Did We Ever Get Tired of Talking About the Trans Canada Trail?

When Sharing Our Journey Began to Interfere With Experiencing It

 
For six years, we travelled across Canada on foot with backpacks, binoculars, and cameras, exploring its landscapes, observing birds and wildlife, meeting people, and learning about the communities connected by the Trans Canada Trail. Throughout much of that time, we documented our experiences through daily journals, photographs, presentations, and our #Hike4Birds blog, hoping to encourage others to explore the natural world around them.

 
Given our enthusiasm for Canada and its extraordinary natural diversity, people sometimes assume that we must have enjoyed every opportunity to write, speak, and share our experiences along the way. And to a considerable extent, we did. We have always enjoyed introducing people to unfamiliar places, sharing observations of wildlife, and encouraging others to spend time outdoors.
 
But did we ever get tired of talking about the Trans Canada Trail?  Yes, in fact, eventually, we did.

 
Interestingly, the realization that sharing an experience could sometimes interfere with enjoying it began developing long before we stopped publishing regular updates from our northern trek on the TCT. While undertaking a training hike and pilgrimage in Spain, I found myself increasingly questioning whether it was possible to be fully engaged in an experience while simultaneously thinking about how to document and present it to others.  Writing a journal or taking photographs was not necessarily the problem. Both had long been part of how we travelled, and neither prevented us from enjoying the places we visited. The difficulty arose when documenting our experiences began to involve considering how other people might interpret them, what details they expected us to include, and whether our observations would agree with their existing ideas about a particular place or trail.
 
On difficult days, this could become especially frustrating. There were occasions when we described challenging conditions or unpleasant experiences only to receive emails asking us to change what we had written. Others seemed disappointed when our accounts did not reflect how they imagined the Trans Canada Trail should be experienced. As a result, rather than simply describing what had happened, we sometimes found ourselves explaining why we had written about it in the first place.  Over time, that tension grew. We had set out to explore Canada, observe its natural history, and share what we encountered. We had not anticipated how much time we might eventually spend responding to criticism, defending ordinary decisions, or attempting to reconcile our experiences with other people's expectations.
 
By the time we reached the Pacific Ocean, the demands associated with documenting our expedition had begun to weigh more heavily on us. We still enjoyed writing, photography, and sharing our observations, but the growing expectation that we should account for each day's progress, explain our decisions, or respond to disappointment about what we had chosen to publish was becoming increasingly tiring.

 
Our decision to continue north brought these concerns into sharper focus. In 2023, when extensive forest fires interrupted our plans and made travel through parts of northern Canada difficult or impossible, we received a stunning amount of criticism from those who apparently believed that our commitment to the expedition should have outweighed such considerations. Some suggested that we were not sufficiently dedicated because we were unwilling to continue walking through areas affected by wildfire.  For us, however, the decision was relatively straightforward. We had no interest in placing ourselves at unnecessary risk, complicating emergency responses, or ignoring conditions affecting the communities through which we hoped to travel. Yet even these practical decisions became subjects we were expected to explain and defend.
 
Around the same period, we discovered that photographs and written material from our journey were appearing online for sale or being reused in publications without our permission. Particularly troubling was finding information presented in guidebooks and other resources that lacked the detail and context we considered necessary for people attempting to follow parts of the route. Having devoted years to documenting our experiences, discovering that our work could be repurposed in ways we neither intended nor supported was deeply discouraging.
 
By then, the question was no longer simply whether we enjoyed sharing our experiences. We had begun asking how much of the journey we were willing to surrender to the demands of documenting and sharing it.   The remaining northern section of the TCT was substantial, involving approximately 3,800 kilometres of walking, much of it along highways and roads. We knew that these conditions would present their own challenges, particularly because extended highway walking was never our preferred way to explore a landscape. We also knew that our days would continue to involve the ordinary demands of finding food, water, and safe places to camp.

 
Amid this, we increasingly wanted our evenings and our hike to belong to us again.  We wanted to spend time reviewing photographs because we were interested in what we had observed, rather than because another update was expected. We wanted to enjoy an encounter with a bird or an unexpected landscape without immediately considering how to describe it. And we wanted to make decisions about our schedule and safety without feeling obliged to explain and defend every choice to people following our progress from elsewhere.
 
Ultimately, we decided to place greater emphasis on experiencing Canada ourselves rather than continuing to document and publish it as we travelled.  This did not mean that we had lost interest in the Trans Canada Trail, stopped caring about encouraging others to explore nature, or abandoned our intention to share what we discovered. We continued photographing, observing wildlife, keeping notes, and exploring the landscapes and communities along the way. We have also continued sharing our other journeys through our writing and photography.
 
What changed was our willingness to make every part of the expedition immediately available for public discussion while it was being lived. 

 
What we could never have anticipated but later discovered is that there is an unexpected responsibility that can develop when a personal journey becomes something other people follow. Readers become interested in your progress, offer encouragement, ask questions, and sometimes develop expectations about what you should do next. Much of that interest is generous and welcome. Indeed, many people supported us throughout our expedition, and we remain grateful for their kindness and curiosity. Much as something is altered by being observed, so too can an experience gradually become shaped by the expectations associated with sharing it. Decisions that ought to concern the people undertaking the journey can become subjects of public debate, while an evening that might otherwise be spent resting or enjoying a place becomes another opportunity to explain what happened that day.

 
We still hope to share more of our northern experiences, including the birds, wildlife, landscapes, and communities we encountered on our way to the Arctic Ocean. Those two years remain an important part of our #Hike4Birds expedition, and we have an enormous amount of material that we would eventually like to revisit.
 
For now, however, much of that journey remains ours.  And after spending years describing where we walked, what we saw, and why we made particular decisions, there is something rather pleasant about having experiences that we do not yet feel obliged to explain.
 
See you on the Trail!