Walking Together across Canada - Long-Distance Hiking with Someone Else

Hiking the Trans Canada Trail as a Couple

“Life has taught us that love does not consist of gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction.”

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars

 

Given that we were the first couple to hike and complete the Trans Canada Trail, one of the most frequently asked questions we have encountered over the years is how the two of us manage to spend so much time together. The question first surfaced on the trail itself, usually from passing hikers or curious locals who paused to ask where we had come from and where we were going. Later it appeared in emails, thoughtfully phrased but circling the same curiosity. We heard variations of it again on the Camino, where many people walk alone because their partners simply do not share the same interests for long days, uncertain routes, or months away from home. 

 
Sometimes the question was asked subtly, sometimes with disbelief, and occasionally with a hint of admiration. Once, a woman laughed and said that we must either really like each other or really hate each other. It was offered as a joke, but it stuck, because it captured how people often imagine something large – in that owing to its size and scope, it must intensify everything, including relationships.
 
For four years we walked the Trans Canada Trail together. We covered roughly 14,000 kilometres side by side. We spoke every day, sometimes at length and sometimes not at all. We slept in the same small tent for many of the 556 days and nights that we hiked - through heat, cold, rain, snow, black flies, and mosquitoes. We hiked together, worked, edited, wrote, and cooked, and cleaned up side by side for years from the Atlantic to the Pacific to the Arctic. Add to this the number of months we have trekked across England and Scotland or been on pilgrimage in France, Spain and Portugal, and we have spent a lot of time together in close proximity.
 
Numbers like these tend to impress people, but they don’t explain much on their own. What they conceal are the routines and relationships that develop when two people move together for long enough. Walking side by side eventually stops being about conversation. Silence becomes comfortable. Words are no longer required to explain fatigue, frustration, or the contentment of a good stretch of trail.  We learn to read each other and know each other in ways that others don’t.  This can be both wonderful and a challenge.   

 
The assumption that spending this much time together must lead to either profound closeness or open conflict misses something important. Endurance does not amplify emotion in the way people expect. Over time, it smooths it. Sharp edges dull. Small irritations lose their urgency. What matters is not intensity of passion, or like-mindedness, but adaptability.
 
When people see that we have trekked together for so long – they think of it as an accomplishment or some type of amazing achievement.  But in truth, I think that among the few people who have completed the Trans Canada Trail, we may have had it easier than most. Not because the trail was easy, or because the days were always good, but because we were not carrying the weight of it alone.    When I was low, Sean pulled us through the day. When he struggled, I kept our feet moving forward. There were days when motivation came from only one of us, and that for short periods could be enough for us to be able to keep going.  There were nights when I was nervous to sleep given some noise or situation – and Sean stayed up to make sure all was well.  There have been times when he was sick and needed to be taken care of, and I was able to help.  At other points, when one of us became overwhelmed or overstressed, the other could often see the situation more clearly, offering perspective when it was hardest to find.  At times we would both lean towards opposite extremes in situations – the result was that we balanced each other out and were able to keep moving.

 
And yes – as I wrote before, there were times of loneliness on the Trans Canada Trail – even while we hiked together.  Loneliness can arrive in unexpected ways – so I have come to see. Even surrounded by vast landscapes, there were moments when the undertaking felt isolating and when the criticisms and threats piled up on us. In those moments, the presence of another person - not to fix anything, but simply to notice and to listen - made a huge difference. A small comment, a shared moment, or a bit of humour can bring light back into an otherwise heavy day on the trail.  We both needed that from the other at times. 
 
Many others we met had walked across a province, a region, or even the entire country on their own. Their journeys deserve enormous respect. Solo walking requires a different kind of resilience, one that means not having to hand the day to someone else when it is too much. Watching them made me acutely aware of how much harder this journey would have been alone. Not impossible - but harder on every level.

 
We were also fortunate in subtler and less evident ways. Over six years, we were never both sick at the same time. That was not planning or toughness; it was luck. On a trail this long, luck matters more than people like to admit. When I suffered from heat stroke in Kitchener, Ontario, Sean got me to the hospital, just as when he was hit by an ATV in Manitoba, I was able to help him. Ultimately, in both cases, we were lucky that nothing worse had happened, but also that there was someone else there to pick the other up.  Recognizing that kept us humble.
 
The question of hiking as a couple often comes up on the Camino – though here it is typically framed through contrast.  Many people walked a pilgrimage alone not because they preferred solitude, but because their partners had no interest in walking this far, this long, or for a spiritual / religious / reflective purpose. Put another way – the interests of one person in the relationship simply were of no interest to the other.  While I don’t believe that we have to do everything together, I’m not sure that hiking side by side was about romance or even companionship in the traditional sense.  I think setting out to do something together – no matter what it might be – is about alignment.  A greater understanding of values, supporting the other person, and getting through things together.  If something matters a great deal to one person in a relationship, it should mean at least something to both.  Because at its more essential core is that what a relationship is once stripped down – alignment and support of one another?

 
So when people ask how we managed to spend so much time together, I no longer hear the question as disbelief. I hear it as curiosity about something rarer than endurance itself. We didn’t walk together because we never needed space, or because every day was easy, or because we were immune to doubt, frustration or arguments. We walked together because when one of us faltered, the other could carry the moment forward - and because over time, we learned how to do that without keeping score.  We came to see that we will each stumble at one moment and that life is easier if there is someone to help you back up without judgment or ego getting in the way.
 
In the end, the question is not really about how much time we spent together, or even how far we walked. It is about what remains when the distractions fall away and the days become simple. Walking together for that long did not make us inseparable so much as it made us attentive - to each other, to the other’s needs, to the moment, to the work of putting one foot in front of the other when enthusiasm ran out. We did not walk together because we were unusually compatible or endlessly patient. We walked together because we accepted that some days one of us would carry the weight of the journey, and other days that burden would shift.  Hiking side by side is less about endurance and more about balance.

 
Perhaps that is why the question keeps returning. Not because our journey was unusual, but because it revealed something many people rarely have the chance to see: how companionship works when it is built up slowly, over time, and allowed to become ordinary – and in so doing, completely extraordinary to have in your life.
 
Whether by Trail, Rail or Sail…see you out there!