twofunkyhearts

Vancouver has been a welcome visit “home” for me. I’ve found that in traveling across Canada this year that I can’t really see myself choosing to live in many places, however this place does feel like my city in some ways. It was the first big city I ever lived in as a young adult – for 5 months back in 2006, and I relished not only the fun you can have in a natural playground like Vancouver, but also the anonymity, the opportunity and the immediacy a big city offers. Staying here in Kitsilano with my inspiring and grounding friend Mark, I’m relaxed and energized at the same time. I’ve caught up with old friends, and even my old boyfriend from the end of university, Binendra. We travelled around Nepal together in 2008 for a month – one of the best trips I’ve ever done. It seemed fitting that we walked through Vancouver’s laughing men statues. This may be my new favourite piece of public art.

Poor Binendra, I introduced him to Menchie’s Frozen Yogurt and may have created an addict.

Don’t do the West Coast Trail in a couple days. Take 5 or 6 or 7. It’s such a gorgeous spot with lots of friendly people and flying whales – it definitely deserves your full attention for as long as you can give it.

That said, I ran into a little time crunch after I booked my reservation on the trail. I realized I could leave Monday afternoon around 3pm, but would have to be off the trail Wednesday by mid day so I could catch the ferry to civilization so I could get on a compulsory call for my nutrition course. I decided I was up for the challenge and left my tent, sleeping bag, large backpack, clothes, most food, etc, in storage and instead took out my running backpack and filled it with water, a tarp, 12 Probars, long underwear, extra socks, a rain jacket, shorts, my silk sleeping bag liner, an emergency blanket, headlamp, and a bandana. I set off after a comedy-filled orientation from park officers and started running. It was beautiful, definitely worthy of a slow walk, but I had a schedule to keep. Unfortunately a fuzzy aura set in the centre of my eyes (yes, I see auras!), causing my vision to be impaired and my senses to numb, and I knew a migraine would hit. I was able to get a good chunk of ground under me before I had to walk though, and I made it to Tsusiat Falls around 8:45pm that evening. I set up my tarp on the beach with a ground cover and tried to sleep amongst the throngs of tents. Sadly, I hadn’t considered the fact that a tarp is not closed to the ground so lots of little creatures (crabs and mice) were able to scurry around – and over – me. I woke up in the night feeling something poking my cheek. I like to think it was a beach crab claw… not a mouse snout.

The next morning I headed out around 8am and caught the first ferry on its first trip after a short wait. Luckily my headache had dissipated and I was feeling pretty decent. The ferry operators have a fish shack where they sell salmon, halibut and crab, but since it was only 10am I kept moving. Instead I stopped for the most expensive burger of my life ($22) at Chez Monique’s, located on a nice stretch of sand just south of Carmanah Point Lighthouse. I met 4 guys from Vancouver who had taken a week off together to leisurely hike the WCT and drink wine at the campfires in the evenings… I envied them! That night I camped at Cullite Cove, a beautiful campsite set back from the trail with the option of rocky beach camping or packed soil amongst trees. This night I opted for the trees and soft(er) ground since I didn’t have a sleeping pad and I was hoping the crabs might not find me farther away from the water. I looked out over the water as I ate another Probar and relished the peace of the place. Going back to my campsite I met about 10 other people camping closeby, all of whom thought I was crazy. Two guys were on their third WCT thru-hike, another was from Utrecht, Netherlands, a guy from the south of France, and a young couple from Vancouver were happy to share their fire. In the morning I set off around 7am, getting to Owen’s Point to explore the sea caves undisturbed at low tide. Along the way I met a group of four who handed me a rescue message – another hiker had twisted his knee on the way in, and was stranded at a campsite. It was a sobering reminder that 1% of all hikers require rescue on the WCT. Turning the corner around Owen’s Point I met about 20 other hikers coming from the opposite direction. The small pack was a blessing compared to the heavy ones other hikers wore – I was able to rock-hop up the coast to Camper’s Cove easily, then continued on to Thrasher’s Cove. Again, I was lucky that the beach was empty and took the chance to take a dip in the ocean before getting back on the trail to finish the last 5km to the final ferry dock.

Finishing the hike at Port Renfrew was bittersweet. All I wanted was to stay on the trail and enjoy another ocean view sunset, but the trip ended on a runner’s high on a sunny day on the west coast. Not much can be better than that.

I’m back from Namaste Esperanza retreat to the bustling cosmopolitan of Halifax. Concrete is getting me down.. off to try “surfering” some freezing Atlantic waves tomorrow I think. It’s an activity that seems so audacious that it is personally challenging me, questioning my toughness and pulling my hair while I pretend I’m not crying in fear. I must do it!

I just finished an interview with a very large company. They contacted me weeks ago about an opportunity in their marketing division and were interested in my experience. Sure, I’d talk to the hiring mannager. She called me this morning, and it quickly became apparent there is no position – at least not right now. There are “probablities and potentialities”, but nothing at the moment. We’re just networking right now.

Okay, that’s fine. It’s not like I want to go back to corporate right now anyways. I’m in no rush and quite happy for it to take quite some time while I camp, swim, hike, jump off cliffs and explore dark alleys. Sure, take your time. (Though I must admit the lack of transparancy is not admirable).

Why was I not excited to talk to her? Why did it feel like I had a bathtub drain in my right heel, sucking a vortex of life energy out of me? How come, now that I’m finished, I feel like she – not just she, but the whole $5B business – is appraising me like a steer, having pinched my ribs, inspected my teeth and patted my tummy to check for what I can give them once slaughtered? And as she closed with dangling a carrot (a rotten one, by the way) and reducing any expectations I could have at a long life and hope for the future, for a moment I felt small, not becuase I am but because she seemed to reduce me to either suitable or not suitable for a box on an org chart. Whether they want to give me the box or not, I feel cramped, and contorted.

So if this doesn’t work for me anymore, what does? Who is doing something really cool that I can wrestle and wrangle with, coax and soothe, love and grow? What do I want to do that is all of those things. And how much time and effort am I will to give to it?

Tried setting up my tent tonight in a church parking lot in a little community several miles back, but the tent blew over as it’s become increasingly fragile every time I set it up. It seems to have turned out just fine though – I have my camping mattress spread between the trunk and backseat so will sleep in the car tonight. After dinner i the church lot I kept driving to get a little closer to St. Anthony’s and pulled off the road into a laneway of cabins. I’m probably trespassing, but the view is spectacular and I’ve just watched the sun sink into the west while listening to the waves from the St. Lawrence touch the shore. It’s an amazing vista and I seem to be all alone here with none of the cabin inhabitants here on a Wednesday.

I woke up at the Green Gardens backcountry campsite this morning bundled up with toque, gloves neck buff, and by the time I had walked 20 minutes I had stripped down to my tank top. The sun was blazing and it was a gorgeous day. I tested my knee by running most of the Tablelands trail and then climbed up to the Woody Point lookout. It’s so crazy to look to one side and see barren rock, alien terrain, then to turn your head 90 degrees and see lush forests and rolling hills. This is one wild place, an intersection of intercontinental rock as I learned yesterday in the Discovery Center. Being a part of this world makes me want to be active in preserving it. The effects of climate change could erase the grasslands completely – changing the face of much of Canada.

i stopped in at Molly Made in Woodypoint to visit a girl’s parents (Cat – she fixed my tent the 2nd time in St. John’s). Her parents, Molly and Austin, were full of local information including plant species native to the region, how to net a capelin that flounders it’s way to shore in June and fry it up with salt and pepper, and so much more. Their store was cute and I bought a couple of cards to send home. Austin showed me a fossil he found that predates dinosaurs, right before handing me a jar of moose meat for my travels (see my post about that amazing stuff). I am so excited about this last point. Ever since completing the ECT I’ve been eating everything I can get my hands on – moose will be a huge treat for this 95% veg humanoid.

The lovely folks at Molly Made gave me a jar of moose… in chunks. I can just see my Toronto, New York and London friends turning away in disgust, then turning back in curiousity. Chunky moose in a jar?

It’s fantastic.

I found a little bakery selling fresh bread and Newfie eggs and have stopped at the edge of town – Parsson’s Pond – and fried up moose, then eggs and devoured it with (white!!) bread. My vegetarian, vegan, nutritionist, IIN, orthorexic friends by now have surely stopped reading and have deleted me from their facebook accounts. It was delicious, and so nourishing. Sitting here, highway traffic behind me (in Newfoundland that means more like a little-used country sideroad), watchingthe sun lower over the St. Lawrence, giddy with happiness, waving at the drivers behind me who look out their windows and feel a spark of envy. It’s so funny how little things like an evening picnic in the sun can ake you feel so alive, so happy, so fulfilled as a living creature on the earth. At least that’s how it makes me feel. Maybe it’s the moose in a jar.

Epiphany today: I visited l’Anse aux Meadows which officially marks the connection of the human race, the very spot where we circumnavigated the globe and ran into one another again – the natives of North America (the Innu, Innuit and/or Doret in the north) with the Vikings from Greenland. The epiphany was this: maybe it’s the natural state of human beings to be roamers, adventurers, explorers. Constantly on the quest for the next moose in a jar. For ages I’ve been wondering when will it be “right” to “settle down” as they say. For so many of the friends I grew up with, the answer to this question came early and immediately. I’m about to start my 30th cycle of the sun and despite setting foot on all continents (well, except Antartica) and living in major cities to small towns to sleepy countrysides, I still only feel at home while on the wander. Part of me wants this to change. The lure of regular yoga classes, a productive garden, reliable community of friends and moose….from the freezer(?!)… sounds so nice. Maybe even a house, a tree with roots. Looking at the Vikings this wasn’t natural for them. Nor was it for the native people of Canada. It’s only modern day man who have stopped wandering and looking across the ocean at the setting sun. Maybe the state I’m in is a natural one. Or maybe I’m just one of a dying breed who hasn’t evolved out of homelessness yet.

Hiked almost 40k today. Wanted to stop sooner but the landscape is so exposed, uneven and boggy at the momet that it want possible to set up camp before or after Petty Harbour, so ended up going 10 farther than planned. Happy to be going to bed in my tent now.

Met a group of 8 Newwfies tonight. Amazing that they go camping and paddling together regularly. What a cool bunch of people! They included me in the their capfire and even fed me moose sauce spaghetti! It’s hit me on this trip what people mean when they say that Canadians really are nice You hear it on the road, but I so rarely encounter other Canadians and have never really been a traveler in my own country.

The ECT has been kind to me since St. Johns and Mother Nature has been very generous with a beautiful sushiney day today. I think I go a bit of a tan. Cape Spear south for 10 km was some of the most intense wind I’ve ever experienced. It literally tipped me over a few times. Kind of lonely though, was caught by some day trippers belting out Joel Plaskett tunes during a rest stop. It made for the briefest of awkward moments, until I realized that I was wearing green pants, a blue shirt, red hat and hadn’t had a shower for a few days and that I had bigger things to be self conscious about.

I love this time of the evening when camping.. my bed is made (despite having the tent fixed I’m opting for bivy under the starts – or cloud cover as is true tonight ps: a major mistake I found when the rain soakinng through my sleeping bag finally forced me to set up my tent in the dark). Dinner is finished and food is hung in a tree. I’m writing and sipping tea that’s gone cold too quickly, listening to the waves hit the rocks. Monster mosquitoes are flying aroud despite the chill and I can only imagine what it must be like as it warms up here. My campsite is cute, bare bones, on the south side of a barrier separating a freshwater bay from the ocean. Theres a breeze with a chilli in it which makes me look forward to the warmth of my sleeping bag.

My creative mind has been activing today, coming up with plans and business ideas, and processing a lot of past events and people. It feels like I’m purging so much of what has been unhealthy for me in the past: people, places, relationships, environments. Perhaps making space for something new.

Disjointed Notes from the Trail:

It’s my first night on the ECT and I’m not far from puch Cove camping in a very.. uneven spot behind a sign on the trail indicating a little-known place called Hollow Cove. The whole place, while beautiful, is cold. Icebergs breaking on the bay below, a lonely foghorn in the distance and an insidious chill that haunts. In a moment of indulgence I broke open a packet of hot chocolate I snuck out of the United Airways lounge in DC. I have 4 and thought they’d last a while but maybe not.
Sleepingi n my bivy for the first time tonight. I had a 6th sense the last while this may happen… one of those things you kind of knew would happen but in no way could you change the course of events. Setting up my tent one of the poles broke, right at the arch. Its the first time it’s ever happened to me, and it’s a crappy, cold place for it to occur. I’ve been thinking how heavy and how muc space my tent takes up and now on the first night it’s unusable. Bummer. Hopefully my sleeping bag will keep me warm. Might go down to 0 degrees toight.

The trail is lovely so far and would probablty be even lovelier if I could see more of it. The taxi driver from St. John’s wouldn’t drvie me from Pouch Cove to the trail head on Biscan Cove because the road was gravel. (I didnt think it seemed soo obad but whatever… whasn’t worth the extra $30 he was charging for the 4km and time breathing in his cologn anyways. I hiked about 6km to Cape St. Fracis then back, picked up my bag I’d hid inn the bush, walked through  Pouch Cove and finally found the best site I could. My knee is causing me some serious grief from the ultra injury in March. I hoped it would have healded by nnow, ad definitely thought it would be fine waking. Tomorrow will be pain, I can tell already. Regardless, I think we should stage an ultra here.