I spent last week on vacation, the first that Eric and I have taken since we got back from our Camino adventure eight months ago.
Where did we go? To a place full of hiking trails, of course!
The Sunshine Coast Trail is a 180-kilometer through-hiking trail in British Columbia, about seventy kilometers north of Vancouver. Despite it being so close to the city, it’s largely undeveloped (probably because there are few roads, and it takes two ferries to get there), full of old-growth forests and overgrown logging roads.
It’s February, it’s raining, and there are no pilgrim hostels along the trail, so we rented a cabin nearby and indulged in backpack-free day hikes through old growth forests and along rocky bluffs overlooking the Salish Sea. And I remembered that feeling that only comes when you unplug all electronic devices and go OUTSIDE, for hours at a time, through remote and stunning corners of the world.
As I was walking (or standing, breathless at the top of another steep hill, rewarded with a new view), this was the song on repeat in my head. It was one of my Camino regulars, too.
I see trees of green, red roses too
I see them bloom for me and you
And I think to myself
What a wonderful worldI see skies of blue and clouds of white
The bright blessed day and the dark sacred night
And I think to myself
What a wonderful world
camino times two 