The last novel of a great adventure writer tells the story of Sir Edward Leithen, an eminent lawyer who learns he has incurable tuberculosis. Resolving to "die with his boots on," the ailing Leithen finds himself in the midst of the bitterly cold Canadian winter wilderness, pursuing a crazed fur-trapper who is seeking the semi-mythical Sick Heart River, where the temperatures are mild and all that a man needs can be found. Overtaking his quarry as he reaches that destination, Leithen -- like the trapper -- discovers that the Sick Heart River is soul-deadening, a place where no one can survive without going mad. For Leithen, the lesson is that there is more spiritual food to be found in the reality of his terrible, painful struggle with his own illness and with the freezing weather than in the supposed comforts of the Sick Heart River.

Too much of our recovery can be spent looking for some mythical reward that we will one day attain if only we work our programs "properly." We are looking for heaven, but hoping to find it by staying in the comfort of our own homes, as Leithen was tempted briefly to do. Steps 10, 11 and 12 invite us instead into the wilderness of not-knowing and not-understanding. If we have the courage to leave the comfort of merely repeating Steps 4 thru 9, we find -- as Leithen found -- that the difficult journey we have undertaken can become in some deeply mysterious way its own reward. We find that we are living in the world as it is, rather than as we would like it to be.