South Shore Camino, Day Four: Hubbards to Upper Tantallon

I’m sitting in a used bookstore/café with Seamus (pictured above) in Upper Tantallon, Nova Scotia. This is the end of our walk, although tomorrow we’re going on a day hike. The trail continues into Halifax, but our feet will no longer be trudging along it.

We walked together this morning to Queensland Beach, talking quietly about life’s twists and turns—not unlike the winding coast road we were following. Such metaphors might be lazy, or maybe they’re unavoidable. Perhaps my writer friends can weigh in on that question. We stopped for a group photo in the fog, then we carried on towards the trail on the rough shoulder of the road, where the fist-sized rocks reminded me of country roads in Spain. I was in a group at the head of the line of walkers, and somehow we missed the turn and had to retrace our steps, adding a kilometre to the journey.

We finally found our way. I felt a need to stretch my legs and walk at a quicker pace, and soon I was alone on the path. I thought about the contradiction between my desire for connection and community, which reflects my complicated relationship to introversion and extraversion. Also, something I’d eaten had given me terrible gas, and farting among other people is embarrassing. The path was lined with maples and aspens, with purple Dutch clover, meadow buttercups, ferns, and tufted vetch everywhere. And lupine, of course. Almost all of those species aren’t native to North America, but they’ve naturalized here, and they’re all over. I heard song sparrows, and Merlin told me that another song belonged to a northern paruta, a species I’d never heard of and still haven’t seen.

It started raining lightly. I thought it might be condensation from the fog dripping off the trees, but as the drops got heavier, I decided to put on my rain jacket. Immediately the rain stopped.

I decided that, since I was alone, I would do one of the guided meditations on the app I downloaded to my phone—one that reliably makes me cry. (Reader, once again, it did.) I sat on a bench to eat lunch, and the rest of the group caught up to me. When I had finished, I walked with others for a while, before I pulled ahead and was alone again.

I began to feel uneasy. The directions we were given this morning mentioned a cemetery and a yellow church. I didn’t see either. Was I supposed to turn off the path? Had I missed something important? Without a companion, I had nobody to confer with. Google Maps filled in the gap. The church was behind me, but the trail still led to Upper Tantallon. I wasn’t lost. I couldn’t get lost as long as I was on the trail. Then I thought about my walk in the Haldimand Tract, and how I constantly got lost on footpaths there. A rail trail is different, I told myself. It isn’t going to just disappear in the trees. Is it?

I caught up to Dawn—I wasn’t at the head of the line after all—and we compared notes on our Camino experiences, ten years apart. As we chatted, I realized I need both solitude and community. Both are important; both are valid. The question for all of us, perhaps, is to find a balance. That’s the task ahead of me.

(Thanks to Julianna at Otis and Clementine’s for letting me stay so long past closing time writing this post.)