The Journey Is the Point

Arrival and the Question Behind It

“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”

Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

Arriving in Whitehorse at the end of our fifth year on the Trans Canada Trail, we were asked by a reporter how it felt to reach our destination. It was a question that has stuck with us. Not because it was unusual, but because of the focus behind it and the inherent implication – that arriving meant more than the journey itself.

What Readers Search For

As travel bloggers, we’ve had the privilege of seeing what readers focus on the most. Our blog analytics tell a quiet story: visitors linger over the practical pages - tips, itineraries, gear lists, reflections and reviews. They study what to pack, where to stay, and how long a route might take. Yet far fewer pause to read about the journey itself. The slow moments that unfold during a hike, the rhythm and routines of each day on the trail, the clack of a train carriage, the vibration of an ocean liner’s engines, and the transformation that happens between the start and the finish.

It sometimes feels as though the modern traveller wants the rewards without the journey - the insight, the wisdom, the photograph - without the process that gives those things meaning. But the real value of any adventure, whether on the Camino Frances en route to Santiago, hiking the Trans Canada Trail, or voyaging aboard the Queen Mary 2 mid - Atlantic, lies in the in-between moments. The times before arrival, the spaces where we live with fewer distractions, the moments when thoughts settle and we are simply out in the world.

On every voyage we’ve taken - whether sailing across an ocean or walking across a province on our #Hike4Birds - we’ve come to realize that the destination is rarely the true achievement. The Compostela, the photo, the completed checklist: these are milestones, not meaning. What matters is the process of moving, patiently waiting, observing, listening and learning.

The Noise We Leave Behind

It is the journey that slows us down long enough to notice the world and ourselves. Often the greatest transformations and memories arise out of the smallest moments – times of shared laughter, the call of a hawk, a stranger’s kindness. These are the true rewards on the journey, not the destination.

Perhaps what’s missing in the scroll and skimming of online travel is precisely what the road, the trail, and the voyage demand: the presence of being where you are each moment in life. The willingness to be changed not by what we arrive at, but by what we pass through and how that passage changes us.

That’s what draws us back, time and again, to exploring the world. Each journey lets us step into a more natural rhythm of life. For days and weeks at a time, the noise of the world fades. There are no time zones to chase, no airports to sprint through, no breaking news to refresh. Just the horizon and the way forward.

The reward isn’t a certificate or a stamp in a passport - it’s the realization that travel doesn’t have to be about escape. It can be about the return to curiosity, to patience, to listening, and returning to the pace of nature.

The Journey as Transformation

Maybe that’s the challenge we quietly extend to those who read our blogs and about our journeys - to value the journeys in life as much as the arrivals. Whether walking the length of a country, taking a train across a continent, or sailing across the Atlantic, it is the act of journeying that opens the door to transformation.

Because in the end, it isn’t the destination that changes us - it’s the way we move toward it.

See you on the trail!