Today a friend with a fine poetic turn of phrase wished me “wings for my feet”. Today marks the beginning of our fifth week of this tracing of Spring northwards. As we head out of Owen Sound towards Wiarton for Saturday, we’ll increasingly need wings for our feet. The Trail’s challenges ahead include more rock and less water. Lighter feet will certainly help as our packs become heavier with carried water. Thanks, Jiiva — I’ll feel those wings with appreciation!

Today we were helped by four Trail Angels! David brought us our resupply to get us on to Wiarton. Then, this morning, while we were dawdling in the excellent downtown Owen Sound campsite, a couple walking their mature and calm dog stopped to chat with us. Turns out that the wished-for anonymous ‘C’ had section-hiked the Trail three times, and had been President of this Sydenham section for three years! (And has an original version of the Bruce Trail Guide — which Kookork touched to his lips!) They asked us if we needed driving anywhere in town for shopping. We strolled to their home, left our packs, got chauffeured to various places around town for this and that, met David, and then returned to C&L’s for repacking, refilling, and restarting our hike. Then along the Trail west of Walter’s Falls, we had a great chat with Patrick, an enthusiastic and experienced Trail user who gave us great advice about our next two weeks! 

The end is nigh …

I’m not presaging my end, I trust. I’m aware that we’re underway to Wiarton and our last section up the Peninsula. But the end of the Trail is still a good distance in space, time, and energy away. 

It is the end of White Trilliums. Starting almost a month ago at Queenston, we were clearly at the beginning of the Trillium season. We passed through days and weeks of stunning shows of these beauties. Close to the cool lakes, such as at Collingwood, Trilliums were slowed down and still mostly white. Heading away and south inland down the Beaver Valley, for instance, we had the pleasure of seeing the most remarkable displays of all shades of Trillium from snow white to deep rich pinks. Then the morning of rain while rounding the southern tip of the Beaver Valley seemed to take the life out of the Trilliums. Now they are increasingly fading and faded. A very few whites are mixed now with shabby drab shades of everything including almost greens. Sad to see them go. Thrilled to be seeing their day-to-day progress!

“Tilit”

Our evening ritual and shared meal involves the often difficult task of finding a suitable tent site for Kookork — tonight right beside the Trail overlooking Owen Sound. We pitch our respective abodes and then gather for a shared dinner. We heat naan over my little alcohol stove, greatly restoring them, liberally slather them with mayonnaise, wrap them around salami, and feast, mayo leaking out the cracks onto our fingers. Then I put my supper of some form of dehydrated or freeze-dried whatevers over the stove as a soup, always enriching with more calorie-dense mayo, often with ramen noodles to bulk it up, and now almost always add “tilit”, the Iranian practice of extending a soup or stew by tearing naan or other forms of bread into the concoction. Tonight’s soup was an inadequate prepackaged Mountain House noodle package, ramen, the obligatory mayo, spicy salami, and ’tilit’, a half a torn-up naan each. Eaten, evaluated, some discussion of the coming day, and into our sleeping bags. Done!