Leaving the Trail Before We Were Finished

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
 
T. S. Eliot, “Little Gidding,” Four Quartets
 

Rivière-du-Loup to Montréal by VIA Rail

 

There are obvious ways for a long walk to end. You can reach a trailhead, walk into a city, arrive at a cathedral, stand beside an ocean, or finally reach the place on the map toward which you have been travelling for weeks or months. You stop, take off your backpack, perhaps take a photograph, and acknowledge that something has come to an end. What we are discovering now is that leaving a trail is not necessarily the same thing as being finished with it.

 

Yesterday winter brought our first year on the Trans Canada Trail to an end in Rivière-du-Loup. Snow and increasingly cold temperatures had made continuing toward Charlevoix unrealistic, and so, after more than 3,000 km on the Great Trail (formerly Trans Canada Trail) since leaving Cape Spear in June, we stepped away from the route and boarded a train for Montréal. Almost immediately, both of us began wondering whether we had stopped too soon. Perhaps the weather would have changed? Perhaps the snow would not be that bad? Perhaps we could still have pushed farther along the St. Lawrence, made it through Charlevoix, or even reached Québec City before conditions became impossible?

 

None of these thoughts were particularly sensible, especially because the truth is that we are very tired. We have been walking almost continuously since April 11th, when we began the Camino Portugués in Lisbon. After reaching Santiago we continued west on the Camino Finisterre to Muxía and Fisterra, flew back across the Atlantic, and within days began the much larger journey we had spent years planning. Since Cape Spear we have walked across Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick before completing the first small section of Québec.

 

There have been breaks, although relatively few of them would probably qualify as either rest or vacations. Some came because tropical storms and a hurricane made continuing impossible for a couple of days, while others came because we stepped away from the trail to give presentations or bird walks. Mostly, however, since April we have simply gotten up each morning, put on our backpacks and continued walking. Yesterday we stopped, and perhaps that is why today feels so strange.

 

Our return to the world began at two o’clock this morning. By 3:30 AM we had checked out of our hotel and were making our way through the darkness toward the still-closed VIA Rail station in Rivière-du-Loup. There was something slightly ridiculous about standing outside a railway station in the snow before dawn with our battered packs, dirty gear and sun-faded clothing, waiting for a train that would cover in a few hours a distance that would have taken us weeks or a month to walk. With that said, by the time we finally boarded, the change in pace was almost startling.

 

Outside the window Québec rushed past in a way we were no longer accustomed to seeing. For months our progress across Canada has been measured at walking speed. Twenty or thirty kilometers a day - occasionally more. A town might take hours to approach. A distant hill could remain on the horizon for much of a day or two. At this pace we notice when the forest changes, when a river begins running in a different direction, when the birds around us shift, or when the gravel beneath our feet changes. From the train, entire landscapes appeared and vanished in moments. It should have felt wonderfully easy, and perhaps under different circumstances it would have, but instead both of us felt strangely restless. One day we had been hikers arranging our lives around daylight, weather, food, water and kilometres. The next morning we were sitting among commuters and travellers while darkened winter landscapes flashed past the windows. Our packs and appearance attracted more than a few glances and a couple of muttered comments, and after months in which being dusty, sweaty and slightly dishevelled seemed entirely normal, we were suddenly conscious that we looked very much like people who had been living outdoors. Perhaps we should have given ourselves a few days before attempting to return to society, because neither of us seemed quite prepared for how quickly the routines of the trail disappeared once we stepped onto the train.

 

For much of the journey the woman seated beside us scrolled continuously through Facebook and Instagram, her thumb moving steadily upward as photograph after photograph, post after post, and video after video appeared for perhaps a second or two before disappearing again. There was nothing especially remarkable about this. Before setting out this year I doubt either of us would even have noticed it, and given how much of our own project depends upon photographs, blogs and social media, criticizing someone for looking at a telephone would be more than a little hypocritical. Yet today it was difficult not to watch, perhaps because after months of living at walking speed we had become more aware of how much time, effort and attention can exist behind a single image. A photograph might represent someone waiting beside a marsh for a bird to appear, getting up before dawn to see a sunrise, spending hours climbing a mountain, meeting a stranger they would remember for the rest of their life, or finally reaching a place they had dreamed for years of seeing. Sean has taken thousands upon thousands of photographs during this journey so far, and we have spent countless evenings after walking all day sorting through them, editing them, writing about what we saw, trying to identify birds, answering questions and attempting somehow to communicate what Canada looks like when travelled at three or four kilometres an hour. 

Watching thousands of other people’s moments disappear beneath one person’s thumb almost faster than they could be seen was unexpectedly humbling and, if I am honest, a little depressing. There was nothing wrong with it, but after seven months spent moving slowly through the world it made us wonder how much any of us truly notice when so much passes in front of us so quickly.

 

The rest of the carriage seemed unusually unsettled as well. At one point a gentleman wanted the lights turned off and the window shades closed because reflections were interfering with the movies he was watching on his laptop. Not long afterwards another passenger wanted the lights turned back on. Someone repeatedly disappeared toward the washroom to smoke. Chips were crunched.  Gum was snapped. People became irritated, and requests gradually became complaints and declarations about what people had a right to do. As the sun began rising outside the train there seemed to be a great deal of discussion about individual rights and surprisingly little willingness to accommodate anyone else. 

Perhaps we simply noticed it because we were tired, but after months on the trail the contrast felt sharper than it otherwise might have. For much of this year we have depended upon strangers, and one of the overwhelming discoveries of our first season has been how frequently people choose to help one another when they do not have to. People have given us water, food, directions and places to sleep. They have helped us around impassable sections, checked whether we were safe, warned us about bears, storms and washed-out bridges, welcomed us into their communities and sometimes gone astonishingly far out of their way to help two dirty hikers they had never seen before.

 

Don’t get me wrong – our time on the trail has certainly not been free of conflict, criticism or unpleasant encounters, but generosity has been so common that perhaps ordinary impatience simply sounded louder than it once would have. We were not quite sure what to make of any of it, so mostly we stared out the window and watched Québec rush past while trying to understand why something as ordinary as a train ride suddenly felt so disorienting.

 

When we finally arrived in Montréal the city seemed to close around us almost immediately. Traffic, buildings, people, noise, and crowds all arrived at once after months in which much of each day involved simply figuring out where to walk, where to find food and water, and where to sleep. We made our way to the hotel and paid for an early check-in, only to discover that the room was still not available. This was hardly a catastrophe, but at that moment it seemed absurdly complicated. On the trail, if we were exhausted and needed to stop, we generally found somewhere appropriate and either sat down or put up the tent and crawled inside. Apparently hotels required considerably more negotiation.

 

With time to fill, we went for a late breakfast and found a wonderful plate of crêpes, which improved our opinion of civilization considerably. By noon our room was ready, and long hot showers followed before we headed back into Montréal. We visited Notre-Dame Basilica, wandered through the city, explored Atwater Market and eventually made our way to the offices of the Great Trail, where we had arranged to meet some of the people behind the pathway we have now been following for more than five months. Their office was surprisingly small given the scale of the trail itself, but it was wonderful to finally meet some of the staff, talk about the journey, and receive Great Trail patches and crests for our packs. After more than 3,000 km following this enormous line across the country, holding those patches somehow meant quite a lot.  It felt like someone was acknowledging us and what we were trying to do.

 

Then the snow began. Not a few decorative flakes drifting between the buildings, but enough of a storm to make wandering around Montréal increasingly unpleasant. Eventually even the city seemed to be telling us the same thing Québec had been telling us for several days: enough. We retreated to the hotel, rested for a while, went downstairs for salads and bruschetta for dinner, and then returned to the room with nowhere else we needed to be.

 

After so many months of constant movement, simply sitting still should have felt like a luxury, but instead it felt oddly disorienting. Yesterday our lives had direction in the most literal sense possible. Wake up, pack up, eat something, put on the backpack, and walk west. There were endless complications hidden within those instructions, but the basic shape of every day was extraordinarily simple. Tonight there was nowhere we had to walk, and although that should perhaps have felt liberating, it did not. Part of our frustration undoubtedly comes from where we stopped. When we planned this first season we imagined reaching Ottawa, perhaps even Toronto. Instead delays en route throughout the year meant that winter caught us at Rivière-du-Loup, only a short distance into our fifth province.

 

Looking at a map of Canada, the distance we have travelled seems enormous until we look at how much remains. And at the moment that is what we are focused on – all that remains.  We are proud of what we accomplished this year, but we are also disappointed, and perhaps both things can be true at the same time. We crossed four provinces and began a fifth, saw landscapes and wildlife we had only previously known through maps and books, met hundreds of people, shared our #Hike4Birds message in communities across the Maritimes, and learned more about walking across Canada than any amount of planning could have taught us. Yet when we look west, Ottawa is still a long way away, Ontario is vast, and the overwhelming majority of the country remains somewhere beyond the horizon.

 

Perhaps exhaustion is making everything seem heavier tonight. Perhaps having time to stop has finally allowed the criticisms and comments we normally try to ignore while walking to catch up with us. Perhaps sitting on the train watching hundreds of people’s photographs, words and experiences flick past in seconds made us question what exactly we are doing when we spend hours each evening trying to share this journey online. Or perhaps after months of walking slowly, paying attention to where we are, watching birds, talking with people and dealing with whatever the weather and trail put in front of us, returning suddenly to speed and screens simply feels strange. At the moment we honestly do not know, and perhaps we do not need to know yet.

 

What we do know is that somehow part of us is still back on the trail. We already miss waking up and wondering what is around the next bend. We miss watching the landscape change almost imperceptibly as we hike on, the uncertainty of not knowing precisely where the day will end, and even some of the inconveniences we spent months complaining about. Perhaps that is what happens when you stop without feeling finished. You can step away from a trail, board a train and travel hundreds of kilometres from it, but the routines do not disappear quite as quickly as the landscape outside the window.

 

Tomorrow we will once again board a train which will continue carrying us toward home, but tonight, lying in a warm hotel room while snow falls over Montréal, neither of us feels entirely certain where home is. For the past seven months it has mostly been wherever we stopped walking, wherever the tent went up, wherever our backpacks landed at the end of the day. Our first season on the Trans Canada Trail may be over, but apparently leaving the trail behind takes considerably longer than simply stepping off it.

 

See you on the trail.