My nemesis: the road to Pense. It defeated me last time, left me scant kilometres short of my goal, shaking with heat exhaustion and mumbling imprecations upon its unwavering straightness. I could not allow that defeat to go unavenged. So, this morning Christine drove me out to that village and left me there. I would walk all the way home or perish in the attempt. (Well, “perish” is a little overdramatic. “Call home for a ride and have to do the walk again another day” would be more accurate.)

I’ve never walked east, into the city, from Pense before. It almost makes it into a new walk. I saw new things, or saw things I’d seen before from another perspective. But it’s still the same straight plod across the prairie, whichever way you’re walking.

There was a heavy, sweet, funky kind of smell in the air, like chokecherries, but there weren’t any chokecherries around. I wonder if it wasn’t the stink of agricultural chemicals–herbicides and fertilizers. I don’t know. It hung around for hours. Eventually it went away as I got closer to the city.

The road was wet in spots–no surprise, given all the rain we’ve had in the past few days–but I was wearing my new gaiters, which are made by a company with the unlikely name “Dirty Girl” (don’t Google that: this is their web site) and they kept the mud and stones out of my boots.

I ate an early lunch (or second breakfast), then ate another lunch a few hours later. But most of the time I was striding forward to the east, or at least stumbling in that direction. After 20 kilometres or so I reached Pinkie Road and headed north to 13th Avenue, which runs right into my neighbourhood, although from the off-leash park I took the more scenic route along Wascana Creek. After seven hours and 31 kilometres I was home and drinking a well-deserved beer. And no blisters! Maybe my feet are finally toughening up, or maybe wearing a different kind of socks helped. It’s hard to say: I’ll need to go on more walks this week to be sure. After all, I leave for my walk in Ontario in less than two weeks and I want to make sure I’m ready.

Why walk to Pense? It’s not like there’s anything there. Well, that’s not true. One of my colleagues lives there, although I’m not sure exactly where his house is, and there’s a gas station where you can buy a Coke. But here’s the thing: I’m getting tired of walking in loops. I want to walk in a straight line once in a while. And the road to Pense is a straight line, with just one deviation, a dogleg where it crosses the main CPR line. So yesterday morning I set out for Pense. Two years ago I did the same walk, and I thought I knew what to expect.

Some of you are wondering where Pense is, or what it is. Pense is a village 30 kilometres west of the city across the flattest part of the Wascana Plains. They say it’s a great place to garden because the soil contains something special that makes plants grow. Maybe it’s traces of potash; there’s a big mine just down the road.

It was another hot day with a strong southeast wind that flung handfuls of dirt and pebbles at me. The gusts threatened to tear off my hat, despite its chinstrap, so I stopped and shoved it into the outside pocket of my backpack. I was wearing a Buff–a merino wool tube–around my neck to avoid sunburn, and I pulled it up over my head like a snood. So for the rest of the walk I found myself peering through the fluttering curtains of my makeshift niqab. I strode across the prairie like Lawrence of Arabia in shorts, my knees burning red despite liberal applications of sunscreen.

The heat and the wind wore me out. So did the blisters on the soles of my feet. They look like doughnuts now: an old blister in the middle, a fresh one around the outside. I started to feel nauseated from heat exhaustion even though I was drinking water and an electrolyte mixture. I was pretty well done in when Christine picked me up just north of the village. So I didn’t quite reach my goal. I really ought to try again another day, to make it all the way to the gas station and the cold Coke that’s waiting there, but it’s a hard walk, mentally: a long, straight, dull plod due west. Still, I hate to leave these things undone. The most important thing I took away from yesterday’s walk is the need to do something to prevent those blisters. Nothing I’ve tried so far has worked: it’s time to come up with something new.

 

Yesterday’s walk–the last “training” walk before we leave for the UK and the Cotswold Way today–was a 30-kilometre hike to Pense, a village west of the city. I’d heard that there was an operating bar there and I thought I could have a beer while I waited for Christine to pick me up. Besides, I’m still thinking about Trevor Herriot and the idea of making this landscape walkable, as it once was, so rather than walk inside the city limits I thought I’d strike out for somewhere I’d never been before.

The first leg of my journey was along the creek side path I’ve walked along so many times before. I thought about the post here where I complained about boredom and looked for differences or changes on the path. One was this little fellow, a fledgling barn swallow who was sitting on a railing. I hope he doesn’t fall off into the creek.

Soon I was walking down a grid road heading out of the city. I walked past baseball diamonds where teams were getting ready to play in the North American Indigenous Games, past the northern end of the airport and a factory that makes farm equipment. Then I turned south and walked along a road used by truckers to get to the new Global Transportation Hub. What a name–both hyperbolic and banal. These days, what transportation hub isn’t global? When I turned west again, I discovered that a four-lane highway is being built across the fields to provide access to the GTH.

What that will mean for the grid roads it crosses–roads that are essential to local farmers–is unclear.

From here, the road headed west, a straight line across the landscape, bisecting fields of wheat and canola that stretched to the horizon.

The road deviated from its path only once, when it intersected with another straight line, the main CPR tracks. I passed a village-turned-suburb (no store, nothing to attract a passing traveller) and decided that, since I was at the halfway point, I could rest for a while and have a snack.I stopped again an hour later and sat on a bridge to eat lunch. Otherwise it was six hours of steady walking. There were lots of ducks and coots in the sloughs, but aside from the birds and dragonflies the only other wild creature I saw was a muskrat in the creek while I was eating.

No angry dogs this time, just an old yellow lab that came up behind me to see what I was up to. He was friendly, though. I was so surprised by him that I forgot to take his picture.

I could see Pense on the horizon–its grain elevator, anyway, which for some reason escaped the orgy of demolitions of smaller, local elevators 10 years ago when the grain companies built a handful of concrete inland terminals to replace them–for a long time. When I finally got there,I discovered that the bar/coffee shop/motel is closed, presumably forever. So I bought a Coke at the gas station and waited in a park beside the railway tracks for Christine.

Would I walk this way again? I’m not sure. I loved the wind and the trance-like state I was in after five hours of walking, and walking around here always reminds me of walking the meseta in Spain. Pense, though, turned out to be just a spot on the map within a day’s walk. There’s no reason to go there, unless you live there. Is that necessarily a problem? Maybe not. Maybe I need to focus less on the destination and more on the journey. Or maybe there’s some other place within 30 or so kilometres of my front door that will prove to be more worthy of the journey. I don’t know.

And that was the last training walk. We fly to Heathrow this afternoon, and then next weekend we begin our Cotswolds sojourn. WiFi willing, my next blog post will be made from there.