From Desk to Quest – Why We Decided to Walk Across Canada

 Leaving Behind the Familiar to Explore Canada on the Great Trail

 
You might think that making the decision to leave a good job, sell our house, give away most of our possessions, and spend the next few years walking across the country on the Great Trail would be something so monumental that we would remember exactly when and why it happened. Perhaps there was some dramatic event, an unexpected crisis, or a sudden realization that convinced us to abandon the security of our everyday lives in favour of an uncertain future. In reality, there was no single moment when everything changed. Instead, the idea developed gradually, growing out of our experiences, our interests, and an increasing awareness that the lives we were living were becoming quite different from those we had once imagined for ourselves.

 
For years, we have followed a fairly conventional path. We completed our education, established careers, purchased a house, and settled into the routines that accompany working and maintaining a home. We were fortunate in many respects. We had income, a place to live, and opportunities to travel. We had worked hard to achieve many of the things that are generally considered measures of a successful and stable life. Yet somewhere along the way, we began to wonder whether continuing to accumulate possessions, professional accomplishments, and pay bills each month was really how we wanted to spend the next several decades.
 
The question was not whether we had made mistakes or whether our lives were somehow unsatisfactory. It was whether the future we were working towards was one we actually wanted.
 

A Conservationist Disconnected from Nature

 
Perhaps one of the stranger aspects of this realization was that it emerged, at least in part, from my work as a conservation biologist.  I had spent years studying ecology, conservation biology, and forestry, eventually completing a PhD and working in environmental conservation. Much of my professional life involved studying bird populations, mapping habitats, analyzing datasets, and using geographic information systems to understand the distribution of species and the landscapes they depend upon. I was interested in how environments change, how human activities affect ecosystems, and how scientific information can contribute to better decisions about conservation.
 
It was work that I did and still believe in.

 
However, despite having chosen a career because of my love of birds, wildlife, and the outdoors, I increasingly found myself spending most of my time indoors, sitting in front of a computer. My days were filled with maps, spreadsheets, reports, emails, and meetings. I could spend hours studying a landscape through satellite imagery or analyzing information collected by other people in the field without ever having an opportunity to explore the places I was investigating.

It was not long before I began to see the frustration and irony in devoting your professional life to protecting natural environments while spending so little time experiencing them yourself.  I could describe habitat fragmentation, explain the importance of biodiversity, and discuss the ecological value of wetlands, forests, and grasslands. Yet increasingly, my own encounters with those environments were confined to weekends, holidays, or the occasional opportunity to escape from work. My understanding of nature was becoming more detailed and technical, while my everyday experience of it was becoming increasingly limited.
 
In effect, I was becoming a conservationist with nature deficit disorder – someone dedicated to the protection of nature without setting foot out in it. 

 
This was not a rejection of science or of the importance of professional conservation work. Scientific research, monitoring programs, environmental policy, and the efforts of conservation organizations are essential. Nor did I imagine that walking through a forest would somehow provide a substitute for the detailed analysis required to understand complex ecological problems.  Rather, I began to feel that something important was missing from the relationship between what I studied and how I lived.  I had chosen this profession because I loved being outdoors, watching birds, exploring different habitats, and discovering the natural world. Yet somewhere between completing my education and pursuing a career my life had shifted to fitting in time outdoors in between everything else once it was finished. And, increasingly, everything else was never finished.
 

From Cyberspace to Greenspace

 
Of course, this was not simply a problem associated with my profession. Sean and I were both spending much of our working lives in front of computers, and when we returned home in the evenings, we often found ourselves sitting in front of yet another screen – the TV.  Like many people, we relied on technology for our work, communication, entertainment, and information. We checked emails, followed news and social media, watched television, and used the internet to research places we hoped to visit. Digital technology provided remarkable opportunities to learn about the world, but it also seemed to be consuming an ever-increasing portion of the time we might otherwise have spent experiencing it.

 
We were connected to more information, more people, and more places than ever before, yet somehow we were spending less time engaging directly with the world outside our windows.  What troubled us was not the existence of technology, but how easily it had become the default way to occupy our time. After a long day working indoors, it was remarkably easy to sit down, turn on a screen, and discover several hours later that another evening had disappeared. We could spend an entire weekend researching a hiking trail, watching videos of someone else's adventure, or planning a future holiday without ever putting on our boots and going for a walk.

We began to recognize that there was an important difference between knowing about a place and actually experiencing it.  More simply put, we were spending an extraordinary amount of time looking at representations of the world rather than participating in it.  Eventually, we began to wonder whether it was time to recharge ourselves instead of continually recharging our devices.
 

Discovering What Walking Could Offer

 
Fortunately, we already knew something about an alternative. We had discovered a shared enthusiasm for hiking and exploring nature while attending university in southern Ontario, and over the years we have spent as much of our free time as possible exploring trails, kayaking, walking through conservation areas, and exploring parks. Neither of us considers ourselves particularly athletic, and we certainly do not have unlimited time or money to pursue outdoor adventures. However, walking was something we could do almost anywhere, without requiring elaborate equipment or specialized skills or high costs.

 
Our wanderings eventually led us to explore sections of Bruce Trail, gradually increasing the distances we were comfortable covering. What began as a way to spend time outdoors became an opportunity to discover places we had previously known little about, even though many were relatively close to home.

 
A couple of years ago we set out on something considerably more ambitious and walked approximately 800 kilometres across northern Spain on the Camino Francés, part of the Camino de Santiago. And the following year, we returned to Europe to hike roughly 780 kilometres along the Via Podiensis /GR65 in France.
 
These journeys were very different from our normal holidays. Instead of moving between destinations by car, train, or airplane, we spent weeks walking through landscapes that changed gradually around us. We travelled through agricultural fields, forests, villages, towns, and cities, encountering places that we might never otherwise have thought to visit. We met people from different countries and backgrounds, shared meals and conversations, and discovered how much could happen during an ordinary day of walking.

 
Each journey was wonderful, yet when each hike ended, we almost immediately began discussing where we might walk next. There was something appealing about the simplicity of travelling on foot. Each day we had a direction to follow, a distance we hoped to cover, and whatever unexpected experiences might occur along the way. We did not need to be particularly fast, and there was usually little advantage in rushing past the very places we had travelled so far to see. In the process, we can explore the world more, notice the ordinary details of the landscapes around us, and begin to pay attention to birds and wildlife once more. 
 
Gradually, we began – with prompting from a good number of others - to ask ourselves an obvious question. Why were we travelling thousands of kilometres to explore other countries when there was so much of Canada we had never seen?
 

Why Wait Until Retirement?

 
There was another consideration that made this question increasingly difficult to ignore.  Like many people, we had grown up with the understanding that if we worked hard, established careers, bought a home, and saved enough money, we might eventually retire and enjoy the freedom to travel. In theory, this seemed like a perfectly reasonable plan. In practice, we were becoming less convinced that postponing the things we most wanted to experience until some uncertain point in the future was necessarily a good idea.

 
Over the last few years, several people among our family, friends, and colleagues have died unexpectedly, many while still in their fifties or early sixties. These experiences were reminders that good health, opportunities, and time itself are not things any of us can take for granted.  We were also aware that retirement was hardly guaranteed to arrive with the financial security, health, or freedom we might hope for. Even if everything went according to plan, there was no certainty that we would still be interested in, or physically capable of, undertaking the journeys we dreamed about.

 
During our hikes and pilgrimage on the Camino, we repeatedly met people who encouraged us to travel while we were young enough and healthy enough to enjoy it. Some had waited until retirement to begin exploring the world, while others wished they had started sooner.  Their advice reinforced something we were already beginning to consider.  Why were we waiting?
 
With that said, we do not propose that everyone should leave their job, sell their house, or set out on a long-distance hike. People have different responsibilities, circumstances, interests, and opportunities, and there are many entirely reasonable reasons to value stability.  However, we were beginning to recognize that we had a choice about how to spend our own time.  We could continue along the path we were following, hoping that one day we would have enough money, freedom, and health to undertake the adventures we were continually discussing. Or we could reconsider our priorities and attempt something different while we had the opportunity.
 

Looking Beyond the Career We Had Built

 
Of all the practical difficulties involved in making this decision, stepping away from established careers was perhaps one of the most complicated.  Education and professional experience represent substantial investments of time, effort, and money. After spending years completing degrees, developing specialized skills, and establishing a place within a profession, it can be difficult to contemplate leaving that path behind.  There is also a strong expectation that a successful career should progress in a relatively predictable direction. Each qualification, position, and accomplishment is supposed to lead towards the next opportunity, offering greater responsibility, financial security, or professional recognition.
 
Yet professional advancement and personal satisfaction are not necessarily the same thing.

To be clear, neither of us considers the years we have invested in education, employment, and caring for family to have been wasted. We had learned a tremendous amount, developed interests and abilities that will remain with us, and met people who had influenced how we understand the world.  But lately we have increasingly been questioning the assumption that having invested so much time in one direction means that we are obliged to continue along it.  A PhD was something I had earned. It was not a requirement to spend the rest of my life sitting at a desk.
 

Why Walk Across Canada?

 
Once we began seriously discussing the possibility of taking an extended break from our working lives to go hiking and once again explore the world, the question became where we wanted to go.  At the same time, we began learning more about the Great Trail, formerly known as the Trans Canada Trail. Here was a national network of recreational pathways connecting communities and landscapes from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific to the Arctic. It consisted of hundreds of local trails, former railway corridors, footpaths, trails, and waterways that have recently been connected together. The more we investigated, the more intriguing the possibility became.

 
It is vast, with huge parts of it undefined and with little information about much of the route - but perhaps that was part of what attracted us.  It invites trail users to follow established routes and experience the country rather than simply visiting the familiar destinations.  To follow the entire route is to deliberately explore the spaces between the places.  We could visit communities we had never heard of, explore local trails, discover different ecosystems, learn about regional histories, and see how the country changed as we travelled from east to west to north. 
 

Choosing the Uncertain Road Ahead

 
Of course, deciding that we want to walk across Canada is considerably easier than figuring out how we might actually do it.  Even in these early stages, we can see that the distances involved are enormous after all. We need to consider seasonal weather, winter conditions, camping along the trail, food options, resupply possibilities, equipment needs, how to navigate across the country, and the practical difficulties of travelling through regions where services could be separated by considerable distances.  And at present we have no idea how long the journey will actually take.   These are still early days in the planning despite the amount of research we have put into this. 

Our previous hikes had provided some useful experience, but walking for several weeks along established European trails that are over 1000 years old is not the same as attempting to cross Canada over several years. We understand that our plans will almost certainly change, and that much of what we needed to know will only be discovered once we begin.
 
There are also more immediate concerns. Selling our house, leaving our employment, reducing our possessions, and stepping away from regular routines of life – each of which is a substantial undertaking.   In essence, we are giving up a huge amount of security without knowing exactly what might replace it. We are certainly not independently wealthy, and our proposed journey will require us to live on a very limited budget.  And has been made clear to us already – we have no guarantee that we will be able to return to the same professional opportunities afterward.

 
Understandably, not everyone thinks that this was a particularly sensible idea.  And to be honest, there have certainly been moments when we have wondered whether they might be right.
 
Nevertheless, we kept returning to the same consideration. If we did not attempt something like this now, when would we?  But ultimately we can either continue researching, planning, and imagining what it might be like to walk across Canada or something adventurous, or we can begin the process towards actually making it a reality right now.
 

Making Room for a Different Kind of Life

 
Ultimately, our decision to undertake the Great Trail is not about rejecting the lives we have built, nor is it an attempt to abandon our responsibilities or escape from the modern world.
It is in so many ways about reconsidering what we want our lives to include.
 
We want to spend more time outside, rather than continually finding reasons why we are too busy to do so. We want to explore places we have never visited, meet people whose experiences differ from our own, and become more familiar with the country we call home.  We want to return to the kinds of experiences that originally inspired our interest in conservation, natural history, photography, and travel.  We also want the freedom to be curious again, without every activity having to contribute to a professional objective, financial goal, or carefully organized schedule.
 
Somewhere along the way, we have begun treating the activities we most enjoyed as rewards to be fitted into the spaces remaining after work and other obligations.   Perhaps most importantly, we do not want to reach some distant point in the future and discover that we have spent years waiting for the right opportunity to do something we could have and should have attempted much earlier. 

 
We are aware that walking across Canada will not somehow magically eliminate life’s difficulties or provide answers to every question we might have.  There will undoubtedly be setbacks, uncomfortable days, mistakes, and plenty of occasions when we question the wisdom of our decisions.  But there will also be opportunities to discover things that we cannot presently imagine, precisely because we have never been to the places we are preparing to visit.
 
The fact is that we do not know exactly where this journey will take us, what we will encounter, or how things will change along the way. We cannot predict what opportunities will be waiting when we eventually return, or even how long we will be away.  For now, we know that there is an extraordinary country waiting to be explored, and that somewhere on its eastern coastline there is a trail that leads westward.  So, after years of studying maps, planning journeys, and dreaming about the places we would like to visit, we have decided that it is time to stop imagining what it would be like to walk across Canada.
 
It is time to find out.
 
See you on the Trail!
www.comewalkwithus.online