I covered 40km today. Half of it quite quickly, thanks to Lilly and Haley, the mother/daughter duo who picked me up quite soon after I hit the main road this morning. It was windy and, as I learned from the backseat of her car, Haley takes pride in her capacity for helping others. When she dropped me at the Pak ‘n’ Save, she wished me luck.

I bought some trail mix, a banana, two energy bars marketed to hikers and the like (the chocolate flavor, obviously), a can of pumpkin soup “for one,” instant coffee, and a packed of my favorite little dried edamame beans. This purchase was my best attempt at “only take what you can carry,” and aside from the banana, it was a preparation purchase.

I accident my made my way to the K-Mart food court and while my coffee and egg sandwich there was more expensive than what I chose not to buy from the deli at the supermarket, my $11-and-some-cents afforded me a table, WiFi, shelter from the light rain that had started outside, and a toilet — first poop of the trip, folks.

I had to stop again a couple hours later to buy a $6.99 chicken, spinach, and tomato sandwich (fine because the man at the holiday park gave me an $8 break because I’m walking the trail) and as I sat outside to shed a layer and enjoy my snack, I was visited by my spirit guide. Today, he was a white man in a striped shirt and dusty pink shorts. He parked his bike and entered the shop without locking it up. He made his purchase, I assume, emerged, and asked me if I was doing the trail. I told him yes and we exchanged niceties and I was on my way. He visited me a second time and I got to ask him what I failed to ask the first time around, when he told me he’d done :

“Do you have any tips for me?”

He only really told me what others have repeatedly stressed: it gets little lonely. He followed it up with an apt acknowledgment that anyone who does something like this is probably quite good at entertaining themselves.

He cycled off and then returned for a third and assumedly final visit, each time positioning himself alongside me while I continued walking and he continued biking, as if a full stop would cost me more energy the way a car battery close to dead is better off just continuing to run.

“Sorry to do this again but I just thought of something,” he was a little out of breath this time, having turned around to deliver this revelation of sorts.”

“I have this friend who runs ultramarathons and when we ask him what gets him up early in the morning, day after day, to train, he said he thinks of it as something he gets to do, not something he has to do. And I just think you should try remember that your healthy body and the time you’ve given yourself to do this walk all add up to a great opportunity. And you get to do it.”

And then he left. And I never got his name. And he never got mine.

But, yeah

xx