The Importance and Satisfaction of Experiencing the World

 “Do stuff. Be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration’s shove or society’s kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It’s all about paying attention.”

Susan Sontag

 

Lived Experiences

 
Over the years, we have tried to share what we have experienced, as honestly as we could, through photographs, writing, and public presentations. Yet one thing has become increasingly clear to us: a thing is only ever fully known by doing. No matter how carefully something is described, photographed, and shared….lived experience carries a depth that cannot be borrowed, replicated, or convincingly performed from a distance.

 
Reading and watching matter. Stories, images, and films can move us, teach us, and sometimes even change us. For most of us, they are the only way we will ever encounter much of the world.  And that’s ok.
 
But they are not the same as first-hand and lived experience, and they do not offer the same lessons, the same growth, or the same responsibility. There is a difference between knowing about something and knowing it in your body, over time, with effort. 
 

Anticipated Criticisms

 
Years ago, far too many years ago now, when we first stepped onto the Trans Canada Trail, we expected some criticism. Experienced hikers told us our gear was wrong. Professional photographers dismissed our images. Serious birders scoffed that we were only seeing “common” species.

 
Some of those critiques had merit. They came from people with knowledge, experience, and standards shaped by their own long investments of time and care.  And from their commentary, we strove to grow as outdoors enthusiasts, photographers, and birders.
 

Unexpected Commentary

 
Yet as the kilometres on the trail were shared and years past even this commentary evolved from an analysis of what we were doing, or how we were doing it to outright doubt that any of our claims could be possible. In many ways, these types of comments and the accusations that followed were entirely unexpected.

 
Claims that we could not possibly walk the distances we had noted (average of 20 km / day), others that we had been “seen driving all sections of the trail” (untrue but also impossible to do), and others that asserted that our entire recounting was an outright lie.  Proclaiming that our photographs must have been staged and our stories invented.   
 
At the heart of these was the sense, as emailed and messaged to us, that our goal was either to “deceive people” or that we were “simply attention seekers.”
 

Can Lived Experiences be Trusted at All?

 
Once again, kilometres passed underfoot, and the years rolled on.  Then, after the walking was done and the journey at its end, a new critique emerged: that everything we had shared was “AI-generated.” That the writing, the images, the daily records of 6 years of effort were not the result of lived experience at all, but fabrication - a performance produced by technology.
 
Setting aside the fact that AI was not a real presence in 2019, what troubled us most was not the accusation itself, but what it revealed.  The commentary at us had evolved from a place of critique, to a place of doubt and fear of being deceived, to the present, where it now asks the question of our age: Can any lived experience be trusted? 

 
After all, so much of what is online and across Social Media is now created.  As a result, at the moment we live in a society where appearances outweigh reality.   Where AI slop is prevalent and lived experiences seem ordinary by comparison.  Why trust any achievement of anyone else?
 
Yet this culture of appearances encourages certainty without cost. It allows people to make confident claims about journeys they have never walked, labour they have never undertaken, and risks they have never borne. In this framework, experience itself becomes negotiable - something to be judged, dismissed, or rewritten from a distance.
 
Angry emails, dismissive comments, and cheap criticism can be quickly tapped out, sent off, and just as quickly forgotten.  It is a process by which people send their rage and frustrations out into the world.  It is a reflection of the anxieties of our lives and our times.
 

A Challenge for this Generation

 
Yet the damage done by this is not confined to a single project or a single life. It reaches further, quietly hollowing out our relationship with effort, learning, and trust. When we privilege how something looks over what it took, we undermine the very idea that time, patience, and perseverance matter. And when that happens, we make it harder, not easier, for the next generation of explorers, researchers, artists, and caregivers to believe that slow, honest work is worth doing at all.

 
Being told about something is not the same as learning it. Watching is not the same as walking. Essential things - endurance, humility, empathy, restraint (among so much more) - are learned only through participation. First-hand experience slows judgment. It complicates certainty. It introduces context where slogans and memes once stood. And over time, it reshapes how we understand effort, failure, and care. 
 
In moments like this, it is worth remembering Marshall McLuhan’s warning:
 

“We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us.”

Marshall McLuhan¸ The Medium Is the Massage

 

Certainty Over Escapism

 
Long journeys do not provide escape in the way we often imagine. You cannot walk away from yourself. You walk with what you carry, day after day, until it begins to change shape. Some burdens grow lighter. Others simply become familiar enough to live with. This kind of learning cannot be rushed, outsourced, or convincingly imitated.

In many ways, it feels as though we are all being invited back out into nature and onto the trail - not by adventure, but by need and by circumstance. And yet, rather than seeing possibility in that invitation, we have grown quick to dismiss it. To critique. To explain away why something could not have happened, or why it was not worth attempting at all. Yet also hollows out the marrow of life by avoiding experiences and avoiding the potential for growth.
 

“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door. You step onto the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

JRR Tolkien, Fellowship of the Rings

 
Yet whereas Bilbo had to deal with dragons, and Frodo had to defeat the Dark Lord, in our day we are left in a tussle with online trolls.  There is no denying that stepping out the door, going out into the world and trying something new can be a challenging and perhaps even a dangerous business. 
 
But it is not because dragons await, but because blind assuredness disappears and critique becomes harder.  Experience unsettles certainty. It challenges the stories we tell ourselves about what is possible, it challenges our casual dismissiveness of others, and grounds us as to what effort actually looks like.
 
Hollow critique builds nothing. Lived experience opens up the world.
 
Lived experiences give us different ways to see, to think, and to be. And lived experience shows us that there are different ways act, and perhaps most importantly, different ways to react.

 
For a long time, critiques shaped how, and whether, we shared our journeys at all. Silence became easier than constant defence. But the meaning of what we experienced does not depend on universal agreement. It exists whether it is believed or not, because it was lived – and because we know what we have done, because we have experienced it firsthand.
 
And that, in the end, is the point we keep returning to.
 
See you on the trail!