Rolling Back the Clock : Life Challenges and the Need for Nature

Rolling Back the Clock 

Essential Lessons are Learned in Nature

After 30 hikes and blogs about our time on the Bruce Trail, which took us along the Niagara Parkway Trail and from Queenston Heights to Owen Sound, it is time to share the final push from Owen Sound to Tobermory!  Ironically, however, the last segment of the BTC that we will share was in fact the first section that we hiked.  In fact, it was also our first major long-distance trek – undertaken so many years ago in 2014. 
 
In order to keep things as straightforward as possible, these blogs (as we have mentioned before) have been presented in geographic order from south to north, rather than in the chronologic order we hiked the segments.  Regardless, owing to other obligations, work, and the usual distractions which life brings about, it took us from 2014 until 2022 to complete every section of the Bruce Trail from the southern terminus in Queenston Heights to the northern cairn in Tobermory.
 

 
As such, our final entries for our Bruce Trail blog are from many years ago, and from a time when we knew far less (actually nothing) about hiking and backpacking.  We were also very much younger, and we were struggling with a number of family issues.  During this first trek, our attitudes were different, our goals were different, and of course, our abilities and sense of hiking were different.   On that first thru-hike, we made every possible mistake we could – from our choice of gear, to what we carried, to setting unreasonable goals each day.  Yet despite the setbacks and challenges, those seven to ten days on the Bruce Trail in 2014 put our feet and lives on a different pathway forward. 

 
Revisiting our journals almost a decade after the fact, it is stunning to see the arc of growth that we have undertaken since.  We have gone from carrying huge backpacks filled with so many things we never used or needed, to leading a Royal Canadian Geographical Society expedition and trekking across four countries.  Our experiences on the Bruce Trail stand as proof that the lessons we learn, and the time we spend outdoors, can be essential later in life. 
 

 

Disconnected from the World 

Admittedly, we did not simply decide one afternoon to begin hiking the Bruce Trail.  In fact, it took a crisis to push us out the door. 
 
For years we had spent a great deal of time trying to help raise a younger relative.  Unfortunately, by his mid-teens, he was facing a tough situation.  He was struggling in school, had few friends that he spent time with, and was encouraged by other family members to spend his time online, playing video games, and avoiding any type of physical activity.  They believed that if he lived behind a screen he would never get lost, never get hurt, never be in danger, and never be made fun of by others.  While these may have seemed like laudable goals, the results transformed a smart and handsome young man with boundless potential into someone who was lonely, failing at school, and who could not be pried away from video games.

 
By the time he should have been deciding what he wanted to do after school, whether that was work, college, university, or travel, our young relative could not print, write, or type.  He regularly failed to complete assignments or participate in school.  Was lying and stealing to buy more video games.  Despite having no physical challenges, he was routinely signed out of physical education so that he could sit on the bench and stay on his electronic devices.  Notes were sent to the school by other family members to get him out of homework because “the internet would be there his whole life to give him answers.  So he didn’t need to do all this stuff.”  

Unfortunately for him, too many teachers allowed this situation to go on too long, and the consequences of this lifestyle were catching up.  By Grade 11, concerned educators finally began to stop accepting the excuses and to worry about how he would navigate the world. 

 
Despite these mounting problems, his family still maintained that the best thing would be for him to stay at home, play games for the summer, and think about his actions.  Assurances were given for the 11^th year in a row that next year would be better, next semester homework would be completed, and all that was needed was some personal time during which he could "store up his energy".
 
In our opinion, it was time to get back to basics, to get him offline, and to get back out into nature.  More time doing the same things that had led to these challenges would do little to change the status quo.  If he was going to find his own way, he needed help - to learn about himself and his own abilities.  For two people who grew up outside, playing in parks with friends, cycling around the neighbourhood until it was dark, and going on regular camping and skiing trips, the idea of living in front of a TV or a video game console all the time was unimaginable.  

Children need Nature 

The situation our younger relative was experiencing, and which so many today strive to navigate, has always made me wonder.  How did we get to the point where we now strive to limit children’s experiences of the world?  When did we stop letting them explore and experiment with nature, allowing them to figure out themselves, find their own strengths, and learn to accept their own limitations? 

When I was younger, the answer from my parents for almost every situation was to send me outside to play. As children and teenagers, we have an abundance of energy that needs to be burnt off, and nature is a great place for that.  Outdoors, I learned what my body could and could not do, I learned that you scraped your knee when you fell and that you could get hurt when you fall out of a tree.  In short, I learned by doing, not by Googling and watching a YouTube video on it.  Accomplishments in life were our achievements, not digital rewards for moving across a screen and hitting buttons.

 
Why do we now insist on children staying inside rather than going out, while at the same time lamenting the rising rates of obesity, their failure to achieve goals, and the inability of teenagers to manage their own emotions as well as the challenges of life?  Our young relative’s teachers continually suggested that the best thing for his inattentiveness was to watch videos on “staying focused” or sitting down and “thinking about his refusal to do class assignments.”  What happened to laps around the track?  What happened to the wood and auto shop? What happened to learning through experiences?  While I don’t pretend to know much about the proper psychology, philosophy, and pedagogy of the education of high school students, I can honestly attest that making them sit down and reflect is the last thing that should be done to them.  From what I have seen, they have an abundance of energy which needs to be channelled and focused, not stored up for some future date.  For both children and adults, sitting endlessly at desks is not a natural or healthy act.
 

Disconnect to Reconnect 

It would take two months of concerted effort for us to finally convince his family that time outdoors was a way to get things back on track, and to foster a connection with the world.   Even then, the belief that “time in nature is unnatural” and fears that “walking is stressful and wastes back and knee energy” pervaded.   While neither of these reactions was unexpected, what was not anticipated was the degree of fanaticism with which they were presented.  In particular, the concept of being offline and without a cell phone, and missing TV shows and game updates seemed akin to subjecting this young man to ritual abuse. 

Interestingly, however, none of these “concerns” were levelled at the practical issues we were still to face on the trail.  Questions such as where would we get clean water each day?  Where would we refill our food supplies?  What if any of us were injured on the trail? How were we to get back to our car from Tobermory?  Instead, the “concerns about hiking” all revolved around unplugging from the online world.  Ultimately it was their own desire to spend uninterrupted time watching movies and texting that allowed him to come walk with us.

 

Unsurprisingly, the inspiration in 2014 for setting out onto the Bruce Trail – trekking from Owen Sound to Tobermory – was to encourage our younger relative to disconnect from his electronic devices and reconnect to nature.  Hopefully, in the process of doing so, he would gain a sense of himself, a sense of what he could achieve, and find an interest beyond the online world he presently lived in.

With understandings reached and plans made, we only had one challenge.  The fact that, at that time, we had never hiked this sort of distance before.  

Outdoors Experiences before the Bruce Trail 

To be clear, the fact that we had not gone on a thru-hike together is not to suggest that we had no experience in the outdoors.  Sean grew up attending the Scouts and going to summer camp in Algonquin Provincial Park, while I participated in annual week-long backcountry hiking, canoeing, and camping trips at school, and later spent several years working as part of scientific research teams in forests across Ontario.  In addition, we had spent many weekends and months front country camping, as well as going on day hikes with our relatives in parks across the province. 

 
Happily, despite the challenges we invariably faced en route, this hike would give way to a love of nature in a younger relative who at the time was struggling with the digital world.  Our family walk from Owen Sound to Tobermory would lead him to enjoy time in the outdoors and give way to an opportunity for him to go to the Boundless School summer camp and later to their school to complete his High School requirements.  In the end, this hike was a transformative undertaking that began on the Bruce Trail. 

A Brief Aside

As a side note – keen observers will notice that the extensive photography that accompanies our blogs for the European Caminos, East Coast Trail, and Trans Canada Trail adventures does not exist for this stretch.  During our first hike on the Bruce Trail from Owen Sound to Tobermory, Sean carried a camera with only five rolls of actual film – so the pictures taken were far fewer.

** To read about our birding hike along the East Coast Trail click this link.

** To read about our birding hike along the Trans Canada Trail click this link.

See you on the Trail!