It's All Relative

I recently attended a screening of Dianne Whelan’s newest documentary, 500 Days in the Wild. As ambitious as this title sounds, it actually understates Whelan’s traversal of the 24,000 kilometre Trans Canada Trail—a feat she planned to do in 500 days when she set out from St. John’s, Newfoundland on July 1, 2015. The real trip took Whelan more than 6 years to complete—mostly alone—through a combination of hiking, biking, skiing, canoeing, and snowshoeing.

When I tried to tell a friend about the film, he stopped me at the title and asked if I was the kind of person who could spend 500 days in the wild. I responded that 5 days would be closer to my limit. I love to be in nature—or more accurately, near nature—but Whelan’s self-propelled journey across the world’s longest trail seems as achievable to me as a balloon ride to Jupiter.

A much younger version of me once backpacked for a week on Vancouver Island’s West Coast Trail. That 1994 adventure was a big deal for a city slicker who had only recently discovered hiking, and who had probably never slept more than 50 feet from a vehicle or building. I’ve long considered that journey from Bamfield to Port Renfrew to be an epic trek, but Whelan’s 6 years in the Canadian wilderness demonstrates, in the most extreme way, that epic is a relative term. Which is why I also hesitate to use that word to define my most recent trip: a 7-night train-and-hostel adventure from Vancouver, BC to Halifax, Nova Scotia.

If epic doesn’t feel quite right, perhaps I can refer to my cross-continental journey as slow. But that’s debatable too, given that most of the trains I rode reached speeds of 160 to 180 kilometres per hour. Yet compared to the 6-hour direct flight I’ll take back to Vancouver, a 7-day train trip is, well, slower.

If nothing else, riding the rails forced me to slow down and take in the vastness of this continent. It caused me to pass hours in train stations, hostels, and coffee shops, and to walk miles around urban centres—stumbling upon gems like Seattle’s Pike Place Market, Chicago’s Field Museum, and Toronto’s Kensington Market. It also allowed me to notice things I wouldn’t have noticed on an airplane, such as:

• The way ever-changing prairie skies breathe beauty into the flattest of landscapes.
• How nighttime silhouettes turn trees into cotton candy and upside-down snow cones.
• How strangely calming it feels to close your eyes and listen to the clack-clack-clack of steel on steel.
• The disorienting effect that rail travel has on time—both stretching hours and compacting days.
• That trying to capture a photo in motion is a great way to miss a moment.

I noticed many other things, too—like the prevalence of Anabaptist families on every train, which prompted me to research the similarities and differences between Amish, Mennonite, Hutterite, and other traditional communities. It would be reductive to distill these observations and learnings into a series of bullet points, but they've inspired me to broaden my examination of simpler, more authentic lifestyles, and to consider the nuanced relationship between tradition and modernity. 

Of course, not all of my observations on these trains were pleasant. I noticed the pervasive stench of overflowing toilets on the crowded Amtrak routes east of Chicago. I noticed whenever someone embarked or disembarked my train car during the night. I noticed every sneeze, cough, throat clear, or baby’s wail. I noticed that everyone has a unique approach to sleeping (or attempting to sleep) in a coach seat—and that mine is to contort my body into a pretzel. And I noticed the cost of my pretzelling: migratory pain, tingling, and numbness that tortured my extremities, subjecting me to frequent wake-ups and cumulative sleep deprivation.

Compared to the dozens of people I witnessed sleeping in train stations, on sidewalks, in alleyways—one man even lying in a shopping cart, his legs dangling out one end—it seems unjust to refer to the reclining seats in a climate-controlled train car as uncomfortable. But just like epic and slow, comfort is a relative term. My coach-seat accommodations may seem like the Four Seasons to many people, but they left me eager to sleep in a hostel dorm bunk—which is not something I've ever looked forward to before.

So, would I recommend a trans-continental train trip? Absolutely. Has this journey inspired me to ride the rails so far again? Most likely. Would I do it the same way? Probably not. Next time, I’ll aim to increase the nights spent in a real bed for every night on a train. I might even splurge for the odd night in a sleeper car—though I’ll find it difficult to justify the price of a train bed, which is typically 5-10 times the cost of a coach seat.

One thing I won't be doing anytime soon is trudging through forests, rapids, and snowbanks on a multi-year backcountry adventure. If my own week in the backcountry paled by comparison to Dianne Whelan’s mind-boggling expedition, then my 7 nights spent in train cars and dorm beds hardly registers on the Whelan Epic Scale. But I’m prepared to put these ambitions in context and recognize the relativity of everything. For me, taking the slow train from Vancouver to Halifax was truly an epic experience—even if it wasn’t always comfortable.