I love the outdoors, yet I make a terrible outdoorsman. Raised in a big city by big city people, I never properly learned how to hunt, fish, snowboard, kayak, handglide, jet-ski, or any of the other things you see in life insurance commercials where the narrator asserts, “HERE’S TO THOSE WHO LIVE WITHOUT FEAR OF BOUNDARIES” or some shit like that.

Nevertheless, I’m as attuned as anyone else to the majestic, the ineffable, the healing power of nature. One of the great travesties of our age is the amount of social insanity that has been allowed to accrue because so many lost souls have forgotten how to, as they say, “touch grass”.

Accordingly, the promise of natural beauty was the primary reason my muse pulled me toward Ontario, and I desired to take full advantage of it. I spent the better part of each morning and early afternoon hiking or exploring nature in some capacity. (The only exception was Tuesday, my third day in town, when my calves were worn out from an extended trek up the cliffs Sleeping Giant. More on that later).

Hiking is easy; it’s essentially just walking, and I’ve loved walking ever since I first got the gist of it some 36 years ago. At home I take frequent night walks through my quiet suburban neighborhood, and in any city I visit I look forward to my aimless pedestrian wanderings as much as I do the Google-targeted points of interest.

But there’s something different about walking in the wilderness, and something seemingly unique about the Canadian wilderness. On a geographic level, this can be explained by the fact that Thunder Bay exists in a kind of floral nether zone where the temperate hardwood forest region (characterized by deciduous, seasonally-shedding leaves) gives way to the boreal forest (dominated by pine, spruce, and the like), making for a rich arboreal layer cake.

Yet I would argue it’s something deeper than that. Driving up from the grassy farmland of southern Wisconsin, one experiences a steady creep of forestial unreality – of the soul of one’s surroundings being subsumed by the trees themselves – all the way up into northern Minnesota, and as wacky as this sounds that unreality is amplified a few decibels the moment one crosses the Canadian border. It’s as though nature herself can breathe easier, let her guard down just a tad knowing her opponent isn’t quite as powerful or rapacious.

That, and moose live up there. More than anything else, I really wanted to see a fucking moose…

***

My first adventure took place at Sleeping Giant Provincial Park, located an hour East of Thunder Bay on a rocky peninsula with thick trees and no cell reception. Among its dozens of kilometers of hiking paths is the famous Top of the Giant trail, where over the course of about six hours one ascends almost 600 meters to the top of what’s described as the highest, steepest cliffs in Ontario. My trusty AllTrails app designates the hike as “hard”.

And yes, the steep ridges and rocky terrain made navigation strenuous at times (I wasn’t kidding when I said it wore out my calves), but for me the real challenge came from the mosquitoes. My god did those buzzing little pests (I swear they were bigger, thicker, and nastier than their U.S. counterparts) give me trouble. I couldn’t pause for a moment without being descended upon. Even when the temperature rose and my body began to sweat profusely from incline exertions I would not remove my flannel shirt for fear of giving any extra real estate to those damned insects.

Thankfully, however, this threat began to thin out at higher elevations, and as the trail climbed above the forest canopy I reached the crest of the Giant and looked out into the vast expanse of clear blue lake water that separates the peninsula from T-Bay proper (I’m sure if I squinted in the right direction I would have been able to face the coastline of my homeland).

I honestly don’t have much to say for this particular moment. I’ve experienced and written about numerous summits and this one was up there (so to speak) with the best of them. It was both a moment of small personal triumph and an opportunity – an invitation – to relax for a bit. You’ve made it, well done. Enjoy the view.

I experienced a similar splendor two days later at Kakabeka Falls, located a half hour West of T-Bay, only this payoff was more immediate. Mere meters from the parking lot a short trail leads to a slippery boardwalk that overlooks a roaring, resplendent waterfall.

Unlike the summit of Sleeping Giant, the Falls titillate all the senses. The relentless gushes of water produce not only picturesque sights but also waves of fresh-smelling mist that cool the skin. But my favorite product has to be the sound. I could close my eyes and get lost for hours in that all-encompassing ambient roar…

I could go on for a while listing off the various parks and trails my boots perambulated (Cascades Natural Area and Centennial Park were particular highlights) but you get the point. This natural wonder, this grandeur, it was exactly what I had expected from Canada. I had come to use it, like a john on the hunt for some prostitute, and she did not disappoint.

But what was I using her for, exactly? I had invested a lot of hope in these hiking excursions, not just for fun or exercise or potential blog pics but as a kind of spiritual reset, a place and time to work out some of the problems that had been nagging my consciousness over the past few weeks, a kind of premediated outdoor therapy session if you will…

I don’t know why I was expecting nature to solve all my problems. I’d be halfway into a thought about whether I should pursue a particular relationship, or how to balance my creative life with work, and suddenly I’d be distracted by an onslaught of mosquitoes. I’d sit on a log staring into the ripples of a gently flowing creek – wondering about the direction of my life or despairing the state of global politics (this was, after all, the week my country was gearing up for an illegal and offensive war with Iran) – and the creek would simply keep rippling onward.

At the end of the hike I’d end up in the same place I’d started; geographically and mentally. There were no magical answers, the towering trees had not imparted some otherworldly wisdom (or if they had I was too dumb to listen).

But that’s kind of the point, eh? Mother Nature, contrary to civilization’s designs, does not exist for some instrumental purpose. It justifies its existence and stakes its claim on our souls just by existing, by holding space for us to come in and reflect on the character of consciousness itself.

Indeed, when I think back on it now (in my comfortable, air-conditioned apartment) I realize what I miss most about these hikes were not the NatGeo highlights – the peaks and rapids and waterfalls – but the simple monotonous crunching of pebbles beneath my feet, the melodic chirping of birds and rustling of rodents in the leaves. In that sense there was serenity, there was revelation, and I had unknowingly attained everything I was looking for.

Alas, however, I still never saw a fucking moose…