The Labyrinth and the Hills

Red Elderberry /Sambucus pubens

I had a good awakening last year when I attended a John Muir event in Wisconsin to celebrate the 100th Anniversary of the National Parks of the USA. The organization that put on the event Wisconsin Friends of John Muir were encouraging people to think about getting away from the concept of mindless mileage that we now call HIKING and instead slow the pace to be more present, more observant and more immersed in nature. They were promoting the term "sauntering" that Muir used when he first arrived in California and "sauntered his way into the High Sierras". My excursion this week to the Hockley Valley once again was to pursue that concept within the re-creation of a John Muir experience.

Hiker meets fern.

Since my youth hiking with a capital "H" has always been encouraged in the family. As early members of the Bruce Trail going back to the early 1960's we were at the beginning of that craze. Then during my life in the Canadian Rockies it became a way of life. So off I went with my giant hiking boots, backpack and high tech spring loaded hiking pole. Oh don't I feel so authentic! The Bruce Trail winds its' way through the Hockley Valley and the Government of Ontario has created another day use park with multiple trails called appropriately Hockley HIlls Provincial Park. This was my destination on this continuing discovery of Muir's Summer of Glorious Freedom.

The classic Labyrinth

As I was doing my planning for the day using Google Earth, I noticed a Labyrinth that showed up quite easily on their Satellite View. I figured out where it was and contacted the owners of the Ecology Retreat Center on whose land it rests. "Yes of course come and walk it " was the positive response. Having been the project manager on the building of a Labyrinth in the Beaver Valley years before, I was quite familiar with the powerful but elusive effect of walking one of these ancient meditation sites. Thus with all due reverence I started my "Hiking Day" by doing a barefoot walk in the sensational sunshine of a wildflower meadow.

Once on the Labyrinth I was struggling to be totally aware of everything that was happening to me as I walked in the ascending / twisting / evolving directions of this classic Chartres Cathedral styled design. I concentrated on my feet and plants that I was walking on; the sounds that I was hearing; on the feeling of wind on my face and grass  tickling my ankles. I eventually became aware of nine different flowering plants hidden in what I thought was just a grassy field. I then started to notice that sounds drifted away into a background hum and there was not the jarring traffic and machinery sounds that seemed to be present when I first started the labyrinth journey. The thought patterns of my mind started drifting - historical events that had happened to me in this valley floated up and then disappeared, my tendency to be always focused on the future vanished and I kept coming back to the path that I was on and the soft grey rocks that lined the path and the grass and the flowers and ants on the flowers and then the smells . . . . and the wind.

One elder friend once shared with me the fact that walking is a bi-lateral activity. Because of that your brain is constantly working on sending messages from right brain to left brain. With the added bonus of more oxygen in your system and working out of body stressors everything functions as it was originally designed! Thus the resolution of problems happens, the sense of balance in the body returns and a subtle but identifiable contentment with all things infiltrates your consciousness. Now if John Muir was doing inadvertent mindful sauntering during this summer of 1864, you can just imagine the powerful connections that he was making in his own brain.

In the middle of the trail, a limestone boulder moved by the glaciers 11,000 years ago.

Part Two: Afternoon in the Hills

Later in the afternoon I move onto the "Hiking Trails". Yes with those official hiking boots, high tech spring loaded hiking pole and regulation backpack I assume the role of Hiker with a capital "H". But now I am contrasting my previous hour of barefoot mindfulness on the Labyrinth and how it all feels in comparison. Within minutes I am striding up the trail like some Sound of Music cliche - climb every mountain, follow every rainbow etc. The route ascends from the valley onto the Oak Ridges Moraine. A  tumultuous glacial terrain of sandy hillocks interspersed with giant boulder chunks of limestone that could only have been moved here by the last glacier of 11,000 years ago. 

The area was most likely cleared by the first settlers but the sandy soil and huge rocks were their demise. There is scant evidence left of that farming time and a wonderful fully mature towering canopy of maple, oak and beech now exists. Earlier at the Labyrinth I had even seen a huge Butternut tree that is extremely rare at this latitude in Ontario. Could this Butternut have been a mere sapling when Muir sauntered by in 1864?

A full canopy mature forest on the sandy hills.

Within minutes I see a new selection of woodland flowers and thus it is off with the pack and out with camera and down on my knees in a prayerful position. At one time in my life I would chide myself on my multiple stops for photos and for the impossibly slow pace, but today the camera is actually forcing me to maintain the slow saunter and mindfulness process. Finished that one and then a hundred yards down the trail it is a repeat performance. As I am down on my knees a sleek spandex emblazoned trail runner blasts by. I yell to him that he appears to be "in training". He responds with a "YES, in two weeks I am doing a 50km trail run competition". Well OK for him, after all I too at a much younger age when fitness and body beautiful was important would run up the trails of Tunnel Mountain in Banff. Now seeing this guy rocket on by in a blaze of coloured neon reinforces my attitude now of going slow and and just sauntering.

Not just hiking but a HIKING CHALLENGE!!

This is the second time recently that I have been on this piece of land. The previous visit must have been a weekend because at that time the parking lot was full and the trail was being beaten to a pulp by hundreds of feet having their "wilderness experience". But despite the lack of folks on the trail today I am again outraged that the Provincial Parks provide a beautiful park and then do nothing in the way of upkeep. Without washroom or garbage facilities, toilet paper blooms behind boulders and garbage gets flung from the trail to end up hanging in the bushes. The trail gets eroded and braided as lazy folk take the shortcuts at corners and go wide around the wet spots to keep their feet dry.

So how did Muir deal with garbage and the lack of washroom facilities? Oh yeah that was during the Victorian Era when people didn't have bodily functions. Nowhere do I read about Muir washing up or even going for a swim to get clean. And garbage -maybe a few discarded tea bags or did they not even have tea bags in 1864? Most likely he would have left behind some organic wrappings of paper or cloth.

A grass growing in the forest, perhaps a survivor of the farming days?

Then the trail runner goes by on his fourth lap making me feel old and doddery. As I walk along at the end of this afternoon with the sun slowly going over the treetops, I start to get somewhat hungry. I recall Muir talking a lot about the lack of food. So with mindfulness I watch what happens to my thoughts. Disinterest, boredom, vague ramblings and pissed off thoughts all take over my brain. So what if there is a new plant there to photograph, so what if the Parks people can't cleanup and then my thoughts go blacker. What kind of civilization are we living in now? How many people actually "get it" about nature? Many of the people I see on the trail at other times are chatting into their cell phones, how can they truly be outdoors when they are still connected to the urban world by phone. What are they seeing when they walk their dog? 
Is this just a glorified dog park? Uh - oh the "Hangrys" are upon me. Yes that newly coined phrase of hunger spawning anger! Might as well go home now.

Staring deep into the dark mood of the river and of my soul.

Once I am back to the car and somewhat restored on peanut butter and honey reserves I slide back into the contemplation process. Ok so we know that John Muir walked for days with only bread and tea to sustain him. Well how far could he go between re-fuelings? Really where was his head at between his hunger and his loneliness? How much of the bi-lateral functions of the human brain were working for him to process his life and information? How much was he cogitating on his strict religious upbringing and fact that he had been to University by this point and started to learn Botany? Is Darwin's Theory of Evolution (recently published in 1858) affecting his views? Then too the Civil War is raging to an end in the USA. What about his new intellectual friends and Professors at the University in Madison, what were they doing as he wanders in the woods of Canada? Although Muir calls it his Summer of Glorious Freedom, I am sure that there was a lot of angst in his soul for all of the issues that he was working through. We will never know!

Because we know so little about his time in Canada and especially the six months of wandering in Ontario in the summer of 1864, the story of his walk to the Florida from Indiana has become the greater legend. That walk was only six weeks! What about this six months of inspiration?

For me this "Glorious Day of Sauntering" - from Labyrinth to trail runners to my own black mood has given me a few insights and now connected me back into the soul of the young man called Muir. 

Despite all the abuse Nature eventually takes it all back!

© Robert Burcher 2017