Wandering in New Directions

 “Live your life by a compass, not a clock.”

 

Stephen R. Covey

 

Modernity, Efficiency and Travel

 

Speed, it seems, governs nearly every aspect of modern life.  From the way we consume news to our entertainment, and the way we plan holidays.  Efficiency has become the default measure of value.  We judge hotels by their wifi speeds, airlines by their flight duration (rather than comfort), and even vacations by how quickly we can move from one experience to the next.

 

This is not new, the speed of travel has long been at the centre of the experience.  In the golden age of the transatlantic ocean liners, prestige belonged to the fastest ship.  Luxury and cuisine certainly mattered, but it was the velocity of the vessel that captured the headlines and upheld national honour.  At the time, the Blue Riband was the prize and faster was better.

 

Yet somewhere along the way, speed ceased to feel like progress and began to feel like pressure.  It didn’t improve the experience, in fact, it began to undermine it. Rather than travel being part of the journey, it was reduced to simply being the mode of transit, regardless of how uncomfortable it might be. While great ocean liners once held that the journey was as essential as the destination, modern airlines routinely add more rows of seats and remove services.  Yet the latter has come to replace the former all because it is viewed as “more efficient”.

 

Travel seems less enjoyable and less like progress than ever before.

 

Return to Slow Travel

 

For us, focusing on slow travel options is not a nostalgia for a vanishing world.  It is not a rejection of modernity.  It is about making a deliberate choice to embrace each moment and to pay attention to others and the world around you en route.  Whether we are walking long-distance trails, voyaging in a train, or sailing across an ocean, we are choosing forms of movement that prioritize allowing meaning to emerge over time.

 

While hiking and sailing may seem like opposite ways of moving through the world, yet for us they are deeply connected practices. Both ask for time. Both resist speed for speed’s sake. And both reshape how we notice, remember, and inhabit the landscapes we pass through.  Most importantly, amid both we surrender to the rhythm the journey and take in the world. In both cases, speed is no longer the point – attention is.  Amid this, you gain the time to reflect, consider, and see the world.

 

Voyaging on Via Rail’s Canadian and stepping on board Cunard’s Queen Mary 2 are not departures from our hiking lives – they are extensions of them.

 

“Drawing the Line”

 

The idea began, almost accidentally – somewhere in the midst of our years walking the Trans Canada Trail during our #Hike4Birds. 

 

After another long day on the national pathway, we were reviewing our GPX tracks when we noticed something strangely beautiful.  A thin thread of trail on the ground and a digital thread on the screen emerged across the map of Canada, from the Atlantic to the Pacific.   An imperfect line stretched coast to coast stitched together by our own footsteps.

 

Once we saw it, we couldn’t unsee it.

 

The line was not straight.  It bent with coastlines, curved along rivers, deviated for supplies, shelter and moments of significance along the way.  It wove almost senselessly across provinces – at times making a 400 or 500 km wide province require 1500-2000 km of trail.  On some level this line felt alive – created through lived effort on the trail.  Because of this it carried within it the shape of Canada, the topography of a continent, and a huge chapter in our lives.

 

Looking closer we soon began noticing other lines.  The Via Podiensis / GR 65 through France to Spain, the Camino Frances across Spain, the Rota Vicentina and Camino Portuguese tracing the full length of the Portuguese coastline.

 

All separate journeys, taken at different times – yet each created a track following a path across the landscape. 

 

Somewhere amid seeing these maps, chatting about those memories, an idea took hold – could these lines be joined?  Could all of our travels in the past and those hiking plans we have prepared for the coming years connect?  Could a line be drawn around the world?

 

Don’t get us wrong, this thought wasn’t focused on a singular circumnavigation of the world, nor was it about “conquering the globe” .  It was a series of questions built on whether it would be possible to explore the planet in a slow human way.

 

Could a series of journeys, measured in footsteps, bird observations and slow travel be accomplished – not over seasons, not even over years – it would take a lifetime.  But could it be done?

 

The evident challenge being that while we have and could continue walking connecting countries and continents, how could we join these disparate routes across the vast distances of the oceans in a meaningful way?  How could the immense spaces on the map, such as the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans, be transformed into bridges rather than barriers?

 

The answer, surprisingly for us, was simply – Cunard’s Queen Mary 2.

 

Why Queen Mary 2?

 

When Queen Mary 2 entered service in 2004, she was not simply another cruise ship added to a fleet.  She was a purpose-built ocean liner, engineered for the North Atlantic and designed to maintain a schedule regardless of season, weather conditions or the state of the sea.

 

Constructed at Chantiers de l’Atlantique in Saint-Nazaire for Cunard Line, her hull was reinforced and her draft deeper than that of most modern cruise vessels. In an age when the majority of passenger ships follow sunlit, sheltered itineraries, she alone maintains the traditional point-to-point transatlantic route.  She transports. She does not cruise. That distinction matters.

 

For nearly two centuries, Cunard vessels, born from the aspirations of Nova Scotian Samuel Cunard, have crossed these waters, beginning in 1840 with the company’s first Royal Mail service between Britain and North America. Immigrants, soldiers, artists, diplomats - generations have traced this corridor between New York, Boston, Halifax and Southampton.

 

To step aboard today is to join that lineage.  In an age dedicated to efficiency and speed, it is a choice to deliberately slow down.

 

As such, for us, sailing on Queen Mary 2 does not interrupt our hikes and pilgrimages. It extends them. It allows our fragile lines on the map to traverse the Atlantic in the same spirit with which it crossed Canada and Europe - deliberately, attentively, unhurriedly.  QM2 becomes a bridge between the long roads already behind us and those still waiting ahead.

 

And in that expanded vision of our #Hike4Birds journey, we found a compass and a calling to continuing wandering, exploring and sharing birds from around the world – on foot, by rail, and across oceans.  Drawing the line through slow travel would serve as a way to celebrate landscapes, cultures, histories, communities and of course the diversity of wildlife that make this planet endlessly worth exploring and protecting.

 

Whether by trail, rail or sail….see you out there!