Let's gloss over the fact that I did 4 or 5 other lockdown hikes. I'll go back eventually and post about them.
Back to the Bruce!
I had planned to go hiking the weekend before but ended up being awake in the middle of the night, anxious about leaving Annie at the airbnb we were in (this is what happens when your apartment is taken over by mould and mushrooms).
But the following week, I got an invitation to join a friend and decided to skip ahead to where he is in the Blue Mountains section. It's nice to have someone else figure out the route, the parking, etc. And the company! I haven't hiked with this friend since mid-March! I'm so nervous about hiking again, and seeing this friend, that I'm awake most of the night. I arrive at our meeting spot 90 minutes from Toronto and warn him I'm operating on about 3 hours of sleep.
It's an entirely different season now. I've packed bug spray and filled up my water bladder and water bottle. I decide to wear shorts over capri leggings so that I can have access to pockets and put a long sleeve shirt over a tank top.
The long sleeve lasts about 30 minutes before I need to strip down. I use so much bug spray but the mosquitos are intense. It's not until I wake up the next morning that I realize I must have about 50 bites, including clusters where they bit thru my industrial strength sports bra.
Spring is here. It's all green and noisy with birds and the buzzing of mosquitos. Or is this summer? In Ontario, we get some glimpses of spring and then suddenly humidity arrives and it's HOT.
It felt good to be back on the trail. To move my body in this way. To notice small things. To be outside the tiny world that is my apartment. A year ago I was living in Tobermory and I'm anxious to get to the one-year mark of the end of that relationship so I can file it away entirely.
I haven't read much about this section, only noting what parks and conservation areas it passes through. I also hadn't made note of the elevation and so did not expect to end up on the top of cliffs.
We take a look for the caves mentioned on the map but find only crevices.
JC has planned this so that we take advantage of a side trail to make the out-and-back shorter and this is the best fucking part of the hike. We descend into these narrows and the temperature drops and there is moss and lichen and cedar growing out of rock. And then a rainbow shows up.
It's the 2nd year in a row that Pride hasn't happened in person and it feels very much like I came into my non-binary identity just as the pandemic meant losing access to community. It is good to hike with a queer trans poly person, to have this friend that I don't have to explain things to, and to have BIG conversations with. I don't know what a queer community looks like in my life, as I identified for so long as a parent that I built community around that. Yes, some of that community are queer and trans, but I know that coming out of this, I need to get better at finding more people to surround myself with. I can't identify so much with folks are in the trenches of parenting.
Two great spots on this hike:
Trumpet Lichen
Our last stretch is full of great convos as we sweat and swat bugs and stop to snack. We spend another hour at our cars talking and I am exhausted by the time I'm heading home, just in time to get Annie outside for her afternoon pee. The shower feels incredible as I rinse off sweat and bug spray and sunscreen and dirt and grime.
I am refreshed. By the evening we're back chatting online, planning the logistics of doing the rest of the trail (I will need to go back to do a 14 km section he's completed already) and talking car shuttles, which requires further convos about risk and pandemic related things. We both have 2nd shots scheduled for the week and roommates to check in on.
Stats:
starting near marker 14.1
ending near marker 22.9
total hiked today: 17.6 or less. Hard to figure out what the side trail saved us on the return
total Bruce Trail hiked since starting: 241.2 km (26.7%)
