit us. No sooner had we thought of it than we knew we were going. There was no question.

What was your reason/goal/purpose for doing this? Was it achieved?

At first I think we were most interested in two things: we wanted to meet Farley and we wanted to see and experience as many of the places he'd written about as possible on our way - to compare them now with Farley's descriptions in the previous decades, to see if, as a society, we'd tackled and resolved any of the issues he'd raised in his writings.

Are both of you equally adventurous?

Well Leanne was the one who first took me on a glacier and ski mountaineering, and the hardest whitewater river I've ever paddled was with her. Let me put it this way: when I proposed to her that we follow an Arctic caribou herd for five months on foot for our honeymoon she barely blinked (documented in another film and book called Being Caribou).

Have you ever done anything this big before?

Yes but not with a two-year-old child. In 2003 we skied and walked for 1500km with a caribou herd in Alaska and the Yukon (Being caribou). before that, in 1998/99 I walked 3,400km from Yellowstone to the Yukon to highlight the need for wildlife corridors. Leanne joined me for the second (and toughest) half of that journey.

Would you ever do anything like it again?

Nothing definite is planned at this time but it's fair to say it's in our blood; it's part of how we're wired.

If you were to do anything differently, what would it be?

Given all the time it took us to get there (5 months), it would've been nice to spend more time with Farley and his wife, Claire, on their farm on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. He's an amazing down-to-earth and sincere guy once you connect with him (which we did through the letters we exchanged on our journey). Nothing like the crusty, gruff character he makes himself out to be in radio interviews and television. it would've been nice to spend more time with him but as it was we only had three days and three nights together.

What do you consider the most difficult aspect of the trip?

Doing it with a two-year-old AND filming ourselves. The two together was just too much sometimes. We would pull over to set up the camera, get back in the boat to paddle past it, then pull over again and run back upstream to retrieve it, all the while fighting off swarms of bugs. Throw in a hypoglycemic kid and a wound up Border Collie (we also had our dog along) and you have a recipe for sheer exhaustion. But it was also incredibly rewarding and inspiring to see this little kid completely at home in the outdoors, night after night, day after day.

Were there ever situations where you felt irresponsible as a parent to bring your child with you on such a journey?

No. I've felt a lot worse when I've had to drop him off at a sitters or a friend's house because I'm too "busy" to spend time with him. There's nothing irresponsible about committing to spending every moment of every hour with your toddler for five months straight. As for safety or potential injuries, we were pretty conservative. He never got sick in the five months we were out there and the worst injury was a small kit on his finger that resolved itself with a band-aid.

What did your son think about the trip? What was most difficult for him?

He didn't think; he simply accepted it as normal. That's what's so beautiful about that age. Leanne and I often commented that it might have been more difficult if he was 10 or 11 years old and had a concept of what other kids his age were doing and always wanted to be with his friends.

What things feel like home to you when you are not at your home?

Sleeping on the ground. Reading in a tent with the sound of wind and birds all around you. The sun on your back. Drinking out of a creek or river. Sitting by a fire with the stars spinning overhead.

What did you learn about yourselves? How has this trip changed you?

We learned that we're happiest when we're out there, interacting with the world around us, hearing and feeling stories embedded in place rising up through our feet and chests. Or maybe we didn't learn that - I think we knew it before. But it affirmed it for us, and introduced those things to our son at a time when he was most impressionable.

What do you guys do when you are not out adventuring?

A little bit of everything. I work six months a year as a wilderness ranger in Banff National Park here in Alberta, Leanne does some filmaking, I write and photograph, do some wildlife research on contract, chop wood for the wood stove, ski, read, hike, fish, hunt, garden...

Do you have any words of wisdom for other families that dream of going out and doing a big trip like this?

The hardest part is leaving. Everything works itself out and only gets easier once you take that big step, abandon your routines for something more exciting and meaningful and finally tear yourself away.

[Photos curtesy of Leanne Allison and Karston Heuer. Used with permission.]