Logging Off and Walking On… for Now

Wildfires and Waiting 

 
By the spring of this year (2023), we found ourselves in an unfamiliar position: ready to walk, trained to go north, and yet unable to move.

 
After four consecutive years on the Trans Canada Trail, from 2019 through 2022, we had already walked roughly 14,000 kilometres over 556 days, linking Cape Spear in Newfoundland with Victoria, British Columbia. The remaining section of our journey lay ahead of us: the long northern arc from Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta, to Tuktoyaktuk on the shores of the Arctic Ocean.
 
It was a stretch we knew would demand at least two full hiking seasons, hopefully spread across just two years, and one that required careful timing, preparation, and respect for conditions on the ground.
 
In 2023, it has become clear that these conditions simply did not exist.

 
What unfolded across northern Alberta, British Columbia, and the Yukon this year was unprecedented. Historic wildfires spread across vast regions of the country, closing trails, threatening communities, and rendering large sections of the northern Trans Canada Trail unsafe and impractical to enter. For weeks, then months, we’ve waited - watching maps, reading advisories, hoping for a window that never came.
 
Eventually, the truth has become unavoidable: walking north this year is not just unlikely, it would be irresponsible.

 
Letting go of our plans and momentum has been harder than we expected. When you structure your life around forward motion - around seasons, kilometers, and a goal - being forced to stop can feel like failure, even when it isn’t.
 
Yet that pause, frustrating as it is, offers something else instead: perspective and a new opportunity.
 

Regaining Perspective

 
We have learned over the years that perspective rarely arrives when you are standing still. It comes through movement – when we are in landscapes, dealing with challenging weather, and uncertainty. So rather than remaining in limbo, waiting for conditions to change while our bodies and spirits stagnate, we’ve made a choice to walk elsewhere this year.

And so, in the summer of 2023, we are returning to Portugal and the Camino.

 
The decision isn’t about escape, and it certainly isn’t about replacing the Trans Canada Trail. It is about staying connected to the reasons we walk in the first place: to remain curious, grounded, physically capable, and emotionally present. Portugal offers us familiar terrain and new variations.  It also offers us trails that allow us to keep our legs strong while reminding us why long-distance walking still matters to us.

 
Our plan, over the next 5 or 6 weeks, will be to hike the Rota Vicentina, then return to the Camino Portugués from Lisbon to Porto, and finally to continue north along the Coastal and Espiritual routes from Porto to Santiago de Compostela.
 

The Quiet Importance of Logging Off

 
This period also coincided with something else we had been feeling for a while: the need to step back from the digital noise that increasingly surrounds outdoor adventure and our own #Hike4Birds here in Canada.
 
A digital detox, for us, is not about counting screen hours or abandoning technology altogether. It is about asking a harder question - Is being online still serving us? Is it informing us, educating us, and expanding our understanding of the world - or is it simply occupying our attention while quietly eroding curiosity and critical thought?

Too often, it feels as though information is consumed and forgotten almost instantly. Questions are googled, answered superficially, and discarded. The deeper impulse to explore, to wonder, to sit with uncertainty is replaced by algorithmic reassurance and passive scrolling. Worse still, the digital world increasingly amplifies anxiety, outrage, and comparison, nudging individuals away from lived experience and toward curated performance.
 
Recognizing that some content does not broaden understanding or invite reflection, but instead heightens frustration and dulls curiosity….means that stepping back, for us, is an important act of self-preservation.
 
Walking, by contrast, does the opposite. It restores attention. It slows thought. It asks us to engage fully with where we are, rather than react endlessly to what we are shown.
 

Walking On, With Intention

 
Returning to Portugal, we hope, will allow us to step back into that mindset fully: to walk without pressure, to rediscover joy in movement, and to remember that endurance is sustained not just by strength, but by love for the act itself.

And while 2023 will clearly not be the year we continue north on the Trans Canada Trail, it is also not an abandonment of that goal. It is simply a pause on the journey. 
 
To that end, come the spring of 2024, we will be ready again – to shoulder our backpacks, head back onto the national pathway, and continue the journey toward the Arctic Ocean with clarity and resolve.
 
Sometimes walking on means changing direction for a while.
 
See you on the trail!