TRAILS
A YEAR ON THE TRAIL words & photos :: Kristin Schnelten A few steps into our first day on the trail, my daughter and I descend into a dark, windless ravine. It’s humid. Close. There’s a faint hum in the distance. Then, in a blink, we’re surrounded. The hellhole of a mosquito blitzkrieg is upon us, and we run. The swarm follows, and I imagine a long, thin cloud of tiny dots trailing behind our heads, squealing a chorus of glee. In a torrent of curses, screams and continuous swats and swipes, we sprint until we emerge into the sun and breeze of the next sideroad, panting and laughing, momentarily free. I take notes after this debacle: Wear long sleeves. Bring bug dope. Start early. The final entry: Maddening mosquitos are dreamy relief from a constant news cycle. Breaks are necessary from time to time. We’re now into our third month of lockdown, and most of us are losing our marbles. We’ve binged all the shows, baked all the sourdough. The political climate south of the border provides a continual feast for the media, enabling endless doom-scrolling, shuttered away in our living rooms. So we hike. We escape. The Beaver Valley section of the Bruce Trail is, end-to-end, roughly 120 km. (With periodic closures, reroutes and additions, the distance isn’t set in stone.) Every step of it is within our health unit, and the farthest point is a half-hour drive from our house. My daughter is up for the adventure, but has a limited attention span. We plan to complete it in small chunks, west to east, hopefully by summer’s end. On the trail, closing in now on Talisman, we add to our list of lessons: Everything is better with friends. With a buddy this time, my daughter hikes farther and faster. Reconnecting after so many months of isolation, we scramble through crevice caves, marvel at vistas and discover fresh bear scratches on the trunk of a beech tree.
Local scuttlebutt of the many woes makes meaty fodder for chatter as we meander through the more popular legs of the trail—Hoggs Falls, Eugenia Falls, Metcalfe Rock—but we manage to steer clear of crowds, passing only a handful of hikers each day. Laughable lack of bug-preparation aside, we’re really no strangers to this trail. I took my first steps along the escarpment in the late ‘80s, walking from Tobermory to Lion’s Head, mailing letters and actual printed photos to friends: You won’t believe these cliffs! This water! This hike! Making our home now at the mouth of the Beaver River, we’re spoiled—privileged, yes—to be surrounded by this winding path, popping onto the nearest trailhead anytime we fancy a walk in the woods. This simple act of taking a trail through the forest is reflected in the Bruce Trail Conservancy (BTC) mission statement: Preserving a ribbon of wilderness, for everyone, forever. First envisioned around 1960 and completed in 1967, the public footpath spans a broad swath of the Niagara Escarpment, from Niagara to Tobermory. Through a patchwork grid of publicly owned lands, private properties and BTC holdings, the board of directors and employees work with more than 1,400 volunteers to maintain every switchback, staircase, stile, boardwalk and bridge of the 900-km trail.
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