Follow Trails, Not Blue Dots

 "Wherever you are, be there…totally.”

 

Eckhart Tolle

 

Navigation on the Trans Canada Trail

 

When we first began hiking on the Trans Canada Trail, we assumed that on some level, the official navigation app would become our constant companion. Yet from Cape Spear to Victoria, it rarely worked.  Heading north from Fort Saskatchewan to Whitehorse it has been an utterly lost cause.

 

The “Explore the Map” feature online showed little more than a thin line stretching across an immense country, offering few clues about actual trail conditions,  amenities, or what lay ahead. At first, we saw this as a strike against us - a failure of digital infrastructure. But over time, we came to see it differently. The absence of certainty forced us to look up, to read road signs, to speak with strangers, to study rivers and ridgelines. We were not guided step by step by an app.

We had to live in the landscape. And in doing so, the journey became infinitely richer.

 

What we originally saw as a huge problem may well be one of the greatest blessings of our journey from coast to coast to coast.

 

Blue Dots and Trail Apps

 

Open a mapping app, and a small blue dot appears on the screen.

Now you know at least one thing - you are precisely here.

 

It is, in many ways, a remarkable thing. The blue dot on the screen removes uncertainty. It reassures. It tells us we do not need to look up, or ask, or wonder where we are in relation to anything else.  If you have questions, check another app or perhaps Google or Wikipedia, but even then, there is no need to look up.  The world resolves itself into a clean line, a calm voice, and a steady instruction: continue straight for 400 metres.

 

It is also, quietly, a little sad…ok its actually really sad.

 

Over the years, we have watched people run urban pathways, walk national trails, and even complete pilgrimages across countries while rarely lifting their eyes from their phones. They move efficiently with eyes fixed on the screen, following the blue dot as it advances across the map.  Sometimes they walk with a headset plugged in, sometimes not, listening only to the robotic voice telling them, turn at the next intersection, continue for 2.6 kilometers.   The trail becomes a lit-up line on their screen, a corridor. The landscape becomes peripheral. Arrival matters more than awareness, or seeing, or listening, or experiencing anything en route. 

 

This is not a criticism. It is an observation.  This is increasingly what travel, hiking, and pilgrimage look like in the modern world.  We reduce our journeys to tracks on a screen broken down by steps, kilometers, and stages.  And in the process, we reduce ourselves to being little more than an avatar on a screen, rather than a living person in a living world. 

 

Centre of the World

 

We had an encounter on a local trail the other day where an older gentleman was screaming at another individual – we never did learn what the argument was about.  What stayed with us wasn’t the topic or the volume but the logic.

 

At the hinge of his certainty was his claim that he was right because “he was at the centre of the world.”

 

It sounds absurd.  Yet he pulled out his phone and opened Google Maps to prove it.  There he was – a small blue dot – perfectly centred on the screen.  Still yelling, he marched around in a circle on the gravel path.  As he did so, the map rotated with him.  “See! See?” he insisted, “The world revolves around me!” 

 

Put another way, his phone told him that he was right about everything because he was at the centre of everything…and he seemed to believe it.

 

Here we stood watching a man well over the age of 60, born well before the age of electronic maps, online travel directions, and the internet who you would think would have been well grounded in the lived world.  Yet he had come to believe that he alone had all the right answers and had dominion because “the world revolved around him”.

 

Worse yet, I don’t think this is an isolated perspective - the online world, the ease of shopping, consuming, and entertaining is shifting how we see ourselves, the world and how each relates to everything else.

 

And all of this is a reflection of the quiet seduction and erosion of our times - the way every interface confirms our centrality.   We already choose our news to confirm our biases rather than to inform, and we prejudge every topic regardless of our level of experience in order to be the one with the “answer” first.  People increasingly choose articles that Google tells them can be consumed in 4 to 6 minutes rather than a book, and pick paths based on AllTrails ratings, forgoing any consideration of weather, season, ability, or intuition. 

 

Each of these are manifestations of how metrics have replaced meaning, and how our experiences are now filtered through an online sense of efficiency. 

 

The result being that now we…or rather apps, are placing us at the centre of the universe. But the land beneath our feet does not revolve. It slopes, floods, erodes, and changes. To walk long distances is to remember that we are not the centre of anything. We are participants, briefly passing through.

 

This is not about technology being bad, it is about ensuring that we each still inhabit our experiences and being in the moment.

 

Experiences Not Apps

 

Maps once asked something of us. They required interpretation. You had to locate yourself within a larger context - north and south, river and ridge, town and forest. You learned where you were by relating yourself to what surrounded you. A map did not lead; it guided. The rest was up to you.  That was part of the experience. En route, you had to prepare, adjust, adapt and navigate both the known and unknown. 

 

The blue dot of trail apps and Google Maps has changed this relationship. They do not ask where you are in the world. It tells you. And in doing so, it places you - quite literally, and very arrogantly at the centre of everything. The map no longer orients you to the landscape; the landscape reorients itself around you.  You are now the centre of the world!  Doesn’t it feel great?  Little around you matters because it is all about you – if you doubt this, check the blue dot – there you are at the center of everything. 

More striking than the loss of situational awareness is what this subtly does to how we experience movement itself. When we follow the blue dot, we are no longer navigating, we are no longer experiencing ….we are complying and following. We are not reading the land, noticing weather, listening to sound, or sensing change. We are executing instructions.

 

Perhaps this makes sense in a car. Roads are designed for speed and efficiency. Highways are designed to get you from A to B quickly.  Attention must remain focused. Voice instructions are helpful, sometimes even necessary. But when that same mode of navigation carries over into walking onto trails, through forests, and across pilgrimage routes - something important is lost.

 

Look Up

 

“It is good to be forced to think about your surroundings

 and consider where we are in relation to the wider world.”

 

Walking has always been a different kind of movement. It is slow enough to invite attention. It allows time for noticing. The crunch of gravel underfoot. A shift in birdsong. A change in light. The smell of rain long before it arrives. Trails are not just routes between points; they are experiences, and they are teachers, offering constant, quiet information to anyone willing to look up and pay attention.

 

Yet increasingly, we have seen walkers moving through these spaces as if they were still in traffic – with their phone in hand, volume on full, awaiting the next spoken instruction. Turn left in 50 metres. Continue on in this direction. The world becomes background noise to the device meant to guide us through it.

 

We have watched people walk into the middle of traffic because they are following their phones.  We have seen people almost hike off the edge of a hillside because they are following their phones.  And we have been around people who have trekked from St. Jean Pied de Port to Santiago de Compostela chasing a blue dot and screen rather than doing much else.  In each case, these individuals are not having experiences they are following a screen as though they were part of a computer game, completing an achievement.

 

On pilgrimage routes, this feels especially poignant. These paths were never meant to be efficient. They exist precisely to slow the traveller, to create space for reflection, uncertainty, and encounters.  They are environments for lived experiences and the broadening of the self.   Traditionally, you learned where you were by landmarks, conversations, church spires, the shape of the land, a yellow arrow or the rhythm of the day itself. Getting briefly lost, having to alter your plans and learning to adapt were not failures… they were part of the experience.

 

To follow a trail or pilgrimage entirely by chasing a blue dot on your screen is to arrive without ever quite being there.

 

Trans Canada Trail in the North

 

There is a wonderful painting called the Wanderer above the Sea Fog.   This 1818 painting shows a solitary individual standing on a rocky outcrop watching over a vast mist-filled landscape.  This image literally invites those looking at it to step into the scene, to look up, look around and be in the world.  It promotes reflection and contemplation on the journey.  It is a reminder of how small we each are as individuals compared to the vast and beautiful landscapes around us. 

 

No app can adequately show you what it means to walk north for weeks and months at a time.  No app can show you how the Arctic shifts your perception of the world, what it feels like to live (if only temporarily) amid such remoteness, and what the scale and silence is like or what it does to you to be in it. 

 

These are all things you can only know by living them and looking up.  Whether that is in your own backyard, on a local path or on pilgrimage across an entire country.

 

Finding Balance

 

“I like to get lost and wander around.”

Steve Marsh

 

As we noted before, this is not an argument against technology. The blue dot is useful. Mapping apps are powerful tools, especially for safety, accessibility, and confidence. Many hikers and pilgrims carry them for good reasons.  There are times you get lost, there are times you are looking for the albergue, and there are times you want to find a shop.  Having help amid all of this makes sense.   The question is not whether to use them, but how completely we allow them to replace our own awareness and undermine the experiences open to us on the trail.

 

When every step is instructed, we are no longer practicing orientation, no longer participating, and no longer experiencing. When every decision is outsourced, we stop learning how to situate ourselves in the world. Over time, movement becomes something done to us, rather than something we actively participate in.  Completing a trail in this manner is similar to receiving a digital achievement badge on a video game and just as hollow.

 

Trails ask for a different approach to life – especially in the online age. They invite us to look up. To notice where the sun sits in the sky. To read a crossroads rather than be told which way to turn. To understand where we are not as as a set of coordinates, but as a place - connected to a river, a valley, a village, or a history that predates us.

 

There is something quietly grounding in this. To know where you are without being told. To sense progress not by a percentage bar, but by fatigue, hunger, and distance covered that is felt in the body. To experience travel as lived presence in a place rather than finished product while watching a screen.

 

Perhaps this is why walking, hiking, and pilgrimage continue to matter in an increasingly digital world. Not as resistance, but as reminder. They return us to a way of moving that requires attention, humility, and engagement. They pull us out of ourselves and place us back into a relationship with the world around us.

 

The blue dot and online information will still be there when we need it.  But every so often, it is definitely worth putting the phone away, lifting your eyes, and letting the trail guide you instead - not with instructions, but with experience of being where you are....totally.

 

See you on the trail!