Saskatchewan Gypsies

We had spent the past week at Dustin’s and did very little walking. We are now in Lethbridge visiting with Maureen’s brother and his wife. Because of the trails here, we get to do a lot of walking involving hills.

Today, Maureen persuaded me to buy a Sony A6000 camera for my birthday, a present from her. I am blown away with the camera, one that I had not even focused on as it was outside of my comfort zone for price. I am including one of the first pictures I took with the camera just hours after buying it. The detail is amazing. What is very important is that it is extremely light as well as having a very high resolution factor because of the sensor. I will be spending a lot of time learning how to use the camera in order to take advantage of all of its capabilities before we head out onto the Camino.

Maureen picked out the camera after checking with a Camino sight with regards to cameras on the Camino. Tomorrow we head home after a few days here in Lethbridge where we have been visiting Mike as well as doing a bit of shopping in Calgary as well as here. We are focused on buying very light, quick drying clothing as we want to keep our backpacks as light as possible.

We won’t be going to begin our walk in Figeac, France this autumn as I had originally planned. We will wait until next fall, 2015, and start in Saint Jean Pied de Port. We are in Saskatoon at the Gordie Howe campgrounds with our trailer and an add-on that we bought and are using for first time. Yesterday, we spent our time shopping for a few things for camping and for our intended Camino. I got the USB adapter needed for my memory card reader so that Maureen can download photos directly onto her tablet. I also got a pedometer and traded in the Osprey hydration unit for a Platypus hydration unit which is the same as what I got for Maureen. We also bought some socks with toes in them to see if they will work in keeping blisters to a minimum. I also got some blister pads just in case.

We walked just over 19 km along the Meewasin Trail today. Thankfully, there are no blisters to show for this effort of walking in very hot conditions with sunshine and 30+ Celsius. We stopped to change socks three times in order to keep our feet relatively dry. Maureen went through two litres of water while I drank a litre and a half during the walk. We will have to monitor Maureen’s water bag more frequently so that she doesn’t run out. I am thinking that perhaps a stop for coffee on Broadway on our return leg tomorrow would be a good idea, more like what we will experience on the Camino from the blogs we have been reading.

I was surprised at how relatively easy the walk was, our longest walk of the year. We walked wearing our backpacks at almost near our target weights making the walk even more of a workout in the process. I took the Nikon camera along for the walk and I am beginning to be convinced that I will need to take a better camera for the Camino, one that is still light but has better optics so that there is less blur in the photos.

Our last day of hiking in British Columbia was in Fernie, British Columbia. We found quite a few number of trails that connected with each other allowing us to circle the small city of Fernie. Because of recent “bear” activity, we were advised to carry bear spray with us through the forested trails. You can see the holster that holds the bear spray on my chest attached to the chest strap of my day backpack in this photo. Of course, we didn’t meet up with any bears and that suited us just fine.

We have encountered bears before here in Canada, usually as we pass them in our car. We did meet one on a golf course a few years ago in Golden, B.C. The bear was by the green and I had enough time to take a few photos while waiting for him to move on so that we could hit our final shots to the green and putt out. Yes, we did keep on golfing as we knew that the bear was not interested in us, other than in putting distance between him and us.

Hiking in the forests and prairies of Canada is an adventure as the opportunity to meet up with wild animals is always there. Needless to say, it pays to be alert and to be prepared. When hiking in bear country, bear spray is a necessity. It is also a good idea to wear bells that alert the bears to your presence (no, we didn’t have them on us – they were hidden somewhere in our garage at home) resulting in less chance of actually meeting a bear on the paths and trails. As part of my preparation is taking along a camera and walking quietly so as to see what there is to be seen rather than scaring them off with excess noise.

The TransCanada Trail is becoming a significant set of trails for hiking and cycling in British Columbia. The trail that begins in Cranbrook travels for forty kilometres to Kimberley – a paved trail for much of the route that follows an old rail line. Taking along extra water because of the hot conditions, we hiked about sixteen kilometres of the trail with one of our friends who now lives in Cranbrook.

As you can see, we are making good use of our Pacer Poles which has enabled us to walk more erect and at a quicker pace. On this trail, we walked about 5 km/hr including the time spent stopped to take photos. We could easily have kept going but our friend had reached her limits for the day and the heat.

Heat is the factor that most steals away energy. The previous day we had intended a second hike in the Grand Forks area, but with temperatures in the mid-thirties Celsius, and our hiking in the late morning at Midway, we ended up resting in the shade at a park in Grand Forks. When we begin to train seriously for the Camino, we will make sure to do most of our hiking in the earlier part of the day. On the Camino, everyone takes off with the first light of dawn, many even setting out earlier because of the heat.

As we began to head towards home, in no hurry of course, we made sure to stop along the way in order to get in as much hiking as we could. We had studied the maps as well as listing places mentioned while doing Internet searches so that we could check out any interesting places. One such place was Midway, B.C., a very small town along the Crowsnest Highway. There were two sets of trails to chose from at Midway, one that followed the Kettle River and a second one that zigzagged its way up the side of a mountain.

We tried the mountain trail first until vertigo told me that I would be better off following the river trail. The mountain trail was very narrow with no room to pass should we have met anyone along the way. Such a narrow path with no place to go but down should I lose my balance just made me more and more nervous. My fear of heights won out, so we turned around and carefully made our way back down. Back on flat ground, we followed the river trail and were rewarded with meeting a deer as well as a number of birds. After hiking for about twelve kilometres, it was time for a lunch before continuing on our way to our final destination for the day, Cranbrook, B.C.

After a few days of visiting in the Kamloops area with a good long walk in the hills near my brother’s acreage, we were off to the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia. Once off the ferry, we stopped for lunch and then a long bay-side hike at Gibson’s Landing. Of course the hike involved taking a lot of photos before we headed up further along the coast. Next stop was Cliff Gilker Park where we got to hike in a cedar forest setting along a creek complete with a few waterfalls along the forested trail. We finished the hike with just a bit of time before we had to head to our destination for the next three days in Sechelt.

The time spent in Sechelt was filled with a good morning hike each day as we discovered the area with our hosts for the weekend. This trip to visit family relations was turning out much different from our previous visits as we were able to continue our habit of walking between an hour and two hours each day. Making sure that we didn’t get carried away with eating fast foods or junk foods left us feeling much better that we had expected while travelling and visiting. We are learning that visiting and hiking go together, a good thing for us to remember for our planned Camino next autumn.

With thirteen months until we head to Saint Jean Pied de Port in France where we will begin to walk the Camino Francés, Maureen and I are taking advantage our our travels in Canada to get our bodies ready for the 800 kilometre long walk through north-western Spain to Santiago del Compostela. We had stopped in Dead Man’s Flats near Canmore, Alberta for our first walk of the day, a short walk of about two kilometres simply because we stopped to fill the car with gas. Our plan was to go to as far as Golden, BC for this first day of our July holiday. We stopped again at the Redgrave rest area where we soon discovered a trail that we decided to follow. The trail zig-zagged down a forested mountain passing flowers, streams and even a rustic cabin set off the trail. We followed the trail for six kilometres. With our impromptu hike done, we then continued on to Golden where we booked into a hotel.

With a few hours of sunshine left in the day, we decided to hike the trails next to the river and then through the forest in order to work up an appetite and to stretch our legs from the long day of driving. We easily walked another eight kilometres giving us a day’s total of sixteen kilometres.

I spent the past few days in Swift Current, Saskatchewan where I was “teen” sitting my two eldest grandsons. While there, I got to give my new Pacer Poles a good workout on the trail system that wends its way along the creek and passed several parks. I was surprised at how easily I managed the ascents with the poles, a significant difference from my experiences on ascents without poles.

Maureen and I used the poles for an hour a day during the first week we owned them, and were able to easily cover just over five kilometres in the hour. This week we have upped the walking time with poles to an hour and a half covering a distance of eight kilometres. I am hoping we continue to build on this over the spring and summer until we are walking three to five hours on the average for each of our walks. We have adjusted our poles following the first few walks until we found what we felt was the optimum length.

We will be spending several days in Lethbridge, Alberta where we will take advantage of their long trails and hills for our training walks.

It has been quite some time since my last entry here. Since our return home to Canada and the Canadian prairie, the weather and walking conditions have limited us to short walks around our small rural, prairie town where we cope with mud, puddles and potholes. Our walk yesterday gave us hope that we would be taking a walk into the country side, finally able to measure our walking in kilometres instead of blocks.

Yesterday, we received our trekking poles in the mail, poles I ordered online from the United Kingdom called Pacer Poles. Having used Nordic ski poles for many, many years when cross-country skiing, we both thought that it would be good to be kind to our aging bodies with trekking poles when on our long hikes.

Since my wife has made the decision to walk the Camino journey with me, she has been busy learning as much as possible about the journey, and more importantly, about what it will take to be ready for the hike of about 800 kilometres. I have to admit it, but she is she is better at this than I am, the art of preparation of body and mind. My strength lies in dealing with the planning and logistics to make it all happen.

Until our departure date for the first stage which is set for 2015, we will be covering a lot of ground, working our bodies and making sure all of our equipment, clothing and footwear is properly broken in and suitable for our bodies and the challenges of the Camino.

Our first hike with the new poles is set for late this afternoon on gravel roads heading out onto the Canadian prairie marking a shift in my journey, my pilgrimage from that of being a solo activity, to a shared activity with the person I trust the most and love the most. We will share the trail, the chemin, but we will both be faced with the realities of our separate bodies and minds on this shared journey.

Bon chemin!

Following the roads, paths, and trails along the Camino doesn’t necessarily present too many places where going forward seems almost impossible. Yet, there are places and moments on the trail where one does feel that going another step forward is beyond the capacity of the body or the mind. When a person looks at the variety of individuals who attempt and complete the Camino de Santiago following one of the many different routes that are possible to follow, there is a sense of wonder for these individuals whether they walk 100 km to get to Santiago, or whether they walk 4000 km from some distant spot in Europe.

Having a Jungian psychology background, I was familiar with the idea of the Hero’s Journey which made its way into the public through the work of Joseph Campbell, The Hero With a Thousand Faces. A hero in this context follows a journey that is more interior than it is exterior. While walking in the real world and in the moments of rest and sleep, the inner journey continues to challenge the hero. We tend to think of pilgrims as humans who talk a very long walk from their home to a religious site of significance, a journey that is purely physical. But once one becomes a pilgrim, there is no question that the hardest part of the pilgrimage is the inner journey that takes place.

As I walked a section of the Camino, just over 250 km from Le Puy en Velay to Figeac, I met so many who took a week or two for doing a section of the Camino with the intention of continuing on from the last stop until at some point in the future, they would arrive at Santiago. Why were they walking this way? Why were they even walking? Each person I talked to have a different answer.

And so it is with me. The journey as a pilgrim is not just about following a path such as the GR 65 and the Camino Francés, it is more of following an unmarked trail through a strange land, knowing that one is lost and that being lost is necessary if one is ever going to arrive at a place of peace, of self awareness and self acceptance. The journey is one that continues in stages, when one is ready to handle the next set of challenges. The journey doesn’t end at Santiago as many Camino pilgrims have learned. The journey becomes life itself.

The explorer and the traveller, not to mention the tourist, may take to a pilgrimage route, but the motives for their departure, what they seek, and the significance of their ultimate destination are never those of a pilgrim. The pilgrim’s progress is both an interior journey, a spiritual exercise, and a physical journey towards an actual site imbued with a divine character. The condition of the pilgrim, in fact, comes remarkably close to that of the hero. By abandoning familiar, worldly surroundings, submitting oneself to physical hardship and sometimes considerable danger, and paying homage or penance at a holy site, pilgrims, like heroes, know that they will return from their odyssey in some way renewed, or at least inwardly changed. ‘A visitor passes through a place;’ wrote Cynthia Ozick, ‘the place passes through the pilgrim.’ In describing mystical experience, Meister Eckhart used pilgrimage as a metaphor: ‘the Wayless Way, where the Sons of God lose themselves and, at the same time, find themselves.’ That, in a phrase, is every pilgrim’s goal.“ [SHRADY Sacred Roads: Adventures From The Pilgrimage Trail (1999)]