Emily Taylor Smith - No Thanks, I Want to Walk: Two Months on Foot Around New Brunswick and the Gaspé

No Thanks, I Want To Walk

Two months on foot around New Brunswick and the Gasp

Emily Taylor Smith

Pottersfield Press, Lawrencetown Beach, Nova Scotia, Canada

Copyright 2021 Emily Taylor Smith

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or used or stored in any form or by any means graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or by any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any requests for photocopying, recording, taping or information storage and retrieval systems shall be directed in writing to the publisher or to Access Copyright, The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (www.AccessCopyright.ca). This also applies to classroom use.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: No thanks, I want to walk : two months on foot around New Brunswick and the Gasp / Emily Taylor Smith.

Names: Smith, Emily Taylor, author.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 2020038533X | Canadiana (ebook) 20200385364 | ISBN 9781989725337 (softcover) | ISBN 9781989725344 (EPUB)

Subjects: LCSH: Smith, Emily TaylorTravelNew Brunswick. | LCSH: Smith, Emily TaylorTravelQubec (Province)Gasp Peninsula. | LCSH: New BrunswickDescription and travel. | LCSH: Gasp Peninsula (Qubec)Description and travel. | LCSH: New BrunswickSocial life and customs. | LCSH: Qubec (Province)Social life and customs. | LCGFT: Travel writing.

Classification: LCC FC2467.6 .S65 2021 | DDC 971.5/05dc23

Cover image: Emily Taylor Smith

Map: Jan Garrison

Author photo: Michelle Doucette

Cover design: Gail LeBlanc

Pottersfield Press gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada for our publishing activities. We also acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Province of Nova Scotia which has assisted us to develop and promote our creative industries for the benefit of all Nova Scotians.

Pottersfield Press
248 Leslie Road
East Lawrencetown, Nova Scotia, Canada, B2Z 1T4
Website: www.PottersfieldPress.com
To order, phone 1-800-NIMBUS9 (1-800-646-2879) www.nimbus.ns.ca

Printed in Canada

For my sister Meredith, who has taught me kindness and bravery.

I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.

John Muir

Authors Note

Throughout No Thanks, I Want to Walk I have for the most part used only first names and occasionally changed names. My apologies for any errors or inaccurate details with regard to locations and interactions en route.

Contents

It was time to get walking again.

It was early 2015, in the dead of winter. I was planning for the fourth season of Local Tasting Tours, my food tour business which would start up again in May. Four and a half years had passed since I had completed my three-month hike around the perimeter of Nova Scotia and nearly everything in my life had changed. I had started my own business and it was doing pretty well (I even had two employees!). I was in a new relationship, living in the North End of Halifax with my partner Darren, our poodle and cat. And I was in recovery, free from my addictions to food and alcohol and very involved in the local recovery community, which had become a huge group of new friends. Life was good. And I was just itching to walk.

Darren told me once that just after we first met, he asked a friend about me.

That girls crazy, man! his friend told him. Shes walking all over the place. You should Google her!

When we first started dating, I told him about my Nova Scotia hike and about my dream to write a book about it (the book was published in 2019: Around the Province in 88 Days: One Woman, Two Pairs of Sneakers and 3000 Kilometres of Nova Scotia Coastline). I also told him I had a desire to do another long hike along the coastal roads of New Brunswick and maybe even around the Gasp Peninsula. After hiking Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia, completing this trip would mean that I had walked every bit of coastline in the Maritime provinces. Im not sure if he thought I was serious. Yet here I was, just a few years later, considering selling my business so I could spend an entire summer hiking more of the coast.

I kept going back and forth on the idea. I wasnt sure that I wanted the trip to be another fundraiser, and I didnt want to spend several months finding billets for each night like I had done in Nova Scotia. (Besides, I didnt know much French and couldnt imagine trying to communicate with strangers to arrange places to stay in Quebec). I decided I would carry everything I needed on my back and camp each night. But what if carrying all that weight was too much for me? My generous hosts in Nova Scotia had provided me with a bed and towels and meals and other supplies, so I hadnt had to carry much in my backpack (and it still felt like it was breaking my collar bones). What if I met a wolf or a bear in the middle of the night and didnt know what to do? If I gave up my business to undertake this venture, what if I couldnt find work once I got back home?

I continued to dream about the journey as I began my tours for the season, researching camping gear and maps of New Brunswick and Quebec whenever I had a moment. Two things happened to me during the summer of 2015 which helped me make up my mind.

I got an invitation to a screening of several short films made by Ben Proudfoot about Nova Scotia artisans. Each film was beautifully shot and focused on the lives of the artists as well as their work. I recognized one of the subjects as Gordon Kennedy, whom I had met at his iron art studio the day I walked into North River Bridge, Cape Breton. When the audience left the theatre after the screening, we were each given poster-sized prints of quotes from the artisans. Gordons quote was: This isnt the dress rehearsal. If you want to do things, do it. You think you need to do something, do it. What matters is life. Life matters. Live it.

Then, partway through August, a young woman showed up on one of my food tours. She was about twenty years old, tall, with an erect posture, sparkling bright eyes, and blonde braids which made me think of Pippi Longstocking. When I mentioned my love of hiking in my brief tour intro, she piped up, I just finished hiking three hundred miles of wilderness trail in Michigan! I stared at her.

As we walked between tour stops, the two of us chatted eagerly about hiking. I told her about my Nova Scotia journey and she told me about her recent adventure. We talked socks and blisters and gear. She said one time she ran out of food on the trail and knew she had hours of hiking to go before her next supply stop and wasnt sure if she was going to make it. I asked her if she was scared. You cant afford to waste your energy on fear you need all your energy to get your body where it needs to go. I told her I dreamed of hiking New Brunswick and the Gasp on my own but I hadnt done much camping before and I wasnt sure if I could do it. She looked at me, incredulous, with a gentle smile. You can do it, Emily sure, you can do it.

I made up my mind. I was going.

Map by Jan Garrison

My planning for the trip looked like this:

mapping out my route and researching the lightest possible camping gear;