When Determination Is No Longer Enough

“If we have our own why in life, we shall get along with almost any how.”
 
Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols
 

Mental Exhaustion on a Long-Distance Hike across Canada

 

For the past several years, whenever we have encountered a difficult day on the Trans Canada Trail, our usual response has been to find some way to keep walking. Sometimes that has meant getting up earlier, continuing later into the evening, adjusting our route, or simply accepting that the next few kilometres are going to be unpleasant. We have walked through rain and snow, struggled along flooded pathways, crossed provinces in extreme summer heat, and spent more hours beside busy roadways and roaring highways than we care to remember. There have been days when we were exhausted before breakfast, when our equipment seemed determined to fall apart, our backpacks felt misweighted,  and when the distance remaining to our destination felt considerably greater than the number displayed on our maps. Yet somehow we have generally managed to continue, reassured by the knowledge that a difficult day rarely lasts forever and that tomorrow might bring something entirely different.

 

Over the years, we have come to regard determination (ok maybe stubbornness) as one of the essential qualities of long-distance walking. In life, there are always reasons to stop, postpone, or reconsider an undertaking, particularly one as ambitious as crossing Canada on foot. Weather changes, trails become difficult, expenses increase, and the comforts of home can begin to seem extraordinarily appealing after several weeks and months of sleeping in a tent, carrying everything you need, and increasingly smelling worse and worse. If we had allowed every difficulty to convince us to abandon our plans, we probably would never have made it across Newfoundland, let alone through the Maritime provinces, Québec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and most of Alberta.

 

And yet, sitting here in Cochrane, with the Rocky Mountains finally rising before us, we have reached a point where the determination that has carried us across more than 11,500 kilometres of Canada no longer seems entirely sufficient.

 

We are still capable of walking. We can get up tomorrow morning, pack our equipment, examine the next section of the Trans Canada Trail, and begin putting one foot in front of the other. We have become reasonably proficient at that particular routine, and I suspect that if we absolutely had to, we could continue westward without taking a break…and arrive in Victoria, BC. But increasingly, as we have made our way through Alberta, we have begun to recognize that there is a difference between being physically capable of continuing and possessing the strength to continue with the same sense of purpose that brought us here.

 

That distinction is proving considerably more difficult to understand than sore feet, heavy backpacks, or the practical challenges of finding somewhere to sleep.  For the first time since leaving Cape Spear in June 2019, I think we are genuinely struggling with the accumulated weight of the journey, of others’ expectations, of demands made upon us that we cannot give in to, and our own hopes.

 

The Distance Behind Us

  

When we began preparing for #Hike4Birds in 2018, we already had considerable experience with long-distance walking. We had completed the Camino Francés in Spain, followed pilgrimage routes through France and Portugal, walked Ontario's Bruce Trail, and spent time exploring Newfoundland's East Coast Trail. We understood that hiking long distances involved periods of exhaustion and discomfort, and that maintaining a positive outlook was not always easy. Nevertheless, those experiences had also taught us that fatigue was usually temporary – day 4 always passes, and something better is on the horizon. After a difficult day, we could generally look forward to a meal, a good night's sleep, and the pleasure of discovering somewhere new the following morning.

 

What we had never attempted was sustaining that experience over several years, particularly while undertaking an expedition that involved considerably more than the walking itself.

Since leaving Newfoundland, we have crossed an extraordinary variety of Canadian landscapes. We have walked beside the Atlantic Ocean, followed former railway corridors through forests and farmland, explored coastal communities, navigated urban pathways, and struggled along long stretches of provincial highways. We have crossed the Canadian Shield, experienced the remarkable openness of the Prairies, encountered thousands of birds and other wildlife, and met people whose generosity has repeatedly reminded us why we wanted to explore the country in this way.

  

We have also learned that the Trans Canada Trail is considerably more complicated than the line we first followed across our maps.  The COVID-19 pandemic interrupted our journey and forced us to reconsider how and where we could travel, and even question whether we should travel. Provincial restrictions, changing circumstances, and the need to return to unfinished sections of the route meant that our progress was rarely as straightforward as we had imagined. Having reached the Alberta border, we subsequently found ourselves travelling back east to complete portions of Québec that circumstances had prevented us from walking earlier. In Montréal, we celebrated reaching 10,000kilometres, an extraordinary milestone that nevertheless came with the strange realization that we were once again hundreds of kilometres from the western edge of the country we were trying to cross.

To this end, there is something psychologically unsettling about that kind of progress. You know that the kilometres are real, that you have walked every one of them, and that the unfinished sections genuinely need to be completed. Yet there is a difference between looking at a map and seeing yourself move steadily toward the Pacific Ocean and discovering that your journey has become a complicated series of departures, returns, interrupted seasons, and efforts to reconnect portions of a pathway that you once imagined walking in a relatively continuous direction.

We understood the necessity of those decisions, but understanding them did not always make the experience less frustrating.  And throughout it all, the work of #Hike4Birds continued. We have continued photographing landscapes and wildlife, recording observations for citizen science, researching communities and historical sites, preparing daily accounts of our experiences, and sharing what we discovered through hundreds of blog entries. We were also organizing and giving presentations to classrooms, naturalist groups, and community organizations across the country, often in the evenings after spending long days walking. In addition to this, we have dealt with constant online critique, criticisms, and threats.

 

Our blogs and comments, regardless of all else, had posted willingly, and they remain central to why we undertook this journey. We wanted to encourage people to reconnect with nature, discover the birds and wildlife around them, and recognize that exploration does not necessarily require travelling somewhere exotic or remote. We wanted to demonstrate that Canada could be experienced and appreciated one trail, one community, and one encounter at a time.

 

Nevertheless, we underestimated how much effort would be required to maintain those commitments while travelling for months at a time.  There have been evenings when we arrived somewhere exhausted, hungry, and desperately in need of sleep, only to spend several more hours sorting photographs, researching locations, responding to messages, preparing an account of the day, and then presenting to a nature group. Zero days have frequently become opportunities to catch up on work, organize supplies, repair equipment, and arrange the next stage of the journey – they have rarely been rest days.  Even during our winter breaks, when we were no longer walking, there were articles to write, presentations to prepare, photographs to edit, and plans to develop for the following season.

 

In many respects, the expedition has become something that never entirely stops.  And perhaps that is inevitable when an undertaking becomes such a substantial part of your life, but it also means that the familiar distinction between walking and resting gradually becomes less meaningful. There are days when our bodies are no longer moving westward, but our minds remain occupied by everything that needs to happen before we can take the next step and the next after that. 

 

Yet today – for a number of reasons we don’t want to go into - I think we have reached the point where those responsibilities are beginning to catch up with us. I think that the trek and the sharing of it has, in fact, begun to crush us.

 

The Exhaustion We Did Not Anticipate

 

Over the past few weeks, as we have made our way south from Edmonton through central Alberta and into Calgary, we have encountered many of the familiar challenges of the Trans Canada Trail. There have been long days on roads and highways, stretches of extreme heat, difficult trail conditions, and the continuing demands of travelling with our hiking carts. Some sections have been wonderful, allowing us to explore welcoming communities, beautiful river valleys, and natural areas filled with birds. Others have been unnerving, particularly where the designated route has followed busy highways with little room for pedestrians.

 

Between Irricana and Airdrie, we encountered one such section where the traffic was so dangerous that we eventually decided to leave the mapped route and find another way forward. We had already walked thousands of kilometres along roads across Canada, but there are circumstances where familiarity does little to make a situation safer. It was another reminder that experience sometimes means recognizing when to change a plan rather than stubbornly following it.

 

Unfortunately, we have also been dealing with increasingly painful physical injuries – my ankle in particular, and the combination of long walking days, the pounding of walking on pavement, and the physical effort of moving our equipment has made recovery difficult. We have tried to adapt, shorten our steps, rest when possible, and avoid making matters worse, but an injury does not necessarily respond to determination.

 

By the time we reached Calgary, we were ready for a break. Yet as we continued westward toward Cochrane, amid it all I began to recognize that the need for rest extended considerably beyond my ankle or the ordinary fatigue of another demanding hiking season.  Sean, in particular, has seemed increasingly worn down by the responsibilities that accompany our expedition. In addition to walking each day, he spends hours processing photographs, editing our writing, maintaining our online presence, answering correspondence (even the hateful ones), and helping organize the presentations and activities through which we share #Hike4Birds. I have watched him continue working long after we should both have been asleep, sometimes after days when we had already pushed ourselves farther than we reasonably should have.

 

I have also become aware that the constant effort of maintaining the journey has affected us both in ways that are not necessarily visible to people following along.  We still encounter beautiful landscapes. We still enjoy watching birds, meeting people, exploring communities, and discovering unexpected details about the country. There are moments when an interesting wildlife encounter or an act of kindness restores something of the enthusiasm we felt at the beginning. But those moments are increasingly accompanied by a weariness that does not disappear simply because we have stopped for a break, or snack, or enjoyed a particularly good night's sleep. We are tired of organizing. Tired of adjusting plans. Tired of explaining why the journey has taken longer than anticipated, why we have chosen particular gear, why we cannot simply walk farther each day, why our pictures aren’t better, or why circumstances have required us to do something differently from what someone else might have expected. And perhaps most unexpectedly, we are tired of feeling that we must continually demonstrate the value of something that has already demanded so much of our lives.

 

With that said, there have been extraordinary people who have supported us, encouraged us, and helped us continue through some very difficult circumstances. Their generosity has meant more than we can adequately express, and we remain deeply grateful for the opportunities this journey has given us. Yet there have also been disappointments, criticism, misunderstandings, and occasions when we have felt strangely forgotten despite the enormous amount of effort we have devoted to documenting and sharing the expedition.

 

I do not think any single incident explains how we feel. It is more that the accumulated experience of several years has left us with considerably less emotional reserve than we imagined we would need.  We never expected to feel this tired.  But over the years we have been threatened with lawsuits, had gear intentionally destroyed, harassed continually online, and targeted by ATV drivers. Amid it all we certainly never expected to reach a point where the prospect of another beautiful section of Canada might be accompanied by as much apprehension as anticipation.

 

And that is difficult to admit when we still believe so strongly in the reasons we began walking.

 

The Pacific Is Still a Long Way Away

 

The difficulty, of course, is that we are nowhere near finished.  From Cochrane, the Trans Canada Trail continues into the foothills and eventually through the Rocky Mountains, following routes toward Bragg Creek, Kananaskis Country, Canmore, Banff, and the border with British Columbia. Beyond that lies another enormous stretch of the country, with mountain landscapes, forested valleys, former railway corridors, communities, and coastal pathways – put more simply, another massive province - still separates us from Victoria and the Pacific Ocean.

 

According to our estimates, we have another 65 to 75 days of walking before reaching the western coast, depending upon the route, weather, and conditions we encounter. The mountains themselves will require considerable effort, particularly as we exchange our hiking carts for backpacks and return to carrying our camping equipment and supplies over more demanding terrain.

 

With that said, we are also becoming increasingly aware of the calendar. Although summer temperatures remain high in Alberta, the days are growing shorter, and the first hints of autumn are beginning to appear. If our calculations prove optimistic (and we hope they do), or if weather and trail conditions force further changes, there is a very real possibility that winter could complicate our progress through British Columbia before we reach the coast. I cannot deny that I do not want to trek through coastal storms and snow on approach to Victoria.

 

It is a strange position to be in. After so many years of walking westward, the Rocky Mountains have become both an extraordinary promise and an enormous obstacle. We have looked forward to reaching them for years, imagining the landscapes, wildlife, and experiences that would await us. Yet now that they are finally before us, there is a part of me that wonders how we are going to find the energy required to cross them.

 

And even the Pacific is not the end of the journey we originally envisioned. Beyond Victoria lies the remainder of the TCT to the north toward Tuktoyaktuk and the Arctic Ocean. We have not yet begun to confront the full practical realities of that undertaking, although we already know it will involve long distances, remote communities, difficult logistics, and challenges unlike many of those we have encountered along the southern portion of the trail.

 

There are moments when the scale of what remains still seems almost impossible to comprehend.

 

Exhaustion on Long Distance Hikes

 

I remember watching one of Jessica “Dixie” Mills's Homemade Wanderlust videos in which she recounted the experience of a fellow long-distance hiker who, despite being relatively close to another major milestone, decided that he had walked far enough. As I remember the story, he explained that he had accomplished what he needed to accomplish through walking and was content to end his journey where he stood. There was no great disappointment in the decision, nor any apparent need to justify it by reference to the kilometres remaining. He simply understood that the experience had given him what he had been looking for and was done despite not reaching the trailhead.

 

Not long after, somewhere along the way, Mel Vogel (@betweentwosunsets) released a reflection on Facebook as she approached Tuktoyaktuk during her own remarkable journey across Canada. Mel has travelled a different route from ours (and everyone else's), walking from the Atlantic toward the Arctic before continuing westward toward the Pacific, and her expedition has involved its own extraordinary challenges. As I remember her observation, she suggested that if she had trekked to the Pacific first, she did not think she would have had the energy to continue northward.

 

At the time, that struck me as an unusually revealing admission about the experience of travelling such enormous distances on foot. Now, sitting here in Alberta with years of walking behind us (with possibly years still ahead) and two oceans still forming part of our ambitions, I find that I understand the sentiment far more deeply.  There is a point in a long expedition when the distance remaining becomes difficult to separate from the effort already expended. Few people understand that – I mean truly understand that.  It is not simply a question of whether you can walk another thirty kilometres, or even another thousand. You know that you can probably continue moving if you must. The more difficult question is whether you have enough left within yourself to undertake another season, confront another set of unknowns, and begin again with the same commitment that brought you this far.

 

I suspect many long-distance hikers eventually encounter something similar, although the circumstances and distances involved may differ considerably. The physical challenges are usually easy enough to describe. Sore feet, tired legs, threadbare equipment, constant hunger, cold nights, harassment, difficult terrain, and exhaustion are familiar parts of the language of long-distance walking. But the psychological demands of maintaining an expedition over several years are less easily explained, particularly when the undertaking is something you chose and continue to believe is worthwhile.  After all, who wants to admit that they are struggling to continue doing something they have spent years dreaming about?  

 

The Need to Go Home

 

For all of these reasons, as we walked into Calgary and onwards still to Cochrane, we began discussing whether we should leave the trail for a short time.  At the moment, our trek no longer seems to be what it once was.    Put a different way - there are several practical reasons why taking a break would make sense. My ankle needs an opportunity to recover, our equipment needs to be reorganized / repaired / replaced before we enter the Rockies, and we need to arrange for the hiking carts to be stored while we return to carrying all of our supplies in backpacks. We also have family on British Columbia's Sunshine Coast, and returning to Sechelt would provide an opportunity to spend time with them before committing ourselves to the next lengthy section of the expedition.

 

All of these are genuine considerations, and together they provide a perfectly reasonable explanation for stepping away from the Trans Canada Trail.  But I wonder whether they tell the whole story.

 

The truth is that we desperately need some time at home, or at least somewhere that feels like home. We need familiar surroundings, the company of family and friends, and a chance to spend time with people who know us as something other than the two hikers crossing Canada. We need conversations that do not begin with questions about how far we have walked, how much farther we have to go, or when we expect to finish. We need to talk with people who aren’t simply being critical of us for why we are not further along or telling us to take better pictures of birds or the TCT.  We need the reassurance of ordinary relationships, the simple pleasure of sharing a meal at a table or spending an afternoon together, and perhaps a little distance from the constant responsibilities of maintaining an expedition.

 

We also, and yes, I admit this, need encouragement. Not applause or recognition, and certainly not another reason to feel obligated to accomplish something remarkable. We need the normal reassurance that comes from people who know us, who understand why this undertaking matters to us, and who can remind us that there is still value in what we are trying to accomplish, even when we are too exhausted to see it clearly ourselves.

 

Perhaps it is difficult to admit how much we need that after spending so many years attempting to encourage other people.  I wonder now – given the negative and hateful online feedback – whether we have done that at all. Through #Hike4Birds, we have tried to share our enthusiasm for nature, introduce people to the pleasures of birdwatching, and demonstrate how rewarding it can be to explore familiar places with curiosity. We have spoken about the importance of connecting with the natural world, recognizing the beauty around us, and making time for experiences that might otherwise be overlooked in the rush of everyday life.  Yet somewhere amid the demands of maintaining the expedition, I think we have begun to lose touch with some of those same things ourselves.

 

We still recognize the beauty of the landscapes through which we travel. We still stop to watch birds, photograph wildlife, and explore the histories of unfamiliar communities. But the enjoyment of those experiences has become increasingly entangled with the responsibility to document them, explain them, inspire others, and somehow transform them into something meaningful for Canadians.  There is, after all a difference between stopping to watch a bird because the encounter fills you with curiosity and stopping because you feel obligated to record another observation before continuing down the trail and writing about it. There is a difference between wanting to write about a remarkable day and knowing that another blog entry needs to be completed before morning and another day’s hike. We have not entirely lost those distinctions, but at times the boundary between our enjoyment of the journey and our responsibility to maintain it has become difficult to recognize.

 

And perhaps that is the most unsettling realization of all.  We have spent years encouraging others to slow down, reconnect with nature, and appreciate the places around them, yet we have become so occupied with the demands of our own journey that we are struggling to find the time and emotional space to do those things for ourselves.  We need to recover more than our physical strength. We need to recover the capacity to continue walking with purpose. We are literally now sinking under the weight of expectations and criticism, and I do not know the way forward – not right now anyway.

 

More Than a Reason to Finish

 

There is another difficulty in all this, and it may be the hardest one to admit.   No one sets out from Cape Spear intending to finish in Calgary (or just beyond). That is a rather ridiculous way to think about it, of course. Calgary is a wonderful city, and there is nothing inherently wrong with deciding that walking across most of Canada is enough. After more than 11,500 kilometres, we have already experienced an extraordinary journey, and by almost any reasonable measure we have accomplished far more than many people would ever consider attempting.

 

But Calgary was never our destination, and to be honest it seems like an odd point of conclusion.   When we stood at Cape Spear in June 2019, we imagined walking all the way to Victoria and eventually north to the Arctic. That ambition has influenced virtually every major decision we have made since before beginning - selling our home, shaping our finances, our work, our relationships, and the way we have organized our lives. We have spent years trying to make the expedition possible, and the thought of stopping permanently with the Pacific Ocean still somewhere beyond the Rocky Mountains is almost impossible to contemplate.

 

And so we know that, if we can, we will continue. But the longer I think about it, the more I realize that finishing simply because we cannot bear the thought of stopping is not quite enough of a good reason.  We can summon the determination to keep walking. We have done that repeatedly, through conditions that were uncomfortable, frustrating, and occasionally dangerous. We can remind ourselves that difficult days pass, that the next community may provide an opportunity to rest, and that the distance remaining will gradually diminish if we continue putting one foot in front of the other.

 

Yet there is something troubling about the prospect of spending another two or three months crossing the Rockies and British Columbia motivated primarily by the fear of leaving the journey unfinished.

 

And we have to be honest - that was never what we wanted #Hike4Birds to become.

 

We did not sell our home, put our lives on hold, and begin walking across Canada merely to demonstrate that we possessed enough stubbornness to reach the opposite coast. We wanted to explore the country, learn about its wildlife and landscapes, meet people, contribute something to citizen science, and encourage others to discover the natural world around them.  We wanted the journey itself to matter.  And it still does. Even now, after so much, there are places we are excited to visit, birds we hope to observe, and landscapes we can hardly imagine seeing with our own eyes. We know that somewhere beyond Calgary lie some of the most extraordinary mountain environments in Canada. We know that British Columbia offers an astonishing diversity of forests, rivers, valleys, and coastal ecosystems, and that we will have opportunities to encounter wildlife and communities unlike those we have experienced farther east.

 

But knowing those possibilities exist and possessing the emotional strength and mental fortitude to embrace them are not necessarily the same thing.  That, I think, is why we need to take a break.  Not because we have stopped believing in the journey, but because we want to continue believing in it for reasons that extend beyond the obligation to finish.

 

The Uncertainty and Hope of Stopping

 

There is, of course, no guarantee that a short break will resolve everything.  My ankle may improve with rest, but the accumulated exhaustion of several years is not something that can necessarily be addressed in a few days. Nor can time away eliminate the logistical difficulties that have accompanied our expedition, reduce the distance remaining to the Pacific Ocean, or guarantee that the next stage will unfold according to our plans.  We may return feeling renewed and ready to continue, or we may discover that the responsibilities and pressures of the journey are waiting for us exactly where we left them.

 

Nevertheless, remaining on the trail simply because we don’t want to disappoint others or are reluctant to interrupt our progress seems increasingly untenable.  Tonight, looking westward toward the Rocky Mountains, I am reminded of how much the journey has changed since we began walking across Newfoundland. Back then, our worries were largely practical and optimistic. Could we manage the distance? Had we chosen the right equipment? Would we find somewhere to camp? How would we deal with bad weather or unfamiliar trail conditions? These questions have never entirely disappeared, but we have become much better at answering them through experience.

 

What we did not anticipate was that, after thousands of kilometres, the more difficult questions would concern the things that sustained our willingness to keep walking. We never anticipated how much people would critique our trek and our postings about the Trans Canada Trail. 

 

As a result, new questions – not about ability have arisen.  How do you maintain a sense of purpose when the journey becomes a series of responsibilities? How do you preserve curiosity when every day seems to involve another problem to solve? How do you continue sharing enthusiasm for something you love when you are increasingly exhausted by the effort required to do so and criticisms about it? And how do you find the strength to begin another enormous stage of an expedition when the distance already travelled seems to have consumed so much of what you had to give?

 

I do not think I have particularly satisfying answers to any of these questions at the moment.

 

We know that we want to reach the Pacific Ocean. We know that the Rocky Mountains and British Columbia contain extraordinary places we still hope to explore, and we remain committed to encouraging Canadians to discover the birds, wildlife, landscapes, and trails of their own country. We also recognize how privileged we have been to undertake this journey and how fortunate we are to have encountered so much kindness and generosity along the way.

But gratitude does not eliminate exhaustion, and determination does not automatically provide a renewed sense of purpose.  Perhaps the best we can do is acknowledge where we find ourselves and respond accordingly.  For now, that means stepping away from the trail for a little while, spending time with family, reorganizing our equipment, and giving ourselves an opportunity to rest without feeling that every hour must be devoted to preparing for the next stage. More importantly, we hope it means finding some of the steadiness, encouragement, and emotional strength that have become increasingly difficult to sustain while constantly moving.

 

There is still an enormous amount of Canada ahead of us – to the west and to the north - and we want to experience it with the same attention and curiosity that brought us this far. We want to be able to stop for a bird without thinking immediately about the kilometres remaining, to enjoy a conversation without worrying about falling behind, and to look toward another mountain or unfamiliar valley with anticipation rather than the weary calculation of how much effort it will require.  We do not need to be persuaded that the journey is worth finishing. We have believed that since the beginning.  What we need now is to recover enough of our sense of purpose that we can continue walking for something more than the fact that we have already come so far.

 

We began because we believed there was something worthwhile in exploring Canada at walking speed, and in sharing the country we discovered with others.

 

Somewhere beneath the exhaustion, I know that belief remains.  Sorry for all the rambling thoughts and the long post tonight.

 

See you on the trail!