The Difference Between Distance and Progress

“Progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be.”

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
 

Running through New Brunswick on the Trans Canada Trail

 

For much of this year on the Trans Canada Trail we have measured our journey in kilometres. There is something reassuring about distance because it is wonderfully easy to understand. Twenty kilometres means we moved twenty kilometres farther across Canada. Thirty is better than twenty. Forty can feel like an accomplishment worthy of celebration, particularly when there are still thousands of kilometres somewhere ahead. Every evening the GPS gives the day's efforts a number, the line of our hike extends slightly farther west, and another small piece of an impossibly large country moves from something still ahead of us into somewhere we have already been.

 

Lately, however, we have begun to wonder whether travelling farther each day necessarily means that we are making more progress.

 

The question is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore here in New Brunswick. Fall is advancing around us, the leaves are disappearing from the trees, temperatures are dropping, and migrating birds seem to be offering their own opinion about what we should be doing as they head south overhead. Winter is coming, and we know it. Earlier in the season we imagined reaching Ottawa, perhaps even Toronto, before stopping for the year. Those possibilities now seem increasingly distant, but the temptation remains to get as far as we possibly can before snow and cold finally make the decision for us. Without really deciding to do so, our pace has been increasing. Thirty-kilometre days have become common. Forty no longer seems extraordinary. On one stretch we walked more than 42 km and reached Hampton a full day ahead of schedule. More recently we covered approximately 85 km in two days before arriving tired and sore in Grand Falls.

 

On paper, this looks very much like progress. The problem is that our reasons for being out here have never really been about covering kilometres as quickly as possible.  In fact, there is a lot to suggest just the opposite. We began this #Hike4Birds because we wanted to explore Canada at a human pace, to watch its birds and wildlife, learn something about the landscapes we were travelling through, talk with people in the communities along the way and perhaps encourage others to look more closely at the nature around them. Walking seemed particularly suited to that purpose because it is difficult to hurry through a landscape on foot. Rivers remain beside you for hours.  Birds can interrupt a day's progress because a movement in the trees gave way to us stopping, pulling out the binoculars and watching.  And communities are slow to approach as the farms and fields gradually give way to main streets and downtown.

 

For much of the first few months, those interruptions felt central to the journey rather than obstacles to it. In Newfoundland we learned that even a seemingly straightforward day could change because of weather, trail conditions, birds or conversations. In Nova Scotia, we repeatedly stopped to talk with trail builders and people in small communities. Prince Edward Island perhaps made the lesson clearest of all. There, on the Confederation Trail, taking time seemed essential to allowing the island to reveal itself through red soil, farmland, and acts of hospitality. We had already begun to recognize something that our earlier hikes had suggested: when the purpose of travelling is to experience where you are, moving more slowly is not necessarily a delay.

 

Yet knowing this and actually living by it turn out to be two different things. As autumn progresses through New Brunswick, the calendar has begun exerting its own pull. Every cold morning that we scrape frost off the tent or set out onto the trail in down jackets and with gloves on reminds us that there are only so many walking days left. It now feels as though every weather forecast has become a calculation. If we can cover thirty kilometres today and another thirty tomorrow, perhaps we can reach the next town before the rain. If we push a little farther, perhaps we can gain a day.  If we gain enough days, perhaps Québec City is still possible. Perhaps Montréal. Perhaps somewhere closer to the destination we imagined reaching when this season began.

 

Besides, none of these calculations is unreasonable. Winter in eastern Canada is not something that can simply be ignored because we would like to walk more slowly. We have to think about safety, daylight, temperatures, accommodation, resupply and whether sections of trail will remain practical as the season changes. There are real reasons to move. The difficulty comes when those practical considerations slowly become something else, when the number of kilometres begins determining whether we think a day has been successful.

 

That is where distance and progress begin to separate.

 

Distance vs. Progress

 

A forty-kilometre day might move us farther down the trail and across the map, but it can also leave us too tired to explore the area we finally reach. Arriving somewhere after dark means that the place becomes little more than somewhere to find food and sleep before leaving again in the morning. A bird glimpsed beside the trail becomes something we acknowledge without stopping because there are still fifteen or twenty kilometres to go. A historic site can be passed because it is closed for the season or because we simply do not feel we have time. Even conversations en route begin to acquire an invisible clock. We still stop, because meeting people has become one of the richest parts of this journey, but somewhere in the back of our minds is the awareness that every half hour spent talking is another two or three kilometres we will not cover before dark.

 

This is a peculiar contradiction for a journey whose entire purpose depends upon paying attention.  The more determined we become to make progress, the easier it becomes to move past the very things we came here to experience.

 

There is no villain in this. The schedule matters. The weather matters. Seasonal realities matter.  Reaching a safe place to camp for the night before dark matters. We also genuinely enjoy the physical satisfaction of covering distance. There is something rewarding about looking back at the end of a long day and realizing that our own feet carried us forty kilometres farther across Canada. After months on the trail, our bodies are capable of distances that once would have seemed extraordinary, and discovering those capabilities is part of the experience too. The problem is not walking far. The problem is allowing distance to become the only measurement that counts.

 

Walking across Atlantic Canada has already given us other ways to measure a day. There are mornings when we have hardly progressed before stopping because a mixed flock of birds has appeared beside the trail. In northern New Brunswick we recently found ourselves watching Pine Siskins feeding among Black-capped Chickadees, House Finches, American Goldfinches, robins and a Hairy Woodpecker, only to encounter Cedar Waxwings farther along. On the Aroostook River we stopped again to watch Hooded Mergansers moving upstream. None of those moments helped us reach Grand Falls more quickly, but they are among the things we will probably remember long after the number of kilometres has been forgotten.

 

The same is true of people. A stranger walking a dog who assures us we are almost in town, someone stopping beside the road to offer encouragement, a conversation in a general store, a person who recognizes us from an interview, or a host who gives us somewhere warm to dry soaked gear does nothing measurable to advance the line across the map. Yet increasingly those encounters are becoming the geography of this journey. We remember places because of who we met there and what happened, not because of the number displayed on the GPS when we arrived.

 

Perhaps progress on a journey like this has to be measured in more than one way.

 

We absolutely need to keep moving west and later north if we are ever to get anywhere. And some days we do have to choose distance.  Weather changes. Supplies run low. A campground or accommodation lies farther away than we would prefer. Winter does not care very much about the ideals of slow travel.   But we also want to get to know places rather than simply cross them.  We want to stay long enough to notice the birds, watch a river, learn why a town developed where it did, understand who maintains a section of trail, hear someone’s story, and simply spend enough time in a place for it to become something more than scenery passing beside us.

 

This is uncomfortable to admit because we still want to get farther this year. We remain disappointed that we have not kept to the season we had planned according to our original expectations.  And so, the idea of reaching Quebec City or Montreal or Ottawa is difficult to give up on.   Every time the forecast shows another few days of tolerable weather or the trail becomes easier to trek along, the possibility returns. Perhaps we could walk a little farther tomorrow. Perhaps we could make up some time. Perhaps another forty-kilometre day would put us closer to where we hoped to be. Then we have days like the ones approaching Grand Falls. We cover enormous distances. We arrive tired and sore. We look at the map with satisfaction because the line has grown considerably longer.  But the question remains – did we get farther or did we actually get what we could have from our time on the trail?

 

Perhaps there is no single answer. Some days the kilometres themselves are enough. Some days the challenge of covering them is part of the journey itself. But if we move so quickly that the birds become shapes we no longer stop to identify, communities become grocery stores and places to sleep, conversations become delays, and the landscape becomes something we simply need to get through, then we may have succeeded spectacularly at crossing Canada while slowly losing sight of why we wanted to cross it on foot.

 

Right now that possibility bothers us more than falling behind schedule.   Tomorrow we will keep walking. Winter is still coming, Québec is still ahead, and there is no pretending that time has suddenly ceased to matter. We will probably continue to have long days, and we may very well continue to complain that we are behind where we hoped to be.  But perhaps progress cannot always be found in the distance between two points on a map. Sometimes it might be found in remembering to still travel slowly enough to know what was between them.

 

See you on the trail.