Life Choices and New Journeys

 “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”

T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding

Life at the Crossroads

This year began with changes and new challenges entering our lives.  Not long ago, my Grandmother, then some 103 years old, passed away.  At the same time, my parents began to have serious medical issues that meant they increasingly required assistance.  In addition to this, over the past several years, we have begun and now completed the world’s longest recreational pathway, the 28,000 km Trans Canada Trail, bringing our long #Hike4Birds from the Atlantic to the Pacific to the Arctic to an end.   

 
All of this means that we now stand at a point in our lives when change is in the air, and we must chart a new direction for ourselves, dealing with the choices that lie ahead.
 

Problem with the Algorithm

 
There is no denying that this year has been a busy one for us – beginning with us sailing across the Atlantic Ocean on Wind Surf, which led us to hike on pilgrimage across Spain on the Via Augusta, Via de la Plata and Camino Sanabres (a distance of 1236 km) before returning to Canada.  

Back in our home nation, we set off for our final year on the Trans Canada Trail, which, including backtracking, would lead us to trek another 1500 to 1600  km over the course of 120 days.  We would eventually reach the northern terminus on Sept. 25^th, 2025, after spending 783 days hiking from the Atlantic to the Pacific to the Arctic from 2018-2025.

 
After getting back home, we spent some time over several weeks celebrating, meeting up with friends, catching up on the events of their lives and the changes in the world.  We also spent a lot of time reflecting, writing, editing pictures, doing laundry, redoing laundry and above all sleeping.  The simple fact is that this last year and our last push was hard, very hard, with challenging terrain, long stretches of highway, tough weather conditions to contend with.  Added to which we both seemed to suffer from a deep weariness that never seemed to let go – even when we were back home.
 
Though excited, the fact remains that after a long journey and a hike that has taken so much effort and time, we have found it very hard to go back to the routines of city living.  It seemed as though, over the course of the last 6 years, that while in many ways nothing had changed, everything had also changed ... us, our situation, civic attitudes, and the world.

 
Having hiked so much in the last decade and lived so much on our own and in a tent and on the trail, the notion of coming “home” has soon led us to feel as though we are strangers in our own community.  Cities suddenly seemed too loud and felt too crowded.  Even the rooms in our new home feel as though they are airless and too warm.  

 
Added to this, we have depressingly discovered that if you do something big, exciting, and that charts a new direction ... it doesn’t make you an interesting prospect for jobs ... it means that no one actually wants you.  Today it seems that employers primarily want people who stay in the box and don’t innovate or who aren’t creative.  There seems to be no demand for teachers across Canada, and jobs that once required a PhD are now volunteer positions, making it a very tough world to get a job in.
 
With one journey behind us, we feel as though we are puzzle pieces that no longer fit into the picture.  We simply don’t fit the algorithm of the modern world.

 

“You can’t go back home again…

 but the home you return to is never quite the same as the one you left.”

Thomas Wolfe, You Can’t Go Home Again

 
What to do next is a monumental question to which we have no answers ... beyond the obvious one of keep exploring, keep hiking, and return to sharing.
 
And so...as we have found so often on the trail or sailing across an ocean -  the questions in our lives tend to clarify themselves once we have sat with them a bit – at which point we often find ourselves ready to pick up right where we left off ... rebalanced and restored with a renewed perspective.
 

Birding England, Exploring the Arctic

 
With the TCT completed and now behind us, the fall of 2025 would see us back at the beginning of Canada’s national trail in St. John’s, Newfoundland, where we returned to the Atlantic trailhead to reflect.

Beginning the Trans Canada Trail, 2019

 
The sign that we had stood under 6 years ago at the outset of our great adventure is now gone...but for the first time since we took our initial steps so long ago, the trail itself once again stretched out some 28,000 km to the west of us.

New Atlantic TCT Terminus, 2025

 
After a few days on Canada’s Atlantic coastline, we and with the hope of finding new direction we set off eastward to the United Kingdom once again. In the UK, we hope to spend a few days hiking and visiting a number of birding hot spots around London, including the London Wetland Centre, Kew Gardens,  the Staines Reservoir (beside Heathrow Airport), and RPBS Rainham Marshes.  
 
After which, we have been given the opportunity to go on a 16-day voyage to the top of Norway in search of the Northern Lights aboard Ambassador's cruise ship Ambience
 
See you on the Journey!