Why I Walk – By Ruth Patterson

I have been hiking the Bruce Trail (BT) since March 2018 with three other women. We are not lifelong friends; we actually met each other by accident through a shared desire to be active and to be challenged physically in our retirement. To date, we have hiked about 350 BT kilometers, doing at least two hikes a month (excluding summer).

We did our first BT hike on a typical March day, where the weather gods blessed us with rain, snow and sleet as we did our first 12 BT kilometers. Every subsequent hike offered the opportunity to explore a different terrain, different weather, a different community, local history and to experience each season more intensely. 

We snowshoed in the winter, followed animal tracks and saw frozen waterfalls and crystals. We used icers and walking poles to keep our footing and slid down slopes on our bottoms like young children without toboggans. We heard the spring peepers and saw and identified many different spring flowers. We watched the forests and meadows turn green and lush, and the rivers and streams begin to flow again. On our most recent hikes around Lions Head, we bought a mushroom identification book and started learning about edible and inedible (gilly) mushrooms. As we still have 450 km to go, we will continue to learn about the landscape and its inhabitants.

 So much of our working and personal lives now are lived through interaction with screens- computers, cell phones and iPads. Hiking on our amazing local, Ontario and Canadian trails is a form of rebellion against the encroachment of virtual reality (an inside life), and to live a more full and rounded life by reconnecting with the beautiful world outside our doors.

Finally, what gets me out on the trails is the knowledge that every hike is an adventure into the unknown, and an opportunity for all of us to be explorers.