The Difference Between a Plan and an Expectation

“That which is an obstacle on the road helps us on this road.”

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book V, 20
 

Rest day in Spruce Woods

 

Long-distance walking requires a surprising amount of planning for something that so rarely goes according to plan.  Each season, each section, and in fact, each morning begins with a rough idea of where we hope to end up. We know how much water we are carrying, how much food remains, where the next town should be, have a general guess about whether there is somewhere to camp, and roughly how many kilometres separate us from whatever we hope will be the day's destination.  Amid this, we try to understand what options we have and, in the process, we make contingency plans for the contingency plans.   To this end, after more than two years on the Trans Canada Trail, we have become considerably better at this than we had when we had to backtrack off the TCT after Bauline on the ECT, caught in a snowstorm or when we left Cape Spear to begin our trek across the nation on the Trans Canada Trail a year later.

 

And yet the trail continues to remind us that a plan is not the same thing as a promise.

 

The difference became rather obvious on the Crow Wing Trail as we approached Emerson. We knew the temperatures were going to be extreme. We began the day carrying nearly twenty litres of water and hoped to reach town before the worst of the heat. The route itself seemed straightforward enough: long gravel roads, little shade and a landscape stretching almost uninterrupted toward the American border. By mid-morning the heat had become oppressive. By noon our water was warming inside the bottles. By early afternoon the gravel roads seemed to radiate heat through the soles of our shoes, and we were stopping constantly to drink. By which point we had covered roughly 41 kilometres and were only about five kilometres from Emerson when both of us began feeling nauseous and disoriented.

 

Five kilometres is not far. Under normal circumstances, it would barely have registered after a day that long. But these were not normal circumstances.  As a result, we did something we have never done on the Trans Canada Trail - we called a taxi. Blessedly, thankfully, wonderfully - an extremely kind woman arrived within minutes, helped us load the carts into her van and turned the air conditioning up as we drove the final few kilometres into town. We checked into the motel, stood under cold showers and gradually began feeling human again.

 

Looking back, stopping was obviously the correct decision. At the time, however, there was still a part of us that disliked the fact that the day had not ended the way we had imagined it would.  That reaction has made me think about the difference between planning for something and expecting it.  In the process, I have come to see more clearly that while planning is necessary, expectations can be more dangerous.

 

A plan says: This is what we hope to do.

Expectation slowly changes the sentence to: This is what should happen.

 

The distinction seems almost insignificant until the trail refuses to cooperate.

 

If the forecast predicts sunshine and rain arrives instead, the rain somehow feels worse than rain we expected from the beginning. If the map suggests a good trail and we find mud, washouts or a road closure, the frustration can overshadow everything else around us. If we believe there will be a campground, motel, or restaurant at the end of the day and discover it is closed, full or no longer exists, disappointment can become far larger than the practical problem itself. The same thing happens with distance.  If we expect to walk thirty kilometres and circumstances turn it into forty-five or fifty, those extra kilometres can feel almost personal. As though the trail itself has somehow failed to honour an agreement it never made.

 

We have encountered versions of this throughout the journey. Ferries have determined when we could move between provinces. Post offices have closed before we arrived, leaving us without resupply boxes and food. Storms have stopped us and flooded pathways. Trails shown on maps have vanished on the ground. Campgrounds have turned out to be dedicated to RVers and do not permit tents. Restaurants have been closed, bridges have been out, and roads have become impassable. None of this is particularly unusual on a journey 24,000 km kilometres long.

 

What has surprised me is how much the emotional difficulty depends upon what we thought was supposed to happen.  In many ways southern Manitoba has been making that especially clear.

 

There is a great deal of exposure out here, both physically and mentally. The landscape can appear incredibly open, with few places to shelter from sun, wind or rain. Communities can be many kilometres apart. Services that look close together on a map may still require most of a day (or several days) on foot. The Crow Wing Trail itself has shifted between pleasant pathways, grassy tracks, gravel rural routes and roads. Even directional signs sometimes disappear, leaving us to compare an app with what actually exists in front of us. The temptation is to fight each difference between expectation and reality. Sometimes that means trying to force the day back toward the original vision of the plan made at a desk months ago. We walk farther. We push harder. We become frustrated because the trail is not what the TCT’s own map suggested, because the weather changed, the trail has been re-routed, or because something we had mentally promised ourselves at the end of the day is no longer available.

 

Increasingly, I am beginning to wonder how much energy is wasted arguing with circumstances that have already happened and which cannot be changed.   The heat does not care that we intended to reach Emerson on foot. A closed campground does not prioritize RVers or seniors because we planned to sleep there.  Grocery stores have not closed because simply because we need food.  Just as rain does not become less wet because sunshine was forecast. The practical problem still has to be solved, but the additional disappointment is often entirely our own creation.

 

That does not mean we should stop making plans. Quite the opposite. Walking long distances safely requires preparation. Water sources have to be figured out. Food has to be carried. Distances matter. Places to safely sleep matter. A vague philosophy of simply wandering wherever the day leads would not get us very far across Manitoba – let alone across Canada.  Amid all of this, I think that the challenge is learning to prepare carefully without becoming emotionally attached to a particular outcome – which is harder than it sounds. 

 

Hope easily becomes expectation, which shapes a day or a region on the trail.  We hope for a shower after a hot day. We hope to get the tent up before it rains.  We hope there is food in the next town. We hope the trail ahead is shaded.  We hope the mosquitoes will not be too bad. We hope there is somewhere comfortable to sit down at the end of today’s trek.  And in many ways there is nothing wrong with any of those hopes. Some of them are what keep us moving through difficult days.  The problem begins when we decide, without realizing it, that because we hoped for something, we were somehow entitled to receive it.

 

Almost two weeks after, as we approached Spruce Woods Provincial Park,  we experienced another version of this. We knew that backcountry trails were closed because of the fire risk, but looking at the map we thought we could still follow a road through the park and perhaps spend part of the day beneath trees. Instead, the road was closed too, and we were directed around the area on exposed concessions that added more than twenty kilometres to the day. In the brutal heat, with the forest visible beside us but inaccessible, it was difficult not to feel cheated.

 

We had imagined shade.  We had expected shade. What we got was another hot road for a distance equal to what would have once filled our day.   For a while that difference was almost all we could see.  Then, eventually, we began actually looking at where we were. Beside us were restored mixed-grass prairies, experimental grazing lands and fragments of tall-grass prairie. Once we stopped comparing the landscape in front of us to the forest we had expected, the colours began to emerge: blue-green grasses, dry blond stalks, reddish tones, purple and yellow wildflowers, low junipers and an entire ecosystem we might otherwise have walked past while resenting its lack of trees.

 

The road had not improved, the heat had not disappeared - we had simply stopped demanding that the day become something it was not.  Perhaps this is what “accept, don't expect” means for us. Not resignation, not pretending that difficult circumstances are enjoyable, and not abandoning plans or lowering standards.  It is simply recognizing the moment we are actually standing in before deciding that it has failed to become the one we had hoped for and begun to imagine.

 

That distinction matters more while hiking and moving slower – if only because there is so much time for expectation to build. A destination can move around in the mind for hours before we reach it. We can spend half a day imagining the cold drink at the next store, the shower in a motel, the shade beneath a stand of trees or the campsite shown on the map. By the time we arrive, the imagined version can feel almost real.  When it disappears, the disappointment can feel equally real.  Yet some of the best experiences on this journey have come from days that bore very little resemblance to the ones we planned.  Someone stops to give us help, a place we never intended to explore becomes memorable, a closed shop gives way to something else that turns out to be better.

 

None of this means that everything happens for a clear reason. Sometimes a closure is simply inconvenient. Sometimes the motel is simply full. Sometimes forty kilometres in extreme heat is simply miserable and has to be gotten through.   But perhaps we can make those days harder than they already are by insisting that they should have been different. Walking seems to expose that habit with unusual clarity. At home, there are often enough alternatives to preserve the illusion of control. If one place is closed, there is another nearby. If the weather is poor, plans can be changed with relatively little consequence. On the trail, choices are fewer and distances larger. Reality arrives with less negotiation.

 

Perhaps that is why long-distance walking keeps returning us to the same lesson.  Plan carefully and hope for the best - but also leave enough room for the day to be what it is. 

 

Tomorrow we will continue west across Manitoba. We have already checked the route. We know where we hope to stop, how much water we need and what the forecast says.  It is a good plan – or at the very least it is our best guess.  Tonight we simply  are trying not to mistake it for a promise.

 

See you on the trail!