After Years of Moving West, We Turn East

 “Traveller, there is no road;

you make your own path as you walk.”

Antonio Machado, “Proverbios y cantares XXIX,” Campos de Castilla
 

Morning before leaving Lake Cowichan, British Columbia 

 

For more than four years, west has meant forward. That has never meant we were continuously walking west. The Trans Canada Trail has taken us north and south (especially in the prairies) so often that we have covered more than twice the distance someone would travel between Newfoundland and British Columbia by driving directly across the country. We have followed coastlines, river valleys, rail corridors and roads that rarely seemed to care which direction the Pacific happened to be. There have been long stretches when we walked north, others when we turned south, and enough loops, detours and side routes that a compass alone would provide a very poor explanation of our progress. Even so, beneath all of those daily changes in direction there has always been one larger orientation holding the journey together. The Pacific Ocean lay to the west, and therefore west, in the broadest possible sense, was where we were going.

 

Yesterday that assumption finally stopped working.  From Duncan we walked roughly thirty kilometres west along the Cowichan Valley Trail to Lake Cowichan, following the old railway corridor through forests increasingly thick with moss and coastal vegetation. Late in the day we emerged into town, crossed the Cowichan River and unexpectedly arrived at the Western Terminus of the Trans Canada Trail. A wooden pavilion marked the westernmost point of the national pathway, and for a few moments we simply stood there trying to make sense of it. After years of orienting ourselves toward the west, we had apparently gone as far west on the trail as it was possible to go.

 

And yet we were still not finished - Victoria and the Pacific Terminus of the TCT remain several days away.  That means that this morning, after reaching the westernmost point of our journey yesterday, we are turning around and will begin walking east. There is something surprisingly a little unsettling about that. For years we have interpreted our journey as westbound. West has meant closer. West has meant progress. West has meant that somewhere, however impossibly far away, the Pacific was getting nearer. Even during periods when the trail temporarily carried us north or south, the broader movement remained westward. It was the direction embedded in the journey from the beginning.

 

Now, with the westernmost point behind us, the route to the end runs briefly in the opposite direction. Yesterday, east would have meant trekking away from the goal - today, east means moving toward it. 

Perhaps that should not feel as strange as it does. The map is perfectly clear. Victoria lies southeast of Lake Cowichan, and reaching the westernmost point of the trail necessarily means trekking eastward.   Nothing about the geography is confusing - the odd feelings are entirely ours. After four years, we had allowed a compass direction to become shorthand for progress. That is probably inevitable on a journey this long. The scale is too large to hold in the mind all at once, so we reduce it to simpler ideas. The Pacific is west. Therefore west is forward. The Atlantic is behind us. Therefore east belongs to where we have already been.

 

That simple mindset worked remarkably well until today.  Now the trail is reminding us that direction and progress were never the same thing.  The distinction feels particularly clear because nothing about the day itself suggests retreat. We are still moving toward Victoria. We are still reducing the distance to the final terminus. We are still completing the same continuous journey begun at Cape Spear. Yet if someone were to look only at a compass, they might reasonably conclude that we are walking the wrong way.

 

That realization has made me think about how easily progress becomes attached to particular forms.  Sometimes we decide that moving forward must look a certain way. It should be west rather than east, farther rather than closer, faster rather than slower, direct rather than circuitous. Once that pattern has worked for long enough, changing it can feel wrong even when circumstances have changed completely.

The trail has rarely supported that kind of certainty.  Yet in Newfoundland, forward sometimes meant waiting for weather. In Manitoba, it sometimes meant stopping rather than pushing farther.  In Alberta, it occasionally meant leaving the mapped route to find a safer one. Here on Vancouver Island, apparently forward can mean east.

 

That may be one of the most unexpected lessons hidden in the strange geometry of this final week. Progress is contextual. Its meaning depends on where you are trying to go and what lies between you and the destination. A direction that carried you toward something for years can eventually carry you away from it. A direction that once represented reversal can suddenly become the only way forward.

There is no contradiction in that – only a shift in mindset.  The landscape itself seems indifferent to our need for journeys to behave neatly. The Cowichan River flows east from the lake because that is where gravity takes it. The rail corridor curves through the valley because that is where the terrain allowed it to be built. The Trans Canada Trail follows these existing routes because they connect communities and make passage possible. None of them exists to preserve the symbolism we attached to westward travel.

 

Perhaps that is why today's turn feels important without needing to mean too much.  It is simply strange.  After years of measuring our progress across Canada by how much farther west we had travelled, we have finally reached a point where the compass no longer confirms what the journey is doing.

 

Today we know we are moving forward, and that means trekking east. For most of the journey, the larger direction has mattered because the destination was so far away. Now, with only a few days left, perhaps there is less need to keep translating every step into east or west.  So be it; from here on forward simply means whatever direction the trail requires next. 

 

We had best get used to that simple fact – because next year it will no longer be either west or east – it will be north. 

 

See you on the trail!