[wind gusting]
Ooh.
Now, that is wind, that is wind.
Right now, the danger is more intense
as we go north into the very tightening valley. -Yeah.
Right, and of course, just how far can we go.
I've come to the Arctic
with a team of US combat veterans.
Decorated, dedicated and desperate for hope
because there is one last battle they're still fighting.
The one they brought home with them.
- [gunfire] - [man shouts indistinctly]
[Chanda Mofu] My second time in Iraq, it really hit me.
We were losing people,
and I still live with stuff today.
[Jesus Sanchez] I just get so frustrated with it
that I don't, I don't...
you know, I don't, I just don't wanna continue. It's hard.
[Elana Duffy] I wanna be happy again.
And I think that this is one of the ways
that I can get myself there.
[Bob Woodruff] For almost as long as human history,
soldiers have been searching for a way to heal
the invisible wounds of war.
I've been looking for that for 20 years.
Could it be that the cure is out here...
in the last place on Earth
you'd ever expect to find it?
For me, this journey started back in 2006.
[young Woodruff] We're on patrol with the Iraqi's ninth division.
there is only one mechanized division
in the entire Iraqi army.
I was a network news anchor reporting from Iraq.
We have some breaking news to report,
our co-anchor of World News Tonight,
Bob Woodruff, and his cameraman, Doug Vogt,
were injured in an improvised explosive device attack.
[Woodruff] The left part of my skull was, was shattered.
I should be dead for sure if there was not
military medical teams there to save me.
Hi, how are you? I'm Bob.
I've got to know so many fellow wounded.
How are you, bro? Look at you.
After more than 20 years of war
in Iraq and Afghanistan,
so many American veterans
are struggling with psychological trauma.
These kinds of wounds are ongoing
and they don't go away unless something is figured out
to make those lives improve.
It's just very hard to do.
You do this every flight?
I-I actually do, I take it off every flight.
It's way more comfortable.
[Woodruff] So, it's not the visible wounds of war that bring us here,
it's the wounds you don't see.
[flight attendant] [on PA] For your information,
we will be de-planing the aircraft by the doors at the back.
It is apparently cold out there.
[Sanchez] My name's Jesus Sanchez.
I was a medic for the Marines.
And I feel like a piece of me
is still in Afghanistan every day.
- [Duffy] Oh, good, it's my legs. - [Anna Pfaff] Your legs.
My legs made it.
[Duffy] My name is Elana Duffy.
I served in the Army for ten years.
Being hit by a roadside bomb
really messed up my brain
and I have severe traumatic brain injury.
[Mofu] My name is Chanda Mofu,
twenty years of service in our United States Army.
I do carry trauma from my combat experiences absolutely,
but most of the combat veterans
don't talk about their experiences
and I've fallen into this trap as well.
[Pfaff] We're gonna start out doing eight miles and set up our base camp.
You know, so, we have to be, like,
prepared for weather and things like that
as the conditions just change really quickly, right?
[Woodruff] So we're gonna go by snowmobile?
[Pfaff] No, we're gonna start skiing from here.
[Woodruff] We're gonna go straight from here?
[Pfaff] Straight from here, yep.
- [laughs] Yeah. - Oof.
[Pfaff] Looking good.
Alright, let's roll.
[Woodruff] We're headed into the heart of Baffin Island,
at the edge of the Arctic Circle.
It's one of the most pristine and wild places on the planet.
It is a prehistoric landscape where granite mountains
are some 3.5 billion years old.
At this time of year it's one of the best places
to see skiesthat are illuminated by the northern lights.
[Sanchez] How do you even run with these? [laughs]
[Woodruff] When the left one goes forward,
your right hand goes forward.
[Sanchez] Okay.
I grew up in Phoenix, Arizona.
Seeing snow a handful of times.
I have never gone cross-country skiing.
I am terrified.
[wind gusting]
[Woodruff] We got the idea to do this
because a growing number of scientific studies
make the case that immersion in nature
may be a great treatment for PTSD.
[Dacher Keltner] Getting out in nature
and the radical outdoors
is really good for trauma and stress.
[Woodruff] Dacher Keltner,
who runs something called the "Happiness Lab" at Berkeley,
is one of the pioneers in this field.
[Keltner] Nature immersion,
we know that it has direct effects
on your cardiovascular system, your brain,
how you think about yourself,
how you think about your life, the purpose in life.
[Woodruff] One study of Keltner's that really got our attention
involved whitewater rafting with veterans.
Keltner collaborated on the study
with his grad student at the time, Craig Anderson.
[Woodruff] Craig, thanks for doing this.
[Craig Anderson] [on phone] It's my pleasure.
So what was some of the results
of, uh, the veterans studies that you've done?
I found that compared to before the rafting trips,
at least two weeks after the trips,
veterans were reporting 21% less PTSD symptoms.
Nature takes us out of the everyday context
that we're used to.
It turns out the daily hassles
and the daily grind that we experience,
those things also seem smaller.
[Woodruff] We are hoping this trip will have an impact on us
as profound as the whitewater rafting study.
[Pfaff] Camp one, you guys. Woo-hoo!
- [Woodruff] Yeah, man. - [Pfaff] Oh, yeah, here we are.
[Mofu] That is called progress.
So far so good but it's only one day.
[Woodruff laughs]
Our plan is to camp on a frozen river,
the Pangnirtung Fjord
and explore the area on skis.
And then, hike into the mountains to a hidden valley
to stand in the shadow of Thor Peak,
it's the highest vertical cliff in the world.
We'll be collecting data on ourselves
while we're out here for Craig Anderson
so he can analyze it after we're back.
Alright.
[Duffy] After a fine day of skiing.
[Anderson] I'm going to be asking you to be doing a daily diary.
[Sanchez] Hello, hello. [sighs]
This is star date or video diary.
Every night after dinner...
Alrighty.
[Mofu] ...there would be five questions
that we would have to answer.
My goodness. Um...
So I'm gonna take that video data...
One, two, three, okay, it's on.
[Anderson] ...and I actually have software
that will analyze the facial expressions
that people are making.
[Woodruff] We'll also be gathering saliva samples
to monitor our stress levels,
measuring a hormone called cortisol.
[Duffy] Can't feel my fingers.
[Anderson] When we wake up in the morning
a healthy cortisol profile
is getting a big spike in cortisol.
It's like your body is like
manufacturing its own cup of coffee for you.
That nice high spike kind of sharply declines
throughout the day,
so that cortisol is low at the end of the day,
and you're nice and relaxed and ready to go to bed.
[Duffy] Oh, yeah, hang on to your vials
'cause we're gonna submit them for...
[both] Science.
[Woodruff] Craig will also be tracking our sleep quality
and our heart rate variability,
ways of monitoring whether PTSD
is really releasing its grip on us.
[Sanchez] My therapist called it "monkey brain."
Uh, he said that you put yourself in that survivalist mindset,
and it's a, it's like an evolutionary flaw.
- Yeah. - Where it's like "I need to survive."
And it doesn't turn off sometimes because you're just,
you relate to certain things,
and it traumatizes you essentially.
- Yeah. Yeah. - [Mofu] Mm-hmm.
[Sanchez] Alright, today we were able to talk a little bit
about some, some of the things that bother us.
Um, I just don't sleep.
Like our inability to sleep and, you know, those stressors
that really get in the way of our just normal function.
[Sanchez] A little bit is like, you know,
seeing all those casualties too that kinda just
replay a little bit in my head when I close my eyes.
[Mofu] Hopefully as I continue to immerse myself
in this experience
that I can unpack a lot of the, uh...
the incredible...
and incredibly sad experiences that I went through,
um, during my combat tours.
[Duffy] I want this data to actually do something
and make people understand things and contribute.
Because...
it's like one of those, "It's too late for me.
Save yourself."
Um, "Help me, Obi-Wan. You're my only hope."
I'm gonna tape some stuff,
it helps to insulate a little bit
or it gets really uncomfortable really fast.
[Woodruff] One of the things I learned after I was injured
is that modern medicine has made it possible
to save the lives of more soldiers than ever in history.
Yeah, I didn't know what layering was
until I came out here so... [laughs]
[Mofu] Ooh, it's cold.
[Woodruff] But even modern medicine hasn't been able to address
something that playwrights and poets have been describing
since ancient Greece and Babylon...
the psychological wounds of war.
Alright.
So day two, ready? Let's go.
One more beautiful spot on Earth.
As we head out there is skepticism
but there's also hope that Baffin Island
will work its magic on us
as it has for those who have
braved the ice and cold before us.
[Sanchez] It's that don't quit mindset, you know.
Plus, it's the, it's easily the most beautiful place
I've ever been to, by far.
[Mofu] I'll just say this,
this is a lot of time for reflection,
kinda where you wanna go forward in your life.
So... lots of, lots of things going through my mind right now.
[man shouts indistinctly]
[gunfire]
[man] Bravo one, bravo, over.
[gunshots]
[newscaster] Today the death toll
of American troops in Iraq reached 3,000.
[rapid gunfire]
[Mofu] The year 2006
was the most difficult year of my life
because of the combat losses
and the people that I led that died.
[newscaster] December, now the deadliest month this year
costing the lives of at least 111 American troops.
[Mofu] When it happens to your own people
and you're picking up teeth out of a Humvee or bone parts,
you don't wish that on anybody.
[helicopter whirring]
And so, I retired,
and I wanted to put those traumatic events behind me.
[Pfaff] We should take a minute here, you guys.
- [Woodruff] Stop? - [Pfaff] Yeah, right here.
[Sanchez] Let's take a minute.
Nah, that was... that was rough. [laughs]
[Mofu] Oh, my gosh, yeah.
[Sanchez grunts]
[Woodruff] The dream is to be able to see something higher up
because the clouds have blocked off
the peaks of the mountains.
In recent years, melting sea ice
has wrapped the island in a fog
that is both eerily beautiful and frustrating.
The clouds can hide the tops of the legendary mountains here.
[Mofu] There we go!
Hey.
See this cloud with that little opening right here?
- [Woodruff] Yeah. - [Pfaff] Yeah.
Oh, my gosh.
You can see the mountains through the clouds over there.
[Pfaff] Oh, yeah, it's starting to open up.
[Woodruff] So when the sun broke through the mist,
it was transformative.
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
[Mofu] That is awesome.
[Woodruff] Yeah.
That's so cool.
[Mofu] It's gorgeous, man.
The appreciation for that kinda stuff,
this is coming back now.
Grateful.
[Woodruff] This is what we came here for.
It's insane.
[Woodruff] The scientists call it "awe."
[Keltner] We define "awe" as an emotion you feel,
when you encounter things that are vast...
uh, most typically, they're kinda
bigger than what you expect,
and are mysterious.
[Anderson] Religious experiences can elicit awe.
Music and dance...
and arts can elicit awe.
[rumbling]
Nature is one of the most common and powerful ways
that people feel awe.
[Keltner] Awe calms your body down
and then, awe transforms your mind.
It deactivates chunks of your cortex here,
and then on the side of your brain.
So, reduced blood flow in those regions
involved in too much self-focus
which is a pathway to anxiety, depression, rumination,
even trauma.
Awe orients you away
from the self to other things,
big things around you.
[Woodruff] Look at, blue sky.
There's blue sky. What?
Everything's changing.
[laughter]
What a day, man. This has been incredible.
[Anderson] With awe, you have these oceanic feelings
of being connected to humanity or all of Earth.
Um, so it's kind of that,
that piece of being small but connected.
[Mofu] It's humbling to appreciate
the snow-capped mountains
in a corridor that's been around for millions of years.
[Woodruff] When we feel awe like this,
the scientists can see it in our faces
The snow-capped mountains.
[Woodruff] The eyes widen,
the eyebrows rise, the mouth opens.
[Mofu] I think somewhere in my deep recesses
I've compartmentalized my feelings
about those I went to combat with
and how I-I haven't been in touch with them.
And, uh, for some reason today I just realized
that I probably need to bring those folks back to my life,
uh, because they helped me
just like I hope I had helped them.
[sighs]
[Woodruff] Chanda and I are sharing a tent
and as we got ready to take off again the next morning,
he told me he felt that something had changed.
The Chanda that I used to be, right, kinda woke up.
Think about the millions of years
that this landscape has been around
and we're now a part of it
and it's helping us, that's humbling.
No matter what happened to us over in the Middle East...
[Chanda] Mm-hmm.
...look what we have here,
[Woodruff] ...like how blessed are we, man?
Incredible.
[Woodruff] The remarkable thing is,
his body was saying the same thing.
That night, his sleep performance hit 100%.
Good morning. Let's go, let's go to work.
I don't think I've ever reached 100%
of my sleep requirements in my life.
Something right happened.
That is good news for these 21st century struggles
of ruminating about myself leading to depression,
awe gets you out of that.
It makes you look to the outside world to find meaning.
- [Pfaff] Ready? - Let's do it.
[Woodruff] I'm hoping that in the coming days
Elana and Jesus
can experience something like what Chanda had.
[Pfaff] Okay, onward.
[Sanchez] Let's ride.
[Woodruff] That nature would carry them across a threshold.
But wounds this deep don't vanish easily.
[wind gusting]
[Woodruff] What about you?
- Tell me about this bear. - [Duffy] This bear of mine?
- [Woodruff] ...yeah. - Paddington?
Um, Paddington is a,
it was a gift from my father
before I was actually born.
And he was in my pocket when I was hit by an IED,
uh, was with me for my brain surgery,
for my leg amputation.
[Woodruff] Elana has gone through a lot
and she told me multiple times
the last thing that she wants out of this trip is pity.
Alright.
Let's do this.
[Duffy] Whoo!
I'm gonna make it,
which is kind of surprising to me.
Yeah. [chuckles]
[Woodruff] Though we are all reporting stress,
cortisol samples we collected before the trip
showed Elana was struggling.
With Elana, her cortisol pattern didn't look great.
[sighs]
Remember, we wanna see a nice big spike
but the spike wasn't so big for Elana.
And we see that in people
with post-traumatic stress
or maybe suffering from depression.
[Duffy] I wanna be happy again.
You know, it is a problem for me
to keep regrets out of my life and out of my head.
[rapid gunfire]
[newscaster] US officials tracking roadside bomb attacks
against Americans in Iraq
say they had become much more deadly.
[man yelling indistinctly]
[Duffy] I was an investigator and an interrogator
trying to find the bombs before the bombs went off.
[man yelling indistinctly]
It's not just the dead people on the streets.
It's not just rolling out in a truck every day
wondering if you're gonna come home.
It's, what did I have to say to a five-year-old
to get him to tell me where his dad was,
and how do you live with that?
[man] Hey, turn around!
[Duffy] The panic attacks and the anger.
It's such a departure from who I know I used to be.
And...
now when I think about it I'm just tired.
Tired a lot.
[man groans]
Hold on. [bleep].
I don't know how I'm gonna do this.
[sighs]
[grunts]
[Mofu] We were making progress
and then Elana couldn't, um, cross-country ski anymore.
[grunts] I'm in a lot of [bleep] pain.
I feel really bad.
Elana, she had some developing pain
where her prosthetic was connected
to her, to her bones.
[Duffy] [grunts] I'm sorry about this.
[Pfaff] No, it's all good, we gotcha.
[Duffy] [groans] Hold on.
Oh, my God, that feels better.
- [Pfaff] Does it feel better? - [Duffy sighs]
Let's not let it get cold.
[Mofu] Hey, Bob, can you pull her skis as well?
Yeah, yeah.
[Woodruff] Are you gonna take the weight of her? -[Mofu] Yep, yep.
[Pfaff] Chanda's gonna pull her.
[Mofu] Absolutely, man.
I wanted to help
and, um, it was a good feeling.
We're gonna fit this in like a tray underneath.
I felt relevant for the first time in a long time
helping somebody out.
[Sanchez] I felt like we were working together as, like, a good team
and I feel like everyone was just a lot closer
because of that experience.
And it just made everyone feel good.
[Pfaff] Give her that one too.
[Duffy] You guys are awesome, and thank you,
and I will fix this for tomorrow.
[Keltner] One of the strong elicitors of awe
is teams working together
and-and in particular selflessly for other people.
[Pfaff] So we-we still have quite a distance to go.
- [Mofu] About five miles to go. - [Pfaff] Yeah, yeah.
Alright, let's go.
[Keltner] And we lose sight of that,
that, you know, our better angels come out
in these really hard situation.
And people rise to the occasion and bring awe to us.
[Pfaff] Let's get you in.
- [Duffy] Ah! - [Pfaff] Woo-hoo-hoo!
[Dr. Marc Gosselin] These are sterile.
- We'll just dry it up a bit. - Yeah, yeah.
- [Dr. Gosselin] Is it painful? - A little, yeah.
Yeah. Okay.
[groans softly]
[Woodruff] Okay, I got you. Your backpack's right outside.
Thank you.
I have troubled them enough today.
Oh Christ.
It was the team that got me through,
and I greatly admire them.
So I'm very grateful for that
and for the, um...
the things that, um...
the things that everyone has done,
um, and I'm gonna be better.
- [Dr. Gosselin] Okay. - [Duffy] It looks normal?
[Dr. Gosselin] Hmm.
I know that I'll just,
obviously I gotta pack it differently tomorrow,
because I intend to keep doing this.
So you're a pioneer?
[Duffy] Right, yes.
[Keltner] We see in Elana,
even though her own life is frustrating
and she has this amputation that's reminding of her past
and the difficulties of doing the trip,
it's the people around her who bring her awe.
- [Mofu] Cheers, everyone. - [Pfaff] Cheers.
- [Sanchez] Yes, yes, yes. - [Duffy] L'chaim.
There you go, buddy. There you are.
- To life. - [Woodruff] What about tomorrow?
What do you think?
I haven't tried standing up yet
'cause my foot's in my pocket.
[laughter]
[Duffy] But, I'll be good.
I'll figure it out.
[Woodruff] Elana, like a lot of people who suffer PTSD,
had trouble feeling valued by her community.
I think that changed today.
Yeah.
[Woodruff] But Jesus may be the toughest case.
His trauma is fresh.
He's only been home from Afghanistan for a few months.
[Sanchez] I do find it a bit scary.
What if I go on this trip and nothing changes?
Which is a very possible outcome.
[Sanchez] I am... a little tired.
[Mofu] Yeah.
[Sanchez] I have difficulty sleeping...
and when I do, I wake up
and I'm just like, well, today's gonna be a [bleep] day,
and I don't want to do anything.
[Woodruff] Jesus is the youngest of us by far,
as in the age of my children.
But a guy who, you know, grew up instantly witnessing
what he did at the airport in Kabul
when the US finally withdrew.
[clamoring]
[Woodruff] I know you talked about this before
but you remember that moment?
[Sanchez] Yeah, that just...
My job as a corpsman was to help people, right?
And, um, there is nothing you can do.
I wish I just... could've done everything
to bring everyone back.
You said you have nightmares, is it about this?
[Sanchez] Yeah. Yeah.
[explosion]
[newscaster] A suicide bomber struck an airport gate
just yards from US forces
who were processing Afghans for evacuation flights.
[Sanchez] Throughout the last year and a half,
I had difficulty sleeping...
damn near every night.
I actually had this terrible dream.
I-I hear the explosion
and I feel the waves of the explosion hit me
and...
I feel hands on my chest, bringing me down into the earth
like deeper and deeper and deeper.
I just get so frustrated with it that I don't, I don't,
you know, I don't, I just don't want to continue.
It's hard.
[Anderson] Re-experiencing those traumatic events
is a symptom of post-traumatic stress.
Feeling like you always have to be on edge
and looking for potential threats,
obviously that's going to impact your sleep as well.
[Woodruff] Nights are usually hard for people with PTSD,
but we're hoping the deep Arctic night
might eventually offer us some healing.
[Pfaff] Look, look, look.
[Mofu] [laughs] Oh, wow.
[Pfaff] Ooh! Oh, that's good, yeah.
[Mofu] That's a flare.
[Pfaff] Mm-hmm.
[Woodruff] We went out, and this
green, blue, white, stunning light,
the northern lights, came out.
- Now that's-- - [Pfaff] Look at that one.
- That one's like... - [Woodruff] Now the bands are...
- [Pfaff] Yeah. - [Mofu] Oh, yeah.
And now it starts to emerge.
[Sanchez] I think the happiest day of this trip has been the northern lights.
- [Pfaff] It's pretty sweet. - [Sanchez] Yeah. [laughs]
That's insane.
It felt like, when I was looking at the lights,
that everything just stopped.
Like it was just in a different place.
[Woodruff] None of the veterans
had ever seen a northern light before.
This was the first time they had.
And that certainly was a moment of awe.
Uh...
Honestly, truly was.
[Sanchez] Now it's really starting to look good
just with the naked eye.
[Sanchez] It hit me pretty hard.
I teared up, for sure.
[Keltner] Tears is a common bodily response of awe.
Released through activation
of the parasympathetic autonomic nervous system.
[Anderson] The parasympathetic system,
when people are experiencing awe
it's kind of slowing the body down a little bit.
- [Sanchez] Damn good day. - [Duffy] Damn good day.
- [Sanchez] Damn good day. - [Woodruff] Yeah.
And when the nervous system
slows the body down,
guess what happens?
[Duffy] Good morning.
[Woodruff] Hey, camper.
[Duffy] Hi, camper.
We have northern lights to go.
[Woodruff laughs]
Yo, how did you sleep?
[Sanchez] Um, well, this...
This, this says I slept pretty good.
- [Duffy] That's great. - [Sanchez] Yeah.
Great sleep, probably, some of the best sleep
I've had since I got out,
or even longer, since probably deployment.
It was so good.
[Woodruff] After four days on the ice,
I went back to the nearest town, Pangnirtung,
to meet a late addition to our team.
There he is.
Nick has arrived.
Nick Henry actually served four tours in Iraq
and came home with a severe traumatic brain injury.
He missed the first four days of the trip
because of a debilitating TBI migraine.
Welcome.
Ready for the coldest part of your life?
[Nick Henry] Yeah, actually I am.
I was one of those people that kept telling myself, like,
there's other people that are worse off than me.
And then eventually it got to the point where I'm like,
[bleep], I need help.
[Anderson] Of all the veterans on the trip,
Nick reported the highest level of post-traumatic stress
and low levels of well-being and social connection.
[Henry] I look forward to this expedition
and being part of this process.
It gives you hope.
Right, like, it's an idea that if you find enough good things,
you can offset the bad that you feel.
Like, it'll, it'll be better.
[Woodruff] We've only got two more days left out here.
Can awe do something for Nick
in only 48 hours?
- [Mofu] Hey. - [Pfaff] Yeah!
[Mofu] There's a face under there?
- [Mofu laughs] - [Pfaff] Hello.
How are you?
[Duffy] Welcome to the party.
- [Pfaff laughs] - [Sanchez] What's up, man?
Nice to meet you, man.
[Woodruff] We were excited that Nick had finally caught up with us.
[Mofu] Alright.
Hey, Nick, so you got prime real estate
- on the end over here. - [Henry] Cool.
[Mofu] Here we are.
[Woodruff] We've been waiting for him to make
that final push to the Arctic and Thor.
- [Henry] Sweet. - [Mofu] Is that it?
[Henry] Yeah.
[Woodruff] But hours after Nick arrived,
the winds really blew in.
By the way, this is the winds.
We have not felt this yet... on this trip. -[Duffy] No.
- [Pfaff] It's happening. - The wind's coming in.
We secured the tents,
so they would not blow off of us while we were sleeping.
[indistinct chatter]
And hoped that things would be calmer in the morning.
Ooh!
Now that is wind, that is wind.
- Ooh! - [Henry] This is [bleep] crazy.
I don't think I've ever been in the wind like this before.
When it's blowing that bad, the debris...
just starts picking up and flying
and it kind of hurts to get hit by.
[Pfaff] As you guys experienced,
it's, it's super windy outside.
[Woodruff] Yeah.
This is the kind of weather and element
that actually can be really unsafe
that we just need to take really seriously.
[Woodruff] Okay.
We hunkered down hoping
that tomorrow would be calmer
so that we could try again to reach the Arctic Circle
and see Thor.
We had one more day out here.
[Henry] It's crazy how the wind just changed everything.
But it is cool to be here, though,
'cause I was really struggling with a lot of emotional stuff.
When I got the call to go on this trip,
I was in a pretty good depressive cycle.
And it's almost every time that it happens,
my thoughts hit the same, it's like the same script.
[rapid gunfire]
After four deployments,
some of the things that I was dealing with
just weren't being processed anymore.
I had become professional at putting them in a box.
So they just all stayed in a box until...
until they didn't.
I didn't wanna feel it,
and I didn't wanna deal with it.
So at that point in time,
I decided I was gonna end my life.
I took out my Glock and I put it to my head.
I went and talked to my team leader
and I was like, "Hey, I need to go home. Like, now."
The first thing I noticed waking up
was my tent was not shaking anymore.
So I was like... [gasps]
[singsongy] "It must be calm outside!"
[Woodruff] You'd think the day of the wild winds
would dampen our spirits.
But their effect was unexpectedly energizing.
[Henry] Gotta get the work done.
I shoveled out everybody's tents and stuff
because the sun was coming up.
It was a pretty day. I was...
[Woodruff] Come on in.
[Henry] ...I was ready to move.
[Woodruff] What's up, man?
[Mofu] We were all positive
because we knew that the conditions were in our favor.
So, the Arctic Circle is right here,
and then the distance from the Arctic Circle to Thor
is about five miles.
Basically the Arctic Circle is halfway?
[Pfaff] Yeah, exactly.
Alright, let's move.
[Woodruff] This is the time now.
[whoops]
Let's get across the circle,
maybe we can just continue
to what our ultimate goal was and see Thor Peak.
[Pfaff] It's gonna start getting a little bit rocky.
- [Woodruff] Ooh, look at that. - [Sanchez] Yeah!
[Henry] I was blessed to get here today.
That [bleep] is crazy.
[Sanchez laughs]
To be able to feel the awe
of being in the mountains and see the rocks and the snow,
just be detached...
from those everyday stressors.
[Woodruff] Just a few miles from Thor
we reached a marker saying
we were at the Arctic Circle.
[Pfaff] We made it to the Arctic Circle.
[all cheering]
[Henry] At the Arctic Circle, I was crying a little bit,
it just hit me, I was here.
One of the things about depression
is the idea that you don't deserve good things.
You don't deserve good things to happen.
And to be at that moment, to be like good things do happen
was, like, just so overwhelming.
[Keltner] There's work showing
that certain forms of awe
are involved in activation in reward circuitry,
people come out of awe experiences
not only wanting to be better,
but having the sense that they can change.
[Pfaff] Alright! Okay.
We have a few more miles left till Thor.
- [Duffy] Sounds good. - [Sanchez] Finally. [laughs]
[Pfaff] Let's go see this mountain
that everyone keeps talking about.
[Henry laughs]
[Woodruff] We've reached the Arctic Circle
but there is one more thing we wanna do.
If we push a little further,
we can catch sight of Thor Peak,
the highest vertical cliff in the world.
We're hoping for a final dose of awe.
[Duffy moans]
But getting there means navigating steep slopes
carved by millennia of glacial movements,
which also left behind fields of giant boulders.
[Pfaff] What do you think?
[Sanchez] The only thing is the-the steepness over there.
[Henry] I mean, it's-it's rocky waterfall terrain.
The, the water had frozen in steps in some places,
but the ice was just...
Some of that stuff was so slick.
It was... it was hard.
[Duffy] I don't know how I'm gonna do this yet.
- [Henry] You got it, I got you. - [Duffy] Ohh.
Nick stayed back
to keep a hand on my pack
so that I could move forward.
[Woodruff] And, if she needed a lift he would lift her up.
[Henry] I got you.
It was really amazing to see that.
- [Henry] There we go. - [Duffy] Ohh...
[Pfaff] Yeah! How you doing?
- [Duffy] Let's go! - [Pfaff] Yeah?
[Duffy] Let's go, bro.
- [Woodruff] Here comes the wind. - [Pfaff] Alright.
[Mofu] The beauty that encompasses
this place is amazing.
[Sanchez] Almost there.
[Mofu] After this nasty terrain of ice and rocks...
you turn a corner,
and, uh, then you see Thor.
[Mofu laughs]
- [Mofu] You made it. - [Duffy] Hell, yeah.
[Mofu] We walked up and...
and all had our own moments of,
of, uh, of success
in achieving our goal.
[Woodruff] Look at this, you guys.
[Pfaff] It's pretty awesome, huh?
[Woodruff] That's a little awe.
[Pfaff] Yeah, right?
[Mofu] The world's an awesome place
when you're not fighting against other human beings, isn't it?
- [Henry] Right? - [Mofu] So true.
So amazing.
[Mofu] Glad you saw it, dude.
Glad you're here. Glad you're here.
[Henry] Yeah, I am glad I made it.
- [Mofu] Yeah. - [Henry] Yeah.
- [laughter] - [Sanchez] It's gorgeous.
Just unreal.
[Pfaff] What a journey.
[Mofu] Yeah, man.
Whoo!
[Pfaff] Group hug, you guys, group hug.
[laughter]
[Woodruff] And here's the most amazing thing.
It turns out that all the changes we felt on that mountain,
we brought them home with us.
We would continue to monitor our heart rate and sleep
for two weeks after we left the Arctic...
and each took one more cortisol test at home.
Turns out even Craig was surprised by the results.
I was really... a little blown away
by what we found in the size of the effects.
Every single one of our participants
showed an improvement in their cortisol pattern.
[Woodruff] Every one of us was sleeping more deeply
and up to 25% longer.
The scientists told me that all of us,
not just veterans,
should try to get a dose of awe every two weeks or so.
And you don't have to go to the Arctic.
Studies show we experience awe
when we slow down to pay attention to nature...
[indistinct chatter]
...laugh with the people we love...
spend time with our children.
Awe comes from noticing all the ways
we are part of a vast, mysterious, beautiful universe.
[Duffy] I think it worked.
The view is amazing,
people are awesome.
I hope that it lasts.
What is is and you can't go back and change it.
It's about seeing things that are bigger than you.
[Henry] I am really grateful for everything.
Here comes the wind.
I got you.
You got it.
To push all the way through
all the negative feelings and all the depression.
Like I just feel it all just oozing out,
and it was like, "Oh, this is so beautiful."
[Pfaff] Look, look, look.
- [Mofu] Oh, wow. [laughs] - [Duffy] Oh!
[Mofu] Somewhere over these last weeks,
I let go of stress.
So, the science doesn't lie. Numbers don't lie.
And the numbers prove that I was, uh,
physically better because of this experience.
[Sanchez] Mount Thor is just humongous.
Just looking at it and just taking it and realizing...
you're tiny.
Those big problems that you have...
are tiny compared to that mountain...
and it just goes away.
[Woodruff] Exactly what we've all been hoping for.
- [Duffy] Okay. - [Pfaff] Scoot in, scoot in.
- [laughter] - [Woodruff] Yeah, man.
That's it.
[Pfaff] Yeah, there you go. Nice!
[Woodruff] This could be the greatest picture ever.
[camera shutter clicks]
That's just... awesome.
♪