West Coast trail: one step in front of the other

Boardwalk on the Westcoast trail

When I wake up in the middle of night and can't get back to sleep, I lie listening to the owls calling from the tall pines down the street from our house. I read that the call of the great-horned owl has been "translated" in our language to "Are you still up? Me too." That middle of the night, nameless anxiety that I feel is both echoed and soothed by their voices, resonating into the darkness.

I think it's not uncommon for regrets to come thundering in on us in the dead of the night, when no one is there to distract from the memories. This is partly the subject of the novel I'm working on, called The Burned House. My regrets, I believe, are relatively minor in the scheme of things, but they loom large at the witching hour of 4 a.m. Lately I have distracted myself with a kind of meditation that I discovered out on the West Coast trail, on the westernmost edge of Canada, where the Pacific Ocean crashes into shore on the wrecks of ships long abandoned to the sand and wind.

I carried a thirty pound pack, nearly a third of my weight but as light as I could make it without going hungry or cold. I had practiced hiking with this pack, but only loaded to twenty pounds, and I worried, when we stepped onto the trail, and within fifty feet encountered two sets of ladders with moss-covered rungs leading pretty much vertically up a rock face. I worried about whether I'd be able to make it, or if I'd have to suffer the ignominy of being rescued by helicopter and air-lifted off the trail. Or worse, of course.

We had been warned, frequently, by websites, handbooks, park guides, and bus drivers, that mishaps on the trail were frequent, up 300% this year for some reason. I was hiking with my husband and my sister and we were all fit hikers, but we had mostly done canoe camping. We were not used to carrying so much weight on our backs.

The West Coast trail is incredibly beautiful, traversing old growth forests with huge ferns, firs, cedars, and waterfalls. Just breathing the air feels healing. Sunlight streamed through the trees, and landed on our faces and for a time, the other world, the one where we have jobs and buy dish soap and get our oil changed, was gone. It was one careful step in front of the other. Then we were hungry and shrugged off our packs and ate the things we'd carefully packed -- almonds and licorice and rice cakes. Then coffee. Can anything be as healing as drinking a cup of hot coffee sitting on smooth grey driftwood three feet in diameter at the edge of the Pacific Ocean with forests older than human memory at our backs?

At night when I can't sleep, I come back to that place, the certainty of its constant change, the thunder of surf on sand, the rich odour of soil and trees, decay and renewal. I feel the weight of the pack, but nothing else, as I put one foot in front of the other, covering the miles.