“You’re coming up a blind hill there buddy,” Linda Murphy calls out, narrowly avoiding a collision with a mountain biker who has just come over a crest of the rolling 21-kilometre forested trail through Wasaga Beach Provincial Park as she approached from the other side on foot.
“That got my heart pumping,” she says.
The surface of this section of the 500-km Ganaraska Trail is largely porous clay and covered in pine needles in sharp contrast to the rooty and rocky Bruce Trail which lies a little further to the west.
“The reason that I’m here is because we have had heavy rain in the past couple of days. The Bruce Trail will be a muddy mess, but the ancient dunes of Wasaga Beach Provincial… provide sponge-like land so that after a big rain or even during a rain, the water soaks in away from the surface and makes it a safer hiking environment,” explains the 63-year-old mom of three grown children over the phone as she walks on what she describes as “a clammy, mosquito-infested afternoon”.
It’s a fine setting for a post-rainy training day. Murphy, who launched the Facebook group the Healthy Hiker several years ago to share her passion through local hikes on Saturdays, is training for the 336-kilometre East Coast Trail – a challenging trek through thousands of metres of elevation gains and losses.
Murphy has long embraced the outdoors, and never felt finished when the day hikes came to an end. While watching the biographical drama, Wild, with Reese Witherspoon playing a character who trekked across 3,000 kilometres of the Pacific Crest Trail, Murphy turned to her husband, Gord, and declared: “I’m going to do that one day.”
It took a special moment in her life for her to take the next step. Murphy shared her goal with a friend who had fallen ill, declaring they would do it together. But the friend died of her illness. It was then that Murphy decided it was time for her to go for it.
She started her hike on March 29, 2018 and felt that her friend accompanied her. But it was a solo hike. And while that’s what Murphy prefers, the isolation of being all alone for weeks on end became something of a psychological endurance test she endured in addition to the aches and pains of the physical challenges.
“I will say on the long-distance trails that can get old real quick. I was alone on the Pacific Crest Tail for 45 days before I met a friend and we stuck together for the next 130 days all the way to Canada,” she says. “Those 45 days were really psychologically scarring.
“You’re really and utterly, completely alone, which is way worse than being lonely. You know you don’t have any reason to laugh when you’re alone…. When you’re alone, nothing is funny.”
As she describes her adventures, Murphy realizes that she has lost her bandana – something that is worth turning around for. It’s a bandana she received from a trail angel while hiking from Mexico to Canada along the Pacific Crest Trail.
“I received that as sort of a token of honour at one of the trail angel’s houses who hosts the hikers overnight,” she explains. “She presented each hiker that she hosted at her home with one of these bandanas which shows a simplified map of the trail.”
One side reads: ‘hiker to trail’ and on the other side ‘hiker to town’ to indicate to others where you’re heading, if you’re off the trail looking for a lift from one place to another for supplies.
The hike, which she completed the following September, raised $30,000 for the Collingwood shelter. She says she likes to hike with purpose and has raised more than $120,000 for shelters through her adventures.
She quickly recovers the bandana during the Wasaga training hike and continues on.
Last year Murphy took on 1,000 kms of trails through Ireland, in memory of her Irish parents. Taking her mother’s ashes with her and wild camping along the way, it was very much a “grief-healing trip.”
“Her absence cut way more deeply than I ever imagined” says Murphy who found a way through it with the hike and then met people along the way reminding her of her mom.
The Wasaga hike is part of her preparation for her next long-distance through hike which she’ll embark upon at the end of the month. She’ll be flying to St. John’s, Nfdl. where she’ll connect with the 336-km. East Coast Trail that she describes as very technical with a challenging terrain. Because of the risks, she’ll be accompanied by a partner, expecting to do it over 15 days.
Murphy regularly connects with novice hikers and her Saturday treks around the Collinwood area often includes seniors. And when asked for advice her general response is: “The tips are to get up and out. It doesn’t matter if it’s just around the block or the town trail or a wilderness trail.
“Short or long it doesn’t matter.”
For more about Murphy’s adventures, videos and her fundraising efforts go to www.youtube.com/c/thehealthyhiker.
