I am back : A review of my trip

This is it : I am back from my trekking vacation. There is always a moment in your life where you are caught up in whatever it is you are doing and you forget about your instinctive attraction to nature. You keep on living and you try to ignore your primal needs as much as you can. However, there is always a moment in your life where you can’t take it anymore and you decide to free yourself. I think we all agree that seeing some trees, breathing fresh air and feeling good mentally and physically are an important part of being healthy. Here is an overview of my trekking trip. It turned out to be a great learning experience.

Research has shown that we are more productive at work whenever we enjoy a break or a vacation from time to time. We all need money because we all need to pay our bills. This usually keep us motivated enough to keep us working long shifts. We try to forget as much as we can about our hobbies, what makes us happy, and free time. What happens when the money is not enough anymore ? Your primal urges take over your robot-like mind, and there is no turning back. It’s nothing to feel guilty about – you only want to feel human again.

Other research has shown that nature can lower our stress levels. As much as I love the fact that I can have access to about anything in Montréal, I hate the fact that I feel like I live in a place that is so unnatural. By this, I mean that I am away from forests, mountains, lakes, etc. In other words, I am away from what would have been my ancestors’ playground. Lately, this stressed me out. Before you know it, you get caught in a routine and your life is programmed according to a schedule : You have to perform, to be fast, to be on time, to look good, to multi task, to run after buses and you get angry whenever you miss one.

I needed a break from everything. I had not left the civilized world in a while. I studied 5 days a week and worked on my free days for most of the past year. I was busy seven days a week. However, I did manage to workout because it’s really important to me to exercise on a regular basis. I have said it in the past, exercise is therapeutic for me. It lowers my stress levels and empties my mind. This led me to call my father to ask him if he wanted to go trek somewhere.  He agreed and, next thing you know, we left for three days.

We headed to camping Le Diable Vert near Mount Sutton and Park Sutton. Because of my ego (I’m young and I sometimes think that I am stronger than I really am), I refused to pay the 10$ to get our luggages, tent, and other stuff delivered to our camping spot. I figured that it would be easy to walk about a full kilometre with our stuff in a small horse-drawn-like carriage.  It turned out that the road was really steep. It was also made of small and big rocks which made it really hard for us to get to our camp. Full of sweat, we did manage to get to our camp spot.

The camping was nice. We had a nice view on the mountains and, at night, the sky was full of stars. I had not seen stars in such a long time. Another cool thing about the camping place we were at is that they raise grassfed cows on site. The cows’ breed is Highland which originates from Nova Scotia. This cow basically look like a bison and I may look into buying some in the near future (unless I buy some grass fed bison, that is). The species looks quite dangerous though.

Once our camp was all set and that we finished eating our t-bones, we planned our trek for the next day. As discussed before, we decided to go to Lake Mohawk which is ”supposed”  to be a 4 hour trek according to the map (more on that later). The cool thing about this Lake is that it is untouched by humans and it is at the top of a mountain. We thought it was cool because, after all, our goal was to break free from the civilization. We then went to sleep and, of course, I had trouble sleeping. My king-sized mattress at home is much more comfortable than an air filled mattress…

The next day, we ate our paleo breakfast : some beef, some vegetables, and some berries in coconut milk. We then left for our trekking. Now, I have trekked in the past and I pretty good at walking long distances, but this trek was probably the hardest I have ever done. First, there wasn’t an actual trail. We had to hike through the forest (according my father’s IPhone, we hiked 700meters high).We had to stop from time to time because we were lacking oxygen – yet I am far from being out shape. We had to hike tall rocks, jump over some and, ultimately, we climbed through some water falls. Our legs were filled of lactic acid and our shirts were drenched of sweat. The view was amazing.

Upon arrival at the lake, we realize that we had already climbed 10km (our goal for the day) which makes me think that we may have taken a longer path (again, we could not really see the trail). The lake was beautiful. It looks like it was abandoned because it’s so far away and it’s so hard to get there. We were happy to accomplish our goal and push through the challenge. We ate our snacks which consisted of a few cans of kippers and sardines, and we sat on the rocks to enjoy the view. Thirty minutes later, we were gone again (we had to go if we wanted to head back to camp before dark).

Our return was not as successful. Again, because we could not see the trails correctly, we ended up taking the wrong path. Next thing you know, we reached the bottom of the mountain but, we were on the other side of the mountain! We had no more water, no more food, and we were completely exhausted. We were 20km away from our camp and it was starting to get late. We decided to look for someone to give us a lift back to our camp site and we were lucky enough to find one. Overall, we have trekked about 15-20km of really steep mountain ground and we spent about 2500-2800 calories doing so.

I always advise against working out to failure on a regular basis. However, I say that once in a while going to complete exhaustion is good (provided that you get enough rest) because you get to learn about your own limits and it also teaches you to persevere. I did learn something useful by doing this. The first thing that gave out were our muscles. The lactic acid build up killed our legs. To compensate, the brain decide to lead the way. You don’t feel much from your body, but your brain is making you move automatically. You feel like it suppresses anything that is not essential to the task : you don’t feel hungry anymore, your eye sight and hearing drop a little, your memory is completely shut down (that’s why we did not take the right path when we headed back) and your movements feel programmed. Then, there is also a moment when your brain lacks glucose to keep running your body on the automatic mode. So, before you know it, you start craving something sweet. Fortunately, we had some fruits on us and never have they tasted so sweet. This was probably due to how depleted we were. By making the fruits taste so good, our brain wanted to make sure we get enough glucose.

Overall, it was a great trip. It reawakened my desire to keep things simple and to enjoy the little things. You see, money can buy you about anything but it will never make you feel human. I think that you can only feel human when you are completely in touch with what surrounds you. You give to the land and the land gives to you. You walk on the land and the land makes sure you don’t fall. And, let’s not forget that this is what we -humans- have been doing for much of our time on earth. Only recently did we forget about the power of  nature (by building cities and hiding in our houses). Out there, there is no need to think about money, cars, houses, supermarkets, etc. In nature, the civilized rules don’t exist. You follow the rules of nature or nature gets you. That’s how simple it is and this is an important fact to understand. See, in my civilized world, I tend to live in the future and I also tend to think like I will live forever. In nature, you have to live in the present and, only when your body completely shuts down do you realize how mortal you are.