Going Silent For Now - Hiking On To the North

Continuing to the North on the Trans Canada Trail

 
Over the past few days, we have spent a great deal of time discussing what comes next for our hike on the Trans Canada Trail. After four years of walking across Canada, sharing our daily experiences, and posting thousands of photographs, we have reached a point where we need to reconsider how we continue.  As we explained in our previous couple of entries, the recent discovery that large numbers of our photographs have been copied and offered for sale online has left us deeply discouraged. Despite our attempts to contact those involved, we have made little progress toward resolving the situation. More troublingly, the experience has made us question how much of our remaining expedition we want to continue sharing publicly while we are still undertaking it.

 
We began this journey because we wanted to explore Canada on foot. We wanted to learn about its landscapes, communities, birds, wildlife, and histories, and to encourage others to venture outdoors and discover these things for themselves. Sharing our experiences was intended to be part of that journey, not something that overshadowed it.  Unfortunately, that distinction has become increasingly difficult to maintain.
 
As we prepare to continue northward and have hiked once again from Edmonton to Sherwood Park to Fort Saskatchewan, we have made the decision to step away from regular online updates for the time being. This does not mean that our expedition has ended, that we have lost interest in documenting the Trans Canada Trail, or that we no longer wish to share what we discover. Quite the opposite in fact.

 
We intend to continue walking, taking photographs, keeping our travel journals, recording our bird and wildlife observations, and exploring the communities and landscapes through which the trail passes. What we will no longer be doing, at least for now, is attempting to publish those experiences as they unfold.  The material will be kept, and we might one day post again about the TCT – but for now there is just too much that has been taken from us to continue the online aspects of it.   There is much about the journey ahead that remains uncertain. Weather, trail conditions, distance, and the practical challenges of travelling north will undoubtedly demand our attention. We would rather devote our time and energy to those realities, and to appreciating where we are, than spend our evenings worrying about what is happening to our photographs and writing online.

Perhaps, when we have had some distance from these recent experiences, we will feel differently. We certainly hope to return to sharing our travels, and there will undoubtedly be stories, photographs, and observations to revisit when the opportunity arises.
 
For everyone who has followed our journey since Cape Spear, offered encouragement, shared advice, or taken an interest in our #Hike4Birds, thank you. Your kindness has helped carry us across 14,000 kilometres, and we remain grateful for the opportunities this remarkable undertaking has given us.  For now, the journals will continue, the camera and binoculars will remain close at hand, and we will keep looking for birds wherever the pathway takes us.
 
The Trans Canada Trail continues north, and so do we.

 
See you on the trail!