Today’s walk was somewhat longer than I expected, but every minute was remarkable. The weather—coolish, mostly overcast—was ideal for a 20-mile amble along a rail trail. It was so chilly during the first couple of hours that my hands were cold and my nose was running, but I prefer that to heat exhaustion. Like yesterday, we walked through thick second- or third-growth forest. The pines and maples met over the path, as if we were walking through a tunnel of chlorophyll. Unlike yesterday, we saw multiple deer and turtles, and unusual plants—or at least plants that are unusual for me, since most of what I know is native to southern Saskatchewan: northern starflower, purple pitcher plant, cotton grass—the latter two in a spongy peat bog next to path. I saw some tall lungwort, too, which I haven’t seen since the last time I was in Prince Albert National Park.
We saw more art, too, including what looked like an accidental collaboration between a tree and part of an old stove.
My phone told me that these white flowers are Allegheny blackberry; then it lost its confidence and would only claim they were dicots. If that’s an example of generative AI expressing humility, it’s a good thing.
I heard so many birds, including my favourite, a Swainson’s thrush. There were hermit thrushes, ovenbirds, a variety of warblers and vireos, and of course red-winged blackbirds and bold, insistent robins.
Someone asked what my forthcoming book is about, and as I stumbled through an attempt at a summary, I realized again that I need to come up with a short, clever, thoughtful description of it, and quickly. I’m sure the marketing people at the press would appreciate it.
The team put out stickers for us this morning. I took one that reminds me to stay positive, and stuck it on my notebook. Once again I enjoyed the companionship of the other pilgrims. They’re all people with a deep religious faith, it seems, and I wondered how much my inability to believe in much, a product of my Baptist childhood, in which I learned that religion was performative and narrow, its words mostly unmatched by deeds, leaves me on the periphery here. I thought about Casey Plett’s book, and the complexity of her consideration of community, and about how I accept Indigenous expressions of spirituality—smudging as a form of prayer, for instance—whereas I struggle with the faith tradition in which I was raised. That’s fine—I’m not mourning what I don’t have—but I wonder how such fundamental differences affect the community can develop, and how much similarity, or even uniformity, is required for community to form.
Of course, our commonality is the experience of this walk—not just our footsteps, but eating together, talking, being kept awake by each other’s snoring.
About halfway through the walk, I stopped at a convenience store. I knew we were going to cross the territory of Acadia First Nation—although all the land here is Indigenous, really—and I asked the fellow behind the counter if we were on Acadia First Nation. “Yes, we are,” he answered. “Thanks for asking.” I’m still wondering how to interpret that response. Was he reacting to the thread of acknowledgment in that question? I’m not sure.
I asked him how to say “hello” in Mi’kmaq. He didn’t know—not a surprise, given what colonialism has tried to do to Indigenous languages—but he did teach me how to say “thank you”: wela’lin. Wela’lin for this day, for this opportunity, then. Wela’lin.
